Feb. 8-10, choreographer Mark Morris will bring the Mark Morris Dance Group back to Boston. The group will perform "Pepperland," a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." WGBH Midday Host Henry Santoro interviewed Morris about the upcoming performance, which is presented by Celebrity Series of Boston. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Henry Santoro: You and I were just kids when the Beatles released "Sgt. Pepper's." I'm guessing you were like me in that you probably listened to it nonstop for a while, and then the record went into a pile. Is that right?
Mark Morris: Yes, exactly. That's what happened with a great deal of popular music. I listened to the Beatles because that's what was listened to by everybody. And so, I loved that and then I liked it, and then I didn't listen to it for years, and then I got sick of overhearing certain songs for every unsuitable occasion. I always liked it, but it's not something I listened to all the time.
Henry Santoro: What was 11-year-old Mark Morris's feelings about it when he first heard it?
Mark Morris: I have to preface that with, 10-year-old Mark Morris went with my sisters to see the Beatles perform a live performance at a giant stadium at the Seattle Center. So, there was no music to be heard because it was just screaming, like really just screaming. And that was the tour that they made their last. They went on to California did a couple of gigs and then that was it. Then they went into the studio and made this album. It's kind of a precursor; it was very interesting to me. I love the album. I thought it was completely for me. But it was very surprising, and radical, and mixed up, and complicated and sort of all over the place to me. Now it's become much simpler and much younger music, and the wonderful big mess of influences of other styles and cultures and points of view, which is what makes it interesting.
Henry Santoro: The music, as you just mentioned, is really all over the map. And I know because you, that when it comes to music, you know as soon as you hear a piece whether you can create a dance to it. In this case, how challenging was that for you?
Mark Morris: The thing is, I don't always know that I'm going to make up a dance to something. I always know when I'm not going to. But some stuff intrigues me, and it’s not like I have to do this right away. Very often, it sneaks up on me for 20 years, or a week or something like that. I don't automatically see a dance in my head when I hear music. I agreed to participate in this project with this festival, which was in Liverpool, and I had a very short run-up time to it. So, I thought, first of all, do I want to do it? Do I like the music enough? The answer was, pretty much right away, yes. And then I knew that, of course, we only work with live music. So, I brought on Ethan Iverson, the fabulous jazz pianist and composer and writer to orchestrate and arrange and come up with some new music to link the songs that we were doing together. It was really fast.
Henry Santoro: Was it difficult getting the rights?
Mark Morris: Yes. It's very many organizations and estates. I wasn't going to do it until we got the global rights to perform the six songs that Ethan made arrangements of, that are actual arrangements of those songs.
Henry Santoro: The Mark Morris Dance Group brings Pepperland to Boston's Boch Center Shubert Theatre. It's happening February 8-10.
