James "Kimo" Williams Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Composer / Performer James Kimo Williams

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

James "Kimo" Williams (born January 8, 1950) is an American composer, musician and professor who has performed with a number of ensembles including his ensemble Kimotion and the Lt. Dan Band, that he co-founded with film/TV actor Gary Sinise [shown in the photo below]. While he is perhaps best known for his work with the Lt. Dan Band, Williams has worked on a number of other projects including award-winning photography, releasing four CDs, writing a stage play and working on an opera based on the courts martial of Henry Ossian Flipper, the first black graduate from West Point. Cognizant of the opportunities he had, as well as those he did not due to a childhood in which he moved often, Williams speaks to students about his history, their future and their need to combat mediocrity.

Williams was born in Amityville, New York, and spent much of his childhood divided between U.S. Air Force bases, and on his grandparents' sharecropper farm in North Carolina, where he picked tobacco, plowed fields and tended livestock on their rural farm. In 1968, he moved to Hawaii to join his father (a career Air Force Sergeant), and attended Leilehua High School. A dedicated, but inexperienced guitar player, he also took up sports and was an all-star football player with a scholarship invitation from Arizona State. The night before enlisting in the US Army on July 4, 1969, he attended his first major music concert: Jimi Hendrix playing at the Waikiki Bowl. He was so inspired by this concert and the music of Jimi Hendrix, that he dedicated himself to music and playing guitar.

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After leaving Vietnam in 1970, Williams used his GI Benefit and attended the Berklee College of Music. While a student he founded The Paumalu Symphony, now known as Kimotion. After teaching at Berklee for one year, he graduated in 1976 with a BA in Composition. In 1976 Williams met his music partner and future wife Carol, a fellow Berklee student and married two years later.

After basic training, he was sent to Vietnam (the day after his 20th birthday), where he served with a unit of the 20th Combat Engineer Brigade in Lai Khe, building roads and clearing land in the jungle. One of Williams' earliest, and most often cited, musical opportunities was in Vietnam when an Army entertainment director heard him play and suggested that he perform for the troops in the field. The Soul Coordinators was born of this request, and started Williams' long resume of performances, both with bands and on his own.

After completing his studies at Berklee College of Music and marrying his wife in 1978, the couple together joined the Army Band program, spending a year with the 9th Infantry Division Band at Ft. Lewis, Washington. Kimo went on to attend Officer Candidate School, and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in 1980. His first assignment brought him to Fort Sheridan, IL: close enough to Chicago that he and Carol could continue producing and performing with his large ensemble (now called “Kimotion”) and their small-group “Williams and Williams”, in local clubs and concert venues. They set up a music publishing company (One Omik Music), as well as launching their own record company (Little Beck Music). To record their music, they rehabbed an old storefront in Chicago, and built and operated a recording studio there.

In 1983 he earned his MA in Management from Webster University. When he left the army in 1987 to pursue composing full time he had risen to the rank of captain. He taught at Sherwood Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and in the Music Department at Columbia College Chicago. He completed his military service in the Army Reserves by becoming the Bandmaster for the 85th Division Army Reserve Band, and retired from the Army Reserves as a Chief Warrant Officer in 1996.

In 1997, Williams wrote the music for the Steppenwolf Theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire, leading to his partnership with Gary Sinise, and in 2003, the creation of the Lt. Dan Band (named for Sinise's character in film Forrest Gump). Also in 1997, he directed the Goodman Theatre's production of the August Wilson play, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”. In 2008, Williams' Fanfare for Life was performed during the Alabama Symphony's annual musical tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. His compositions include works for chamber ensembles and orchestras, and have been performed by groups worldwide, including the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Sinfonietta. In October 2013 a commission by Williams for the string quartet ETHEL was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In 1996, he accepted a position in the Arts Entertainment and Media Management Department of Columbia College. As of 2011 he is a tenured associate professor. Williams was named Chicagoan of the Year in 2006, and was recognized for a lifetime of work including the 1998 founding of the United States Vietnam Art Program. In 1999, he received the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra's Composer Award, and has been the recipient of honors from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Savannah Symphony Orchestra. Buffalo Soldiers, one of his most well-known works, was the result of a commission by The West Point Academy to celebrate their 2002 Bicentennial. In 2007 he was named a Fulbright Program for his works in music, education and history.

In February of 2000, James Kimo Williams came to the studios of WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago for a conversation. While we were setting up to record, it was noted that the tape machine I was using was not the most up-to-date model, and that is where we began the interview.

Bruce Duffie:   You’re looking at my ancient equipment. Is it part of the responsibility of the composer to always be on the cutting edge of everything?

James Kimo Williams:   Absolutely! When someone once asked if I used a piano when I compose, I said, “I’ll use whatever instrument I have available to me!” Another time I had an individual who said, “You wrote this with a computer, didn’t you?” and I said, “I did use a computer to help with some of the sounds that I was looking for.” But he had this look on his face as if to say, “Ha, ha, so you used a computer. You didn’t use a piano in your ear. So you’re not using the analogue, you’re going digital!” I said to him, “If Beethoven was here today, and he was able to get into a guitar center and play one of those synthesizers, I think he would go nuts and write something for it. I don’t look at technology and say I’m going to stay with the traditionalist approach to composition just so I can be intellectual. I want to use whatever resources, whatever sounds, whatever instruments are available to create the sounds in the compositions that I want to write.

BD:   For you, it’s a tool but not a crutch?

Williams: Absolutely, it’s a tool. That’s a good point you make, because there are some composers who would use it as a crutch, or figure they don’t have to this or that. The just plug it in here, and plug it out, and then send it off, and hopefully it will get played. It does happen.

BD:   Aren’t there some computer programs now that almost paint-by-numbers?

Williams: Absolutely! I was on a panel for a composers’ contest. Scores were sent in, and a score came in that was totally computer-generated. It had some good things that were happening with it, and when you looked at the score, you can tell that the individual just plugged into his software, because the dynamics were off place, the rests were wrong, and you can tell he didn’t have any type of musical approach to the composition. You have to be able to use technology as a tool and not as a crutch, and not as something which writes the music for you.

BD:   Do you do some teaching as well as composing?

Williams: Yes, I teach at Columbia College.

BD:   Is this one of the things that you impress on your students, that you must utilize the technology but not let the technology use you?

Williams: It’s not like I do or I don’t, because the courses I teach are not strictly composition, or as it relates to the theory of music. I teach Music Business courses, because most of the things I do at this point are more business-oriented. I have a record company and a publishing company, so what I try to do is to get students to understand the necessity of passion. If you’re going to apply yourself to something that you really love, then you have to have passion about it, and with passion will come success. Those are the kinds of things I try to say. But in the area of music business, I try to tell them that they must understand technology, and then know how to use technology as it relates to their goals.

BD:   They can use that technology in the business, rather than in the artistic creation?

Williams: [Enthusiastically] Right, right, right! I don’t normally try and dictate to a student not to use technology, or to be careful with technology. When you’re a student, it’s very hard to be able to separate a teacher saying not to do something, as opposed to just being aware of this, and then making a good quality decision based on that knowledge. When I was at Berklee College of Music in Boston, they said not to use trombones in thirds below D in bass clef. So, all the students said, “We’ll never do that, ever!” I looked at it and said, “Why not? Let me try it out and see what it sounds like!” So I did it, and it sounded great. But it was appropriate to the composition, and that’s what the teachers are trying to indicate — that if it’s not appropriate to the composition, then you don’t want to do it. It’s how you apply the rules, as opposed to just following them with your eyes closed.

The Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal and bluegrass.

Since 2012, Berklee College of Music has also operated a campus in Valencia, Spain. In December 2015, Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory agreed to a merger. The combined institution is known as Berklee, with the conservatory becoming The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Berklee alumni have won 310 Grammy Awards, more than any other college, and 108 Latin Grammy Awards. Other accolades for its alumni include 34 Emmy Awards, seven Tony Awards, eight Academy Awards, and three Saturn Awards.

BD: So, when you’re writing music, or getting ideas in your head, you’re the one who has to decide whether it is or is not appropriate?

Williams: I strongly believe that, yes, absolutely, and that’s what is missing with so many students who want to express themselves creatively through composition. They’re taking the rules and the limitations, and using them totally from the left-brain, and not saying, “Let me see what this rule does on the right-brain side!” On the right-brain side, it’s going to open itself up, and says, “Let me try this out, and if it works, I’ll use it. If it doesn’t, I won’t.”
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BD:   Is it appropriate to you, or is it appropriate to the audience, or appropriate to the score? Where does that appropriateness fit in?

Williams: It’s to the artist. The artist has got to feel good with what he or she is trying to express. If you’re trying to express something in a way that it makes the audience extremely mad and angry at you, then express that in your music. I am a composer who is totally committed to providing music to the common man. I use that term because you always immediately come up with the Aaron Copland relationship, but I really want someone to hear my music. A construction worker will listen to it and say, “Hey, I like that,” or “I understand that”.

BD:   Do you write it for everyone?

Williams: For everyone! Brahms said he wrote for the populous, and ever since I read that, it validated my approach to composition.

BD:   You’re looking to get as big an audience as you can? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with Paul Freeman, and William Brown.]

Williams: Right, exactly!

BD:   [With a wink] Will you not rest until you get all six billion of us? [Both roar laughing]

Williams: Well, I really don’t write to try and gain the audience. I hopefully write to express my ideas. Much like a conversation, you want people to hear your stories or your thoughts. So I’m looking for as many people who are out there that may be interested with what I have to say. Then I want to make sure that I can communicate with them, and I do everything I can to do that.

BD:   Have you found your voice?

Williams: I have found my voice, because I use a lot of different genres of music.

BD:   Is your voice always evolving?

Williams: [Thinks a moment] Wow! Yes! It’s a continuous thing. Ten years from now my music may speak entirely differently than how I’m speaking now. So yes, it is evolving. I am very satisfied at this point. It took me a long time to get to this stage, especially with classical music.

BD:   Why?

Williams: There are some amazingly great composers out there who have spent their lives writing music, and learning about it. They have master’s degrees and doctorates, and they live it and they breathe it every day, and yet they’re struggling to get their music performed. I came through rock ‘n’ roll, went to school at Berklee (which is a jazz school), so I understand the basics of jazz and rock. I understand classical music, but classical music was never the area that I would have spent my life trying to develop. I don’t have all of the tools that a composer would have who had gone to the University of Chicago, or Northwestern. They understand technically how to create a piece of music that reflects that genre.

BD:   Does that make your music more pure you?

Williams: For me it does. However, sometimes I still feel intimidated. When I was in the music department at Columbia College, I had the opportunity to have one of my string quartets performed. It was my first time having my classical music performed by a professional ensemble. There was another teacher there at Columbia at the same time, and they did my piece first. I listened to it, and I said, “Oh, that’s not so bad! That’s pretty nice!” Then they did his piece, and I said, “My God! Why didn’t mine sound that way?” I felt awful, and I said to the other composer, “You are amazing! Your technical ability is just mind-boggling!” It was very hard for me, and at that point I said to myself, “Why am I trying to write if this is not my area of composition?” Or, as you said earlier, “If this is not my voice, why am I using the classical idiom to try and express myself?”

BD:   I was going to ask this question earlier, so let’s ask your question now. Why are you getting into the classical area?

Williams: Because now I’ve come to terms with it. That is my voice as it relates to classical music, and I use the instruments of the orchestra to represent music from my perspective. I may not approach it from a typical point of view, but George Walker said to me when I was in Atlanta, “Kimo, how you write is how you write! How you express yourself is how you express yourself, and it’s not relevant whether or not you are writing with all the technical finesse of someone who’s gone to school to do that. You’re expressing yourself, and that in itself makes your work just as valuable as someone who has their doctorate degree in composition!” It was great to hear a Pulitzer Prize winner say that. I felt a lot better about my music.

BD:   I assume you want your expression to be as clean and as available as possible, which is the technical aspect.

Williams: Yes, right. Maybe ‘technical’ is the wrong term, because you cannot just have the technical expertise for writing. For instance, I could use a very simple D major triad, and not resolve it to G. Maybe I could go into some other direction. When someone who understands classical music says the D is supposed to resolve to the G, while understanding that there are sometimes deceptive resolutions, normally this is not supposed to happen.

BD:   But it should resolve the way you want it to resolve!

Williams: That’s the way I feel! It should resolve the way I want, or don’t want it to resolve. Therefore, I’m going to go after this because that’s what I’m trying to express. My point is that it doesn’t have to be this clean thing. It can be this ‘dirty’ thing, and still be able to express what I want it to express.

* * * * *

BD: When you get it written and give it to the performers, do you want it to come back exactly as you envisioned it, or do you want them to put something of themselves into it?
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Williams: Oh, that’s such a great question. I never want it to come exactly as it is on paper. I always ask the instrumentalist to at least be able to understand it, and I give them some insight on what it is I was looking for in each piece. I always talk to them about what the piece represents. When I was in Atlanta for Symphony for the Sons of Nam, I wanted to talk to the musicians to tell them what it was about. I said, “This represents this, this represents that, and it means a lot to me” The violinist who took the solo, came up to me and said, “I am so glad you indicated what this piece is about, because I approached it entirely differently. If I had not known that, I would have just played the music, but because of what you said, I played the emotion.” That meant a lot to me.

BD:   If the performer has a better understanding, will the audience necessarily have a better understanding?

Williams: I think so. What’s very important to me is that the emotion comes out, as opposed to the audience just listening to the notes. For a lot of my music, I have some type of printed program, or something about what the piece is. Most composers do that, but it helps the audience to experience what it is you’re trying to say as a composer.

BD:   You mentioned the Symphony for the Sons of Nam. You’re a Vietnam veteran, and also a concert music composer. I don’t know if you are unique, but it’s very rare to have both in your resume.

Williams: That’s true. In fact, there was a work done by the Pacific Symphony in California that used Vietnamese instruments. It was a very popular piece [Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio by Elliot Goldenthal], and Yo-Yo Ma performed on the cello. Sony put it out, and in their advertising, they said, “This is the first and most significant piece representing the Vietnam War in this genre of music.” So immediately I wrote them a letter to let them know that Symphony for the Sons of Nam had been released, and it was done by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. I made sure they knew I was a Vietnam veteran, and sent them the score! I got a nice letter from the conductor, Carl St. Clair, who said they weren’t aware of the piece. He thanked me for that information, and said he was glad to know that it exists.

BD:   Did they make a public ‘oops’? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interview with Roque Cordero.]

Williams: No, not publicly, but it was nice to hear their response. So Symphony for the Sons of Nam is my most cherished piece of music.

BD:   Are you happy that it’s perhaps your most widely performed piece?

Williams: Yes, very happy. It has been played every single year since 1990, and as a composer it is gratifying it’s been played by very significant orchestras, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra last year, and Atlanta and Detroit, and so forth.

BD:   Do you get letters from other Vietnam veterans about it?

Williams: I do, but mostly from mothers and daughters. They usually call up National Public Radio because NPR plays it normally on Memorial Day. After they play it, they get letters, and they forward them to me. I respond to each and every one. Sometimes they ask how they can buy it, and I send them a free copy. One was from a woman who said, “I’m sitting here making an apple pie, and I’m listening to the radio, and then on this concert was this beautiful music. I just want to write to tell you that my husband was in the War, and I thank you so much for this piece.” It was so moving just for her to say apple pie. So I have that letter hanging on my wall at work!

BD:   You are touching people directly!

Williams: That’s what makes it. I revise things a lot, and after the Atlanta Symphony performance was when I really felt that I had done what I wanted to do with this work. It was the first time I actually listened to the piece objectively. I wondered if it was going to sound right. Did they play that part right? Is it too fast? Is it too slow? Maybe I should change that!

BD:   That was after the recording had been made?

Williams: That’s after the recording, right! That was two years ago.

BD:   So, if someone made a recording of a new performance, it would be a different piece?

Williams: That’s right!

BD:   Are you finished with it now, or is it going to be one of these things that you’re going to tinker with for the rest of your life?

Williams: No, no, this is it! When I say finished with it, I’m finished with the approach. This is a four-chapter piece. Chapter One and Chapter Two is what I’ve already completed, like bookends. I want to write Chapters Three and Four because Chapters One and Two represent book-ends. I want to write the most significant parts of my experiences in Vietnam, which were going there and then coming home. So those two parts I have actually written. Chapters Three and Four, which would be the middle, would be events in Vietnam, and then after I come back, which is very traumatic with regards to Vietnam veterans coming back. They are thinking that everybody’s going to say they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it turns out that they’re the worst thing ever. So, from that standpoint, it is an uncompleted or unfinished piece of music.

BD:   Will it ever be finished, or is this something you’re going to work on until your last breath?
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Williams: I might work on it till I have those other chapters completed. I went back to Vietnam in 1998. One of the reasons I did that was to see if I could find the inspiration to write Chapters Three and Four, specifically because Vietnam affected me from the standpoint of its culture. Even when I was there as a soldier, I was really intrigued with the culture of the people. It affected me, and my values, and how I looked at life. Life is wonderful, happy, and I enjoy every minute and moment. Watching those people when I was there, gave me that kind of value system, so I went back to see if I could understand what that culture was, and why that was so significant to me. I thought I would go back, find this inspiration to start writing the third and fourth chapters, but it was pretty frustrating. There was a film crew with me who video-taped the trip, and on the night we were on our way back, the interviewer asked me if I had found the inspiration for Chapters Three and Four. I could have easily said yes, and then the movie would have a happy ending, but I said no, I didn’t!

BD:   Would it have been different if the GIs had achieved their goal and won the war?

Williams: I don’t think so, because it was my individual personal experience. It really didn’t have anything to do with the War. It had to do with my experiences in the War. When I say that, it’s because I’m dealing with something that’s a little bit deeper than the political situation which was happening there, and that is the everyday life of the people. It might have been true if the War had turned out that we came back victors, and everything was wonderful, but I still think the people that affected me would have been going out to plow the field. They still would have said hello with a smile, and still would have wanted me to give them some chocolate, and pat their dog, and do all those types of things. So I don’t think the outcome of the War would have had affected how I viewed my relationship with the culture that was there.

BD:   Is there any possibility of getting this performed with their orchestra?

Williams: [Laughs] No, I don’t think so! That would be pretty difficult. When I came back from Vietnam, I wanted to do something to create an artistic relationship between Vietnam and the United States, and specifically Chicago. While I was there, I met the Ambassador, Pete Peterson, and one of the things he said to me was that we, the United States, really need to embrace Vietnam artistically. A lot of the other countries are doing that, and I presented to him this project that I was talking about. He said it was a great idea, but the only way I could be successful with this is if I can get the confidence of the Vietnamese community, specifically the arts community. This was while I was there, so I had an opportunity to meet the director of the Hanoi Conservatory of Music [Now the Vietnamese National Academy of Music], the director of the Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory of Music, and the Minister of Artistic Culture for the country of Vietnam. All three of these people that I spoke to said that this project was a phenomenal idea, which could create a type of synergy between Vietnam and the United States, as it related to art in general. So, that actually is in progress right now. The program is called Arts Synergy. It’s attached to Columbia College, and also in connection with the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, which has visual art from Vietnam Veterans.

BD:   What is the reaction of the Vietnamese community here in Chicago to this work?

Williams: I have not gotten any input from the community here at all. When I started working with this program, one person who was helping me write the Mission Statement asked why we didn’t try to embrace the Vietnamese community with this project. It seemed pretty obvious that it would work. My wife was working at a hospital, and she met somebody there who was creating relationships between Vietnam and the University of Chicago. He is Vietnamese, and when I talked with him, he said that the Vietnamese community does not want to have anything to do with Vietnam because it is now a communist country, and that’s what they left! Some still have family over there, but they lost their homes. The piece is normally played in symphonic halls for the subscribers who normally attend, and the Vietnamese community, at least here in Chicago, they’re not interested in attending these concerts.

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BD:   Another part of your personality is the jazz side.

Williams: Yes, that’s where I started out!

BD:   Are you trying to bring the jazz side and the classical side together, or are you keeping them separate as parallel tracks in your life?

Williams: I’m not trying to keep them together, and I’m also not trying to keep them separate. I started with jazz composition at Berklee. During the process of getting my undergraduate degree in composition, you are exposed to the classical idiom, and one of the things that opened my mind to classical music was Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. We were in a big lecture hall for a style and analysis class, and they played that piece. I said, “That’s rock‘n’roll!” [Laughs] It had those odd meters, so I started listening to a lot of other things that he had written.

BD:   That was the doorway for you to get in?

Williams: Absolutely, and then I listened to Mussorgsky, especially the Prologue to Boris Godunov. This is rock‘n’roll! To me it’s jazz. This is great stuff, so I could see that I could apply my approach to composition the same way, whether I learned jazz or classical. I could still write for that instrumentation.

BD:   Do you then want to be a doorway for some of your jazz listeners to get into the classical?

Williams: Yes! In fact, I went to a concert given by two very good friends of mine who write in the jazz-rock-pop-style. I listened to their music, and I actually called them right after the gig and said, “We really need to find a way to have your music be expressed with instrumentation that’s more related to the classical way, because you have this approach to writing. You don’t need to learn how to write composition from the classical standpoint, because you express yourself in a way that would be easily understood with the instrumentation of a chamber orchestra.” So, yes, I’m hopefully opening the door for jazz guys, at least my friends. Look at Wynton Marsalis. He does both really well.

BD:   He’s one of the few that is solidly in both camps.
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Williams: Right, solidly!

BD:   But it takes you to hear the commonality between some of the jazz and the classical.

Williams: Yes. I can hear it especially in Mussorgsky’s music, such as Night on the Bare Mountain, not the Rimsky-Korsakov version, but the original version. I love the recording with Claudio Abbado conducting.

BD:   [Gently protesting] Rimsky made it nicer!

Williams: He made it very nice, but Mussorgsky was rock ‘n’ roll. [Both laugh] You can hear there’s some major chord bass movements that sound like the bass player in somebody’s band, with his hair going back and forth. You can just hear that hard edge that he had on that original version. I love that piece!

BD:   We’re kind of talking around it, so let me ask you the real easy question straight out. What is the purpose of music?

Williams: The purpose of music??? Wow! That’s a hard question. I can tell you the purpose of music for me is putting forth a form of expression, and that is happiness. I mean it makes me happy to hear it. It makes me happy to play with it, and to use it as a tool for expression. But mainly the purpose of music for me is to express what I can express with the syntax. I have been able to say things that I never could have said with words. I have a violin solo called Silent Prayer, and it can tell somebody that I feel very sad. Vietnam really made me feel lonely, and when they hear the music, a tear will come to their eye. Now they have my emotion, so that’s the purpose for me, to clarify that communication process. What about you?

BD:   I describe it as ‘the food you eat nourishes the body, and the music you hear nourishes the soul’.

Williams: It nourishes the soul! Oh, beautiful! I love that! Can I use that?

BD:   Be my guest! [Pauses a moment] You’ve just hit the big five-oh. Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age?

Williams: Yes. When I turned 50 it was one of the happiest times of my life. When I turned 40, it was not as happy. I don’t know what it is about 40 that’s different than 50, but when I turned 40, perhaps I was still thinking back at 30. When you turn 50, you’re looking towards 60! [Both laugh] I feel everything is coming to a point where I wanted it. I’m excited about so many different things right now with regards to my music and my personal life. I’ve finally resolved myself. I finally understand that age has nothing to do with happiness, and it has nothing to do with expression of myself musically. I can still get up on stage if I want to strap on my bass guitar and sing some Jimmy Hendrix tunes, and not worry that I look like a silly old man! [Laughs]

BD:   It’ll be very interesting as we move along to see rock ‘n’ roll as a geriatric exercise.

Williams: That’s right! [Both laugh] It’s heading that way! I watched the band Blondie on TV the other day, and realized we can all go out now and play if she can get up there and do what’s she doing.

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BD:   Are you pleased with the recordings that are out so far?

Williams: [Thinks a moment] Not really. It’s not that I’m not pleased with the performance, but there are certain ideas in the works that could have been expressed a little bit differently if the orchestra had had a little bit more time to deal with them. As you know, with the costs and so forth, the musical directors and the producers feel they’ve got to get through it. That’s a lot of money, so they have to make sure that they can get the best recording they can. Every composer would love to spend a lot more hours, so if I had had more time, there are certain things that I’d like to have done.

BD:   Another two rehearsals and it would have been so much better?

Williams: That’s right! But for what was done, Paul Freeman did a great job with both works in the limited time that he had. He did an excellent job.

BD:   Are all your works on commission, or are some of them things that you just have to get out of your system?

Williams: I usually write because I like to write. For instance, Symphony for the Sons of Nam was because I wanted to write that piece. The pieces that have been recorded and played outside of Chicago with large orchestras include my Fanfare for Life, which was commissioned by AT&T through the Chicago Sinfonietta [CD with Freeman conducting the Czech National Symphony Orchestra shown above-left], and a piece commissioned by the West Point Academy called Buffalo Soldiers, which represents the black cavalry men of the ninth and tenth cavalry in 1866 and around that time. [CD shown above-right] Then, I just recently was commissioned by the composers’ forum in coordination with the NEA [National Education Association]. They had something called Continental Harmony, which is creating a partnership between composers and communities throughout the United States who are writing pieces for each state.

Continental Harmony, a program of the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts, is the first nationwide music commissioning program in American history. Beginning as a celebration of the new millennium, people in every state worked with composers to bring to life new music that reflected their history, culture, and hopes for the future.

Continental Harmony has revealed the vitality of the arts across our land. It has touched the lives of millions of Americans through projects shaped to fit the culture and vision of the people being served.

I was selected to write one here in Illinois, and there’s also another one in Illinois. The community I am writing the work for is Oak Park. In 1968, Oak Park did something that was just wonderful. They had a referendum for fair housing which actually said that anyone can come into this community and live anywhere they want to. It was the major step at that time. So, they wanted a piece, and they put in for a grant to Continental Harmony, to say that they would like to have a composer write a work to reflect this great step that we took. I put my application in, they read it, and they felt it was appropriate for what they wanted. So I received the commission, and I’m extremely excited about it. I haven’t begun the process of writing yet, but I’ve begun the process of communicating with the community, which is extremely important.

BD:   Is there a time deadline?

Williams: We want to have it premiered in October, and I always meet my timelines. So, that work is in process, and I’m also working on an album right now. I got another commission two years ago with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. This was a chance to collaborate, which I had never done. It’s very hard for me to collaborate because you have to find people who are as passionate as you are, and then you may have to work with them together. I was lucky.

BD:   Were you collaborating with other musicians, or with the dancers?

Williams: With a choreographer. Randy Duncan is his name [biography and photo below], and when you want to talk about somebody passionate about dancing and choreography, he was there. But he also understood music, and the process of composition. As we worked together, I started writing. As a composer, you have a melody with maybe an antecedent and then you have a consequence. Usually, it’s going to go maybe sixteen bars, and then you end it. So I wrote this nice piece, and he said it was great, but there was not enough time for the dancers to get on stage! In my mind, I wondered so what? That’s where the melody ended. But instead of looking at it from the standpoint of that’s what I wrote, and you just take it, I looked at it and knew I should open it up. Instead of making it a limitation, I made it a challenge about how I can express what I want, and then create more of it to make this happen and get more time. It turns out that when you listen to Affection, which is the name of the piece, it was a wonderful experience for me to expand and take the limitations off and continue, so the melody doesn’t end after eight bars or sixteen bars.

BD:   I’m glad it worked rather than falling apart.

Williams: Exactly. It worked well, and I was able to see the premiere at the Auditorium Theater, and then at Ravinia. Watching the music come to life with the dance was such a wonderful experience.

Renowned choreographer and dancer Randy Louis Duncan was born on December 14, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up and attending public schools on Chicago’s west side, Duncan’s career began at age fifteen with the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre. Duncan later began formal dance studies with Geraldine Johnson, followed by classes at the Sammy Dyer School of Theater, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Illinois State University. Duncan credits Harriet Ross and Joseph Holmes with much of his inspiration.

Drawing upon ballet, jazz dance, and modern dance for his choreography, Duncan created works that have been performed by numerous dance companies including the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, River North Dance Company and Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago as well as companies in Seattle and Tel Aviv. In 1987, Duncan choreographed for the first all-African American cast of A Chorus Line. Duncan’s musical theater credits include Guys and Girls, Street Dreams, West Side Story, Carousel, Hello Dolly, and Don’t Bother Me I Can’t Cope. He has taught and judged dance competitions throughout North America, Europe and the Middle East. Duncan’s classes in jazz dance have taken him to Mexico, England, France, Amsterdam, and Israel.

Duncan has been a three-time recipient of Chicago’s prestigious Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Choreographer of the Year (1988, 1990, and 1992). In 1994, Duncan won the Jazz Dance World Congress Award. He regularly serves on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, Arts Midwest and the Illinois Arts Alliance. Other awards include the 1999 Artistic Achievement Award from the Chicago National Association of Dance Masters, and the 2000 Black Theater Alliance Award for Best Choreography.

An avid supporter of HIV/AIDS causes, Duncan has donated his time and choreography to Dance for Life, creating world premieres for Chicago’s largest dance benefit for HIV/AIDS. His television ballet, Urban Transfer, was produced and distributed nationwide by PBS-TV’s WTTW. Duncan’s first major motion picture by Paramount Pictures, Save the Last Dance, earned him a nomination for the American Choreography Award for dance on film.

== Biography from The History Makers
== Photo from the Chicago Academy for the Arts

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of your music?

Williams: Very optimistic! I feel very, very optimistic. I have a great relationship with a lot of the performing arts organizations here in Chicago. Henry Fogel of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and I have been very close from the standpoint of dealing with the community and education. He comes to speak to my students at Columbia College. I take 100 rap and hip-hop artists, kids, freshmen normally to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of the class, and they have to write an eight-page paper on what Classical music is as it relates to pop music, and is one more artistic than the other? This involves their critical thinking. You want them to think about it. Then Henry comes and talks afterwards to the students, and gives them a little insight on what Classical music is, and what the symphony orchestra is as it relates to the community.

BD:   I would think that would be a tremendous experience for those kids.

Williams: It is! You should see some of their papers. They write things like, “I never knew that the symphony was like that. I thought it was just boring.” The good thing about it is that they’re very honest. Sometimes they say, “I just felt like everybody was looking me, like I didn’t belong.” I think that’s very important, so I usually would send a copy of some of the papers to Henry just so that he would have an idea of some of the things that the students were saying, because that’s our community. It’s very important that a performing arts organization like the CSO, and all of the other arts organizations, embrace everybody in the entire community, and the CSO does it very, very, very well.

BD:   They’re patrons of the future?

Williams: That’s right, and that’s the key. You hit it right on the nose, and the more we include them, the more they’re going to start paying those high prices when they start making that high money! [Both laugh] In just a few weeks we’re going to go see the Third symphony (with organ) by Saint-Saëns. I’m not going to tell them in advance that parts were used in the movie Babe. Then when they hear it, they will know what that is!

babe

The musical score for Babe was composed by Nigel Westlake and performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Classical orchestral music by 19th-century French composers is used throughout the film, but is disguised in a variety of ways and often integrated by Westlake into his score. The theme song "If I Had Words" (lyrics by Jonathan Hodge), sung by Hoggett near the film's conclusion, is an adaptation of the Maestoso final movement of the Organ Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns, and was originally performed in 1977 by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley. This tune also recurs throughout the film's score. There are also brief quotations within the score from Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces, Op.71 No. 1. Other music featured is by Léo Delibes, Richard Rodgers, Gabriel Fauré, and Georges Bizet.

BD:   Their essays will say, “They got that music from the pig???” [Much laughter]

Williams: Right! That’s exactly what they’ll say. But that’s what’s good, because it’s going to open their eyes. When we have our conversation afterwards, and they write their papers, then they’ll see that relationship which came from the classical piece, and how it was applied to the film.

BD:   Bring it all full-circle?

Williams: That’s right.

BD:   Thank you for everything that you’ve done in music.

Williams: Thank you very much, and thank you for the time you spent to converse. I loved it!

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on February 5, 2000. Portions were broadcast on WNIB two months later. This transcription was made in 2024, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.