In this Sonatas & Soundscapes interview that aired Friday, June 26th, host Bradley Fuller hears from Charleston Concert Band Director Basil Kerr about the ensemble's upcoming premiere of a work inspired by a momentous event in South Carolina history—a collaboration bringing people from across the Palmetto State together.
TRANSCRIPT:
FULLER: Basil, it's great to have you.
KERR: It's my pleasure being here, Bradley.
FULLER: The Charleston Concert Band is presenting the program “Liberty!” (with an exclamation point at the end there) on Saturday at Dock Street Theatre. Now, how far ahead did you know you wanted to start planning this concert to honor South Carolina's Revolutionary-era history in this 250th anniversary year?
KERR: We began working on this project a year ago—almost exactly a year ago in June. We started doing a preliminary plan for a concert. We weren't sure if we were going to have a tie-in with SC250 just yet. We were still reaching out to those people. We had formed a committee to look at grant possibilities and coordination with our local SC250 Charleston as well as the state level.
SC250 Charleston really liked what we did. We played, last year at this time, for Carolina Day. We always do it at the Battery in Charleston with the Palmetto Society. They have celebrated Carolina Day every year since 1777—the first anniversary—so, it's pretty interesting. But they came over—Marissa Sams was one of the folks from Charleston SC250 to explore possibly doing something in conjunction with them. At that point, we did a little research, formed a committee of folks who have done grants and have done education research in the past, and we began exploring the possibility.
FULLER: I understand exploring that possibility ultimately led to a collaboration with a South Carolina composer. You mentioned Carolina Day—this holiday that that really marks a very momentous event in South Carolina history: the Battle of Fort Sullivan or Sullivan's Island. So some of these things started to come together in this collaboration, I understand?
KERR: That's correct. One of the first things we talked about was having a composer to create an original work that would commemorate this historic event. And we looked at several people. The most obvious one was the one from our own state. And that was Jay Bocook, who had been at Furman for many, many years. He's just recently retired, he's still writing music, and he's a nationally-recognized composer for band and also for drum corps. So he seemed like a natural choice.
I’ve known Jay since we started out in band directing many, many years ago, and I've always respected his work. So, we got together and we started talking about it.
He wrote a piece in commemoration of 9/11 called “As All The Heavens Were a Bell.” It was a very emotional piece and very programmatic. He doesn't do a lot of programmatic works, but this one—of course, 9/11 touched everybody. And he wrote this piece and it was very powerful. The year after that happened, I had the School of the Arts in Charleston wind ensemble perform it at the first anniversary of 9/11. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
And so I told Jay that I thought this was something that could be along similar lines in terms of the emotional impact of the people of the city and the defenders of the fort. And he went with it.
When we started working on it, the musicians in the concert band sat up straight and said “This is going to be something special.”
He told me he didn't really know much about this battle. So when I filled him in on the battle, and especially the role of the palmetto tree—and, you know, that's why the tree is on the state flag, because of the unique properties of the spongy wood that soaked up the cannon shells as they came in and didn't really have much of an effect on the fort—he was fascinated. There was recently a video on that battle, and I sent that to him to kind of fill it out, and he just went with it. It's just amazing the things we were able to do together.
FULLER: So would you say this is a team effort really bringing people from across the Palmetto State together, then?
KERR: Yeah, I mean think about it—we have a composer from Furman, we have educators from Winthrop, and we have Charleston, of course. So it’s definitely a statewide event in terms of contributions.
FULLER: And what role will the educators from Winthrop be playing?
KERR: Well, we are also working with the State Department of Education’s Arts in Basic Curriculum—or the ABC Project. It's at Winthrop University, and they have a committee of teachers who are coming down here this weekend.
And they're going to study the Battle of Sullivan's Island, they're going to come to the concert, they're going to hear the music. We're going to record the music professionally—we always do anyway, but this is going to be a little bit different. We’re using a three-camera technique and more—but the point is, they're going to be recording the piece, the teachers are going to take it, and they're going to build an instructional unit so that they can take this piece with the story of the Battle of Sullivan's Island and the images created, and send it to schools across the state to use in social studies classes, especially South Carolina history classes.
FULLER: Now, I know you want to save some surprises for the performance itself, but tell me a little bit about the music—you know, what kind of structure does the piece have? You mentioned it’s programmatic, so it's kind of telling a story, referencing this great battle on June 28th, 1776—a little under a week before the famous signing of the Declaration. What does the music do to evoke this great event in South Carolina history?
KERR: Well, I will tell you that the first thing you'll be struck by when the piece begins is a fife-and-drum corps that’s playing at the beginning. And he wrote an original fife tune that really sounds like it came straight from the history books. And then it goes along and we have—without giving out way too much—the battle scene. But the lead-up to the battle scene is pretty intense.
One of the things that he did—we talked about this—when Colonel Moultrie, who was in charge of the fort, saw the ships coming in, he quickly called for the drummer to beat to quarters—to beat to positions. And so there is a long roll that they used to get the guys to their places by the cannons. And we did that, and he insists that we do it at the same rate that they would have done back then. It’s kind of an open roll on a Revolutionary War drum for eight to 10 seconds. And then the battle’s on. So that happens—it’s very intense.
And then, the last part is, of course: the smoke clears. The city sees that the fort is still standing and the ships are withdrawing. And there's a big rejoicing. So, it's a three-part thing: the beginning, the battle, and the aftermath. Very, very, very powerful. When we started working on it, the musicians in the concert band sat up straight and said “This is going to be something special.”
FULLER: I think it's remarkable he was so intent and conscientious about bringing in not only the influence and the inspiration of the battle, but actually the soundscape, if you will, of what people would have heard—and, importantly, the role that music and rhythm played there to marshal the forces and ready them for the defense of that fort. So I can understand the excitement of the ensemble under your baton.
KERR: That's exactly right. We've been very pleased with the response from our musicians. We had Jay come down here—Jay Bocook came down and worked with our band in a rehearsal, and he made the comment that he rarely gets the chance to hear a piece performed before its actual concert. So he came in at the rehearsal and he said “This is really great, because I can hear it and I can then decide if we can fix things.” And so it became a collaborative effort.
He found a few things he wanted us to do differently, we showed him a few things that we were doing differently, and the result is an even better product. He says sometimes he'll have a piece played out on a stage and he'll go “Oh, wow, I didn't mean that” [laughter]
But it’s what happens. We're human beings and so we interpret what the composer is intending to do. So in this case, we were pretty close—the collaboration was very close, and it was very easy to have him come in and work with the musicians, and then we had this phenomenal, phenomenal, experience.
FULLER This performance will be given at Dock Street Theatre. Is that your usual home venue or a special choice for this concert?
KERR: Well, the Dock Street Theatre venue is actually the result of our collaboration with SC250 Charleston. We normally do our performances at the Rose Maree Myers Theater for the Performing Arts at the Charleston School of the Arts in North Charleston. It's a better central location for us. But we just could not pass this up.
They offered us the facility as the third day of their three-day event. They're having two days of round tables and lectures on Thursday and Friday of this week (the 25th and 26th), and the 27th was their day that they were going to empty out—but they were still going to have to building. And they said “You can have it.” We said “Oh, absolutely we're going to take that!”
There are not very many large ensembles. There’s chamber music in there all the time for Spoleto Festival USA. But for a large ensemble like ours, that doesn't happen very often. And we've been working with the staff at Dock Street Theatre and they've been wonderful. They're really excited about this. They haven't had a large ensemble in the space for at least 20 years, so this is an exciting time for them as well.
FULLER: The acoustic in the venue is, of course, incredible and I can just imagine with so many wind instruments on stage that the sound there will truly be something else—and in a venue, again, with so much history and such a storied past to it really tying in with the historical nature of this program.
Well, Basil, thanks so much for giving just a little sneak peek into “Sullivan's Island” by Jay Bocook and, of course, what all the Charleston Concert Band has in store for Saturday. All best for the program “Liberty!”
KERR: Well thank you so much, Bradley. It is a very special day for our band and a very wonderful experience that everyone who is in that hall is going to have.
More information about the Charleston Concert Band can be found on the organization's website.
