In 2003, I was in Kiev watching American/Coalition forces on television as they invaded Iraq. During that vodka-inspired night, Ukrainian musicians spoke and shouted the numbers One, Two and Three into my minidisc recorder. Shortly afterwards, serious allegations of electoral cheating were were investigated in America and Ukraine. During the week of the premiere of Count Me In, electoral fraud was discovered in Birmingham, UK. With the wide-scale corruption at the core of democracy, are we all really counted in?
The title 'Count Me In' can mean many different things: the upbeats while waiting to perform music or a dance; having one's ballot counted in an election; inclusion in a group or its activities; having one's opinion taken seriously; showing agreement with prevailing opinion. Counting is also the ghost of linear descent (the ubiquitous Schenkerian 3-2-1) and the ascending 5-6-7-8 which opens both Kerry Lee Lewis' 'Great Balls of Fire' and the stuff, self-conscious American presidential march 'Hail to the Chief'. (These two pieces repeatedly have something in common on the world stage).
Count Me In was commissioned by Adam Swayne who gave the American premiere in Chicago in May 2005 following the world premiere by Paul Cassidy in Manchester UK three months earlier. The Irish premiere was given by Mary McCague in Dublin's National Concert Hall in March 2007.
- ISMN: 9790570681723 (M570681723)
