A New German text for Stravinsky's Soldier

Première of a New German text 
for Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale"

It's such an honour to be invited to create live kinetic paintings with such eminent artists as bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff (Narrator), the amazing actress Katja Riemann (the Devil) and of course the indefatigable creative spirit Daniel Hope (violin and the Soldier) and ensemble, all directed by Leonhard Koppelmann with the text-writer Peter Jordan. We are just one part of June 23rd Gala programme in Essen Philharmonie entitled: Ein Sommernachtstraum: Heimat (A Midsummer Night's Dream: Homeland). Check that link.

I've performed  this piece several times before - here's another Link to my blog from a Stockholm performance in 2014. The original story conceived by C.F. Ramuz in 1918 is well-known, but this totally new German version of The Soldier's Tale by Peter Jordan has inspired quite a number of new kinetic images. The stills without the story-telling and music are nothing more than teasers. 

                                        Marching on the zigzagging roads home
Stravinsky's score is alternately humorous, wistful, crazy and full of irony. It seems to me to reflect the visual art style Cubism, where the subject is fragmented then re-structured as geometric forms, seen from multiple viewpoints. Stravinsky must surely have seen Picasso's early Cubist works in Paris, ten years before he composed The Soldier's Tale in Switzerland in 1918. By then the first signs of Art Deco were also taking shape and this awareness had an influence on my designs and cut-outs, through which my mysterious and ever-surprising fluid paint flows.

On home-leave just before the end of World-War 1914-18, the Soldier trudges along a long and dusty road, takes a break (the Petits Airs) and encounters the Devil who persuades him to exchange his violin (his soul) for an illegible book that nevertheless makes him unbelievably rich. We feel the Soldier's hope, disillusionment and despair. 

My brush for the Devil with his illegible yet enriching book

Petits Airs

On hearing that the king's daughter is terribly sick - possibly from listening to the Devil's violin playing - the Soldier heads to the royal palace, retrieves his violin and using his musicianship as therapy, get's the Princess to open her eyes and dance with him to Tango, Waltz and Ragtime. It's a long story and of course the Devil wins in the end.

The Royal Palace

The deadly ill Princess

Towards the end of the "Petit Concert" the Princess starts to open her eyes

The Soldier's Tale is the Essen Philharmonie finale of a festive Midsummer Night's Dream. Especially magical for me, because all being well, the morning after, on Midsummer's Day (June 24th) I celebrate my 85th birthday. What a wonderful birthday present. Thank you Daniel! 

Painting The Sea

Painting "The Sea" 
with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla & the CBSO
February 16th. 2019

I'm delighted to share the announcement of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra that in February 2019 I shall be making kinetic paintings live in concert to The Sea, by the Lithuanian composer/painter M.K.Čiurlionis (1875 -1911), conducted by Music Director Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla in Symphony Hall Birmingham. The date for this UK première is now confirmed as Saturday February 16th. 2019, which by the way is Lithuania's Independence Day.

It's still a work in progress of course, but here's the Link to my first 4-minute Trailer on YouTube for a few quick glimpses of the beginning and the end of this twenty-nine minute work.   

And here's the Link to my blog from last September - Serendipity: Mirga, Norman and Čiurlionis, written after I had done some serious research in Lithuania on the audio-visual work of this prodigious creative spirit. Čiurlionis had a significant influence in early abstract art, symbolism and art nouveau and became a cultural legend in Lithuania. As a synaesthete, he was so finely tuned to the correspondences between visual art and music, that had his life not been tragically cut short at the age of thirty-five, I'm sure he would have become one of the composers of early film music. At last, in 2019, I shall be creating the movie to his music. Music that is ideally suited to my flowing colours. 

Čiurlionis probably had Chromesthesia, as I do. I'm not going to copy his paintings, but rather create my own kinetic flowing images inspired by my own automatic involuntary reactions to his music. How wonderful it would have been to meet! You can imagine that we might have embraced as brothers.

Mirga's concerts with the CBSO are regularly sold out, so here's the Link to book your concert tickets early (from June 4th. for general public). After all, this concert has a somewhat unusual added visual attraction! It's been twenty-five years since I performed with the CBSO in Symphony Hall under Sir Simon Rattle, televised by BBC in 1993 as Concerto for Paintbrush and Orchestra. Born in Birmingham nearly eighty-five years ago, this is quite an emotional milestone in my career in visual music and I shall be thrilled to be back in Symphony Hall.

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