About this work:
“HAPPY DAYS”, a light-hearted musical theater piece performed by The McLean Mix from 1996-2000, had its inspiration from Barton McLean’s fascination with music boxes. While living in Austin, Texas and directing the University of Texas Electronic Music Center (1976-83), McLean had recorded some of the sounds from a huge collection of antique music boxes a neighbor and fellow musician, Richard Blair, had stored in his house. Then in the early 1990s, McLean came upon a set of small brass music boxes sold at a Hallmark gift store in Bennington, Vermont that were hand-sized and malleable. He purchased the entire collection immediately. McLean then began the composing process, stating, “As I worked with the material, combining the looped melodies from the boxes (including “Happy Days are Here Again”) with others I had already recorded on a digital sampler, I felt the need for more depth of timbre.” Next to the McLean music studio is a large closet filled with instruments and sound makers, including the party horns and Happy Apple, a Fisher toy chime, used along with the music boxes. Priscilla McLean takes the role of a clown happily playing with the boxes, actually organizing them to perform and stop at the music score’s exact bidding, a difficult and humorous task. Halfway through the piece she becomes a music box herself, and later a conductor of two opposing beat structures at once— a Chaplinesque rendition guaranteed to make anyone smile. The performance recorded here took place at Engine 27, a converted firehouse in lower Manhattan, on June 7, 2000, sponsored by the Electronic Music Foundation.
Lighthearted live performance work for 2 players; 1. Music Boxes winding, party instruments, happy apple, flexatone, slide whistle 2., keyboard synthesizer, flexatone, party instruments. Recorded on CRI CD 846, released in 6/2000. Premiered at Missouri Western State College on 4/9/97. Also, Mass. College of Liberal Arts, 4/23/97, San Jose State Univ (3/19/97), Missouri Western State College (4/9/97), Chicago Musical College (4/15/98), Ohio Northern University (4/22/98), SUNY- Plattsburgh (3/26/99), Living Arts of Tulsa (4/3/99), Ohio University-Athens (5/8/99), Univ. of Minnesota - Duluth (4/28/99), Wake Forest university (3/6/00), Lynchburg College (4/26/2000), Engine 27 in NYC - EMF (6/7/2000).
My website (where you can find my email as well)
http://www.fairpoint.net/~rainfor1/McLean_MAXMSP/Main_page.html
Phone: 518 658 3595
YouTube playlist (with 32 videos and counting)
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3ACAB7BAD86CE7B4
Also check out my entry in Wikipedia
Although I, Barton McLean, hold the copyright, I nontheless hereby gladly authorize anyone to make copies and perform the work for noncommercial and/or educational purposes providing that my name is reasonably displayed as the composer. I do not under any circumstances authorize selecting portions of the work to appear intact in another person's composition, or to appear under any other composer's name, without my written signed authorization.
Regarding the audio file accompanying this work: I, Barton McLean own the copyright to the composition itself. Being aware that this work has been released on a commercial CD, and that the CD company might possess the copyright to that particular sound recording of the composition, I nonetheless claim copyright to this specific sound recording posted here, because it is not the exact recording released on CD. Rather, it is another mix down and revision of that work which may approximate the commercial CD in most respects but nevertheless is a distinct sound recording of which I claim the copyright.