A Parisian in America

(A Response to George Gershwin’s"American")
(2000) Approximate duration: 8:00
Wind Band - Commissioned by the Connecticut Chapter of ASBDA

A Parisian in America is a depiction of the travails of Monsieur Rolleaux, a Frenchman from Paris visiting New York City in 1928 (the same year that Gershwin’s American was in Paris). M. Rolleaux (a distant relative of America’s Rollo) presents himself as a jaunty cosmopolitan gentleman, perhaps one who has lived off the family money and is accustomed to a life of privileges (he "appears" first as a bassoon). He ambles around and lets everyone know that he has arrived, surrounded by whiffs of his national anthem. As his self-satisfaction grows, his particular theme takes on rhythm and begins to subsume everything, including the Star-Spangled Banner, the very anthem of his host country! (Hear the "land of the free and the home of the brave.") At the height of his revelry, M. Rolleaux steps off the curb and this reverie is broken by taxis and the mad rush of 5th Avenue traffic, all of which threaten to extinguish him. He brushes himself off, and then, re-gathering his deflated French ego, he again attempts to cross the street. He probes the traffic here and there and eventually makes it across the street. He turns the corner, only to run smack dab into the middle of the Macy’s Day parade! The marching bands immediately engulf him — hear his frantic attempts to reach the other side as he is buffeted by the marchers, who are also disrupted by him in their attempts to deliver standard march melodies. M. Rolleaux’s façade breaks a bit and one hears traces of his common ancestry— Freré Jacques, Sur la Pont D’Avignon, Alouette and a whiff here and there of Gershwin’s American across the sea. M. Rolleaux makes it to the island in the center of the street and rests. This episode was a major trauma for him, a man unaccustomed to manual labor of any kind and any contact with the vulgate. He puffs up in pride that he triumphed over the parade and achieved the "island." His motive and L’Marseillaise begin to spin out and he regains his jaunty composure and, tentatively at first (perhaps by extending only one toe into the street), strikes out again to conquer the other half of the street. A car whizzes by, taxis threaten: he resolved to try Canada (hear a whiff of O Canada), and scurries off into the bustle of New York traffic.