Common Sense: MELLITS

Born in the United States, in Baltimore, Maryland (1966), Marc Mellits has studied at the Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, Cornell University, and Tanglewood. His teachers have included Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, Dominic Frasca, Bernard Rands, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Roberto Sierra, and Steven Stucky. Mellits' music has been widely preformed throughout the United States & Canada, as well as Europe. Mellits' music is visceral, often making a deep connection with the audience. "This was music as sensual as it was intelligent; I saw audience members swaying, nodding, making little motions with their hands" (New York Press). His recent commissions include pieces for internationally acclaimed artists such as the Kronos String Quartet, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Sergio and Odair Assad, Canadian Brass, Nexus, and Eliot Fisk, as well as the Albany Symphony's Dog's Of Desire, the Orchestra Dancing In Your Head, Dominic Frasca, American Baroque, Lelabo (Paris), Manhattan New Music Project, New Millenium Ensemble, Society for New Music, and the Meridian Arts Ensemble. Mellits is also the artistic director of his own unique ensemble, the MELLITS CONSORT. On CD, Mellits' music can be found on CRI/Emergency Music, Santa Fe, and Serious Records (11/02). Marc Mellits lives in New York City and in Romania.

Find out more about Marc at
http://www.marcmellits.com

Polysorbate 60 from Common Sense
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"Polysorbate 60 is a substance that we encounter everyday. We find polysorbate in a great number of commercial products ranging from the junk food that we eat to the shampoo we wash our hair with. Similarly, the piece Polysorbate 60 creates three different musics out of the same basic substance. This musical substance provides cohesion between the three larger sections (1. Fast; 2. Smooth flowing; 3. Precise) while still allowing for variety in musical style."

9 Miniatures
from The Shock of the Old
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"Among my fondest childhood memories is that of my father making my brothers and I laugh. Of all the humorous moments I recall, none remains more vivid than those times when my dad would put on an ruffled cowboy hat and bellow out a drunken version of an old country song called "There Stands the Glass." The image of this large man stumping around the kitchen with a silly hat and his faded blue robe still brings a smile to my heart. My brothers and I would fall off the sofa laughing so hard tears would run from our eyes. When my father died in 1995 I was just beginning to work on 9 Miniatures. With this image of him and his voice still echoing his song, I could not help but weave fragments, bit's and pieces of the old Lefty Frizell tune into my own work. For some bizarre reason I seem to remember Dad doing his song around the Chanukah menorah, which may explain the motif "Dreidle, Dreidle, Dreidle" that appears in this work."

dan BECKER