The Wild and Exotic Dreams of Mortimer Johnson

electronics
(2003)
8 minutes

premiered on KTRU 91.7 FM
December 5, 2003 - Houston, TX

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About the piece:

When I first moved to Houston in the fall of 2003 I was listening to a lot of klezmer music. I have always thought that music should be connected in some way to ones experience of the world so I decided that it might be a good idea to write a piece based on the sounds which seemed to dominate my Houston life, cars and accordians. Combining these two sets of sounds proved to be a great deal of fun though during the process of composition I got carried away by the klezmer effect and added clarinet and violin. The piece is a fantasy of a fantasy a little bit like James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I imagined this character, Mortimer Johnson, sunning himself in a big, old lawn chair on the side (or maybe in the middle) of the road and gradually falling asleep, the sounds of traffic growing into strange, terrible and silly creatures in his dreams.