MC’s Tartanband ensemble prepares to give the ‘One Star’ treatment to iconic pieces of music
March 14, 2022
It’s considered a staple of the Great American Songbook, and in the more than eight decades since it was originally recorded by Judy Garland, “Over the Rainbow” has been covered by hundreds of artists from across the spectrum of fame.
It’s also one of the centerpieces of an upcoming concert by the Maryville College Tartanband, which will perform “One Star: A Concert of Poorly Reviewed Music” at 7:30 p.m. April 7 in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts.
Because while it may be the most memorable song from the classic film “Wizard of Oz” and a tune to which anyone with a passing familiarity knows the words, fondness for “Over the Rainbow” wasn’t always universal, pointed out Dr. Eric Simpson, Tartanband director and associate professor of music at Maryville College.
In fact, legendary music publisher Jack Robbins’ initial reaction to the song led him to compare it to “a child’s piano exercise” and lament that “nobody will sing it — who’ll buy the sheet music?”
“Opinions have existed as long as art has, and opinions are sometimes negative,” Simpson said. “Years ago, I read about how much trouble the director of ‘Wizard of Oz’ had getting the song ‘Over the Rainbow’ into the film, and I remember being surprised. If you ask people to recount some of the most important songs of the 20th century, it’s going to make the list.
“And yet, when it was written (in 1938), the executives at MGM wanted the song cut because it was too slow. That got me to thinking: what if all of the music in a concert was about negative opinions? Could you program a concert that was just made up of negative reviews and not have it be a punitive experience for the performers and the audience?”
Short answer, Simpson added: absolutely. The Tartanband — an instrumental ensemble of MC students performing on winds, strings and percussion — has put together an hour-long performance of music, as well as compositions about people and places, that didn’t initially find favor with critics and pundits. Accompanied by narration, the performance — which starts at 7:30 p.m. and will include works by Edvard Grieg, Astor Piazzolla, Stephen Sondheim, Eric Whitacre, the band Radiohead, Aaron Copland and more — is meant to be a lighthearted one, Simpson said.
“It was tricky to find appropriate music, because a lot of the music composed for contemporary instrumental ensembles like the Tartanband is not widely reviewed,” he said. “At first, I thought we’d only be able to play transcriptions (a piece of music composed for one medium but performed in another) of fairly old classical music.
“But then I expanded the topic: What if the concert wasn’t just music that was poorly reviewed? What if we thought about reviews in a broader sense? There are poor reviews of places, restaurants, people … and some of the worst reviews can be the ones about ourselves that we get from other people, or the ones we give ourselves.”
“One Star: A Concert of Poorly Reviewed Music” is free and open to the public. Following the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control, Maryville College has lifted indoor mask requirements, so face masks are not required for this concert.