ABSTRACT
When I first saw modern dance, I saw Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Hanya Holm, and of those three I preferred Martha. I preferred Celebration and some of her solos. When her work became literary, as in Letter to the World, I grew disinterested in it. I begged Merce to leave her theater and to make his own. And I promised that I would help with music. —David Sears (1981)
How have all these things come together in your mind and work? You work in music, theater, writing, lecturing, dance…
Mushrooms… That kind of range is very unusual today. Don’t you think again we would have to trace circumstances? When I was
just beginning I wrote a piece for a clarinet solo. Since I knew it was difficult to play I called up the first clarinetist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. And when he looked at it, he said, “That’s not the way to write music.” He thought I should write like most writers, so he was not going to play it, and advised me not to do the sort of thing that I was committed to doing. Then I made another stab at getting this piece done, and it failed again. That time not because the clarinetist wasn’t willing to play it but because he didn’t have the time to devote to learning to overcome its difficulties, and didn’t choose to overcome them. The circumstances again.
