Performed by Factory Seconds Brass Trio: Jack Sutte, Jessie McCormick and Richard Stout.
Assembly line Suite
in nine movements
1) Daily grind 1’55”
2) Paper jam 1’50”
3) Cutting room floor 2’20”
4) Squeaky wheel 2’40”
5) Interchangeable parts 2’25” (may be interchanged to #8)
6) Lunch break 4’33”
7) Quality control 2’40”
8) Power outage 2’30” (may be switched to #5)
9) Cranking it out 2’50”
Total time 23’ (including Lunch Break)
Program Notes:
Assembly line was written for a trio of first-rate seconds: Jack Sutte, Jesse McCormick and Richard Stout! Playing in the Cleveland Orchestra is one thing, and this is something entirely different…
1-Daily Grind : the task remains mind numbingly regular. Time
warps…ceases to exist, and then lasts forever. The mind wanders into oblivion even as the body continues to carry out tasks!
2-Paper jam : the hurridier I go, the behinder I get. Only at the copy
machine is it possible to have started 10 minutes ago, and already be 30 minutes behind…
3-Cutting room floor : Assembling raw footage shot on the set, clarity is laboriously edited out of 10 takes. The floor accumulates piles, while the final reel tightens. Bit by bit the scene clarifies and emerges whole.
4-Squeaky wheel : like every well-oiled machine, time, repetition, and friction, cause even the best maintained equipment to cry out. I wonder if machinery likes it even less than over-worked disgruntled humans. You think you’ve got it bad…?
5-Interchangeable parts : out of small, identical little parts, more and
more complicated things can be made. While evidence existed from two thousand years ago in the Carthage war machine, Eli Whitney
standardized the modern interchangeable part for an order of 12,000 muskets by President Washington in 1798, which initiated the slow march towards the homogeneity of Western society, despite attempts to thwart it…
6-Lunch break : everyone needs a break, even on the daily grind of making music. Ever wonder what happens back stage at half time of a concert?
7-Quality control : Products slowly grind by on the conveyor belt of
consumerism, needing to be checked for quality. Attention to detail
languishes in mind-numbing sameness. Worker bees dozing off…don’t buy it if it came off the floor on a Monday morning!
8-Power outage : Just like machines squeal and break down, so do the power systems that drive them. Whether a fire running out of wood for steam to drive conveyor belts, or electricity shorting out, systems that run hour-upon-hour are not sustainable forever.
9-Cranking it out : Despite all that can go wrong with 90 musicians on stage, or thousands of moving parts on an assembly line, work gets done. Sound and merchandise are cranked out in the never-ending cycle of modern-day consumption of both art and tangible goods.
Performance notes:
Individual movements may be played separate from the suite, or in smaller sets of suites ordered out of varying combinations of movements.
#6 Lunch break may be “performed” as the start and end of intermission.
#5 and #8 may be interchanged in order (thanks to Eli Whitney!)
Trills in the horn and trumpet parts are to the next natural note up, unlessotherwise specified with an accidental.
