Jack Langstaff / Sir George Martin
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5_Janney_essay_06-07-089E.qxp 10/6/06 7:56 PM Page 146 5_Janney_essay_06-07-089E.qxp 10/6/06 7:57 PM Page 147 I grew up in Washington, DC, until the age of fifteen. My dad worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and my mom was a school teacher at the Potomac School, an elementary school for grades four through nine. Since she was a teacher For the hell of it, I asked Giles if I could there, it was decided that that’s where I would go to school after third grade. Most hear just the harmony track of Paul singing of my friends went to the other all-boys schools around DC—St. Albans, Landon, on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” circa 1964. St. Stephen’s. When I first entered Potomac, it felt like a raw deal. I was pissed. Giles punched it up and a rush of memories I was not in the testosterone-charged environment of an all-boys school with my other friends. However, within a year, I knew this was the school for me. I was in an as a fourteen-year-old flooded my imagination. environment with girls, which I later realized was a far more normal and healthy circumstance for me than a single-sex school. We had art and music every day—at least that’s how I remember it. And we had one of the best music educators in the country teaching us, a man named Jack Langstaff. We sang in school productions, and when the Washington Opera Company needed child singers, they called Jack. In the early fall of 1963, Jack missed several weeks of school. We asked our other teachers where he was, and were told he had gone to England to work on an album of folk songs. Upon his return, I remember asking him what he had done in England, and he told me he had been making a record. He went on to remark that when he was rehearsing in the studio, the producer kept having these four other musicians come in to listen to his American accent and his enunciation. A few months later, the Beatles stormed America, and Jack said one day, so nonchalantly, “Those are the four guys who were in my studio.” Christopher Janney/Susan Cooper, Due to Jack’s influence, I have always sung. Perhaps it is not music that every- The Dark and the Light. one would agree is interesting, but I find there is no substitute for this “original Light, sound, performance, 1989. instrument” when it comes to creating spontaneity, releasing energy, and For the 1989 Christmas Revels concert, Jack asked Susan and me to create a grand finale. expressing oneself. I realize now how much of my approach to music and creativity We started with the archetypal idea of a dooms- was shaped by being around Jack with his joie de vivre. day that leads into darkness. I scored a six-chan- nel surround-sound piece for the Sanders Theater and designed a giant sun that went into an eclipse. It only passed when the audience sang “Dona Nobis Pacem” as a three-part canon. In this s The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw final movement. I had the crew in the rafters until he is a classic. —Gertrude Stein sprinkling down slivers of gold mylar, “pieces of new light,” onto the audience. Jack Langstaff / Sir George Martin After the Potomac School, I lost touch with Jack for many years. It wasn’t until always coming back to Beethovan, Bach, and their “cathedrals of sound.” We talked Christopher Janney and Sir George Martin 1976, when I was in Boston at MIT, that I ran into him on the street. He was living often of the reality of the music business driving the creativity now, hopeful that at Abbey Road Studios. there, teaching, and had started The Revels, an extraordinary annual songfest and the pendulum will swing back. performance celebrating the winter solstice. We stayed in touch and occassionally In 2006, I had a treat one day when George and I were together in London. worked together. He mentioned that he and his son, producer Giles Martin, were working on a One afternoon in 1998, Jack called me up in my studio in Lexington and asked if Beatles score for a Cirque du Soleil production. Their task was to create a running I was “terribly busy.” He added, “I have some friends here I would like to bring out collage of Beatles songs and transitions. I ended up back at Abbey Road Studios to your studio for a visit.” An hour or so later, Jack arrived by car and out stepped with them, listening to the work in progress. We were in a small post-production Sir George Martin, producer of the Beatles, and his wife, Lady Judy. That is so Jack! studio with all the original Beatles tracks unmixed. I asked Giles if I could hear just We spent the whole afternoon together, walking around my studio, talking about the harmony track of Paul singing on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” circa 1964. Giles ideas of music, architecture, recording, the rhythm of life. punched it up and a rush of memories as a fourteen-year-old flooded my imagination. George’s pioneering work has been an inspiration to my generation, and it is But what was even more interesting was what they were doing with the music. a great gift to have him as a friend. On the one hand, he is the producer who has Rather than taking entire songs, George and Giles were constructing parts: cross- been responsible for some of the most creative music of my generation, but he is fading, reversing, overlapping. It was a rich palette of music history, and they were also a person always interested and willing to listen to what new possibilities might creating this incredible pastiche: an “impressionist canvas” of emotions and memo- arise. We’ve had some long lunches exchanging ideas on music and architecture, rable “audicons” (audio icons), interwoven into a huge collage of sonic portraits. 146 147 147.