Lives of the Great Composers: Ingram Marshall Impersonates Julia Child

Guess who was at the grocery store the other day! Composer Ingram Marshall. He's the greatest! We hang out all the time, he and I, just kidding no we don't, I'm namedropping. But so he says to me, "Kyle said you were laughing about the Julia Child thing," and at first I had no clue what he was talking about, like honestly at first I thought he was referring to the forthcoming Julia Child biopic starring Meryl Streep (pictured) but then he said, "He said you guys were reading Hallelujah Junction..." and OF COURSE, Kyle (my colleague at ye olde record shoppe) and I had both read the following passage from John Adamses memoir and then laughed like idiots about it:

Ingram, when I first met him, lived in a drafty garage space under the Fell Street freeway ramp. Dressed in an old Marimekko striped pajama, a relic of his days at the Swedish Radio, he cooked gourmet meals for any number of guests with a wok and a green two-burner Coleman camp stove. Only a few feet away froom the cooking area was his Serge modular synthesizer, his microphone, and several two-channel Revox tape recorders that constituted his studio. Nearby next to a case of prized California wines, slept a large, phlegmatic dog of uncertain breed named Ibu. On one occasion, during my brief fling with video art, I filmed Ingram doing a Julia Child impersonation while he cooked fonds d'artichaut farcis, lecturing the camera at every step of the preparation while Strauss's Ein Heldenleben soared in the background.

Unfortunately, Marshall reports, this work has been lost; "Videotape was expensive back then," and they had to tape over it and record something else. The good news is, I hear rumors of an upcoming anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall, for which So Percussion, Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass and Wu Man will all dress up like Julia Child and cook us a lovely artichoke dish, in order to pay tribute to this minimalist masterpiece. I'll see you there!