Saddened by the passing of the great sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.
This is a sad day. My vivid memories of Ravi Shankar go back to the late seventies at the Yehudi Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, where I made half a dozen paintings of this remarkable musical friendship, during rehearsals for those East meets West concerts. Yehudi and the phenomenal tabla player Alla Rakhar, who provided the rhythms for my carpet, have also passed on. Read more about this creative process on Bob Singelton's blog Overgrown Path. http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/09/one-foot-in-past-and-one-in-future.html
Gentle snowflakes were falling onto the groups of Russian tourists, as they weaved their way past the kitschy Salzburg Christmas cribs, chocolate “Mozart-kugel”, and stalls with gluhwein and hot-dogs. But pushing through the crowds, I had other things on my mind last Friday - under pressure to get the show (Piano Colours) on the road. It was an unreal feeling to suddenly see my name in lights (finally, ha, ha!), projected onto the Mozarteum wall for the Dialoge festival.
Set-up the gear, one rehearsal with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, then another surprise. The amazing piano technician Stefan Knüpfer, now famous from the film Pianomania, bounded on to the stage to uncrate a brand-new complete inner mechanism for the Steinway that Pierre-Laurent was going to play in our recital. Stefan slid one set out and the new one in with the skill of a heart transplant surgeon. A casual request to Pierre-Laurent to please be gentle with it. But P-L immediately launched into the loudest fortissimo and the gentlest pianissimo he can create, smiling like a schoolboy with a new toy. These guys are like brothers, planning their choice of the right Steinway and exactly the appropriate sound for each programme. Stefan will make it available. Just back from his Asian tour, P-L later joked over a fabulous dinner at Hotel Sacher that at one location he was billed, not so much as a pianist, but as “starring in the film” Pianomania!
Our duo recital went better than ever and a warmly appreciative Salzburg audience brought us back for four curtain calls. Following our practice, we then had a 30 min. “dialogue” with the audience. I had just discovered that the composer Tristan Murail was in the audience and yes (phew!) he “adored” what I had done with his work “Cloches d’adieu…. in memoriam Olivier Messiaen”. One visitor said that the purple globe, floating alone in black to the final chord, gave him an intense nostalgia and awareness of our fragile planet. During the weekend, it was lovely to be stopped in the corridors by smiling people telling me: “I was there…. thank you!”. One fan travelled six hours by train through Germany to attend this concert. Here are some of her comments. "The collaboration of these great musical and visual artists is mind-expanding in all directions. It's impossible to find the right words for this, as the mind played only one part in the perceptive process. I saw whole worlds being created and destroyed. Microcosms, planetary systems and a whole range of emotions passed through me in a visceral way. I was sitting close enough to the piano to feel the vibration of the sound. Then finally, the projectors were switched to black and I was falling into the dark, shrunk to atomic size, falling into a big black nothing. I definitely have to see/hear/feel Piano Colours again." Even though it sounds traumatic, I know she found it therapeutic!
Liquid colours in Salzburg Mozarteum Dialogues Festival
Großer Saal der Stiftung Mozarteum
Performing in the grand Concertgebouw is always quite an experience, but the large hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum (above) appears to be even more elaborately decorated. No, sorry, we can’t hang your screen from the ceiling. Yes, we can raise the large chandeliers a bit. Psst! Don’t even mention the danger of splashing paint on to that stage! (It won’t happen). I can’t help a naughty giggle, thinking of the shocking moment when my projections will escape “out of the box” (screen) and the paint will appear to spread all over those oh-so-splendid walls. My hat goes off to the adventurous Festival director Matthias Schulz, for bringing an artist’s work-table, paints, jam-pots an’ all, into this distinguished Mozart shrine. I think Wolfgang Amadeus would have loved it - it’s almost opera.
Welcome to Salzburg. No, this isn’t the famous Salzburg Festival, but the contemporary festival of the Mozarteum Foundation. The Dialogues festival was established to celebrate the Mozart Year in 2006. “It’s primarily aimed at an audience which is open to a controversial, contemporary take on new and classical music. For this purpose, the festival invites contemporary artists from the disciplines of music, dance, literature, fine arts, and film. This interdisciplinary approach of the Dialogues festival seeks to move beyond the traditional concert protocol and develop unusual, powerful listening situations.” The Piano Colours programme with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and my live kinetic painting fits into this concept perfectly. Our dialogue is between colour and sound. Pierre-Laurent’s painterly interpretation of Debussy’s Preludes reveal the composer’s genius at creating images in sound: he doesn’t need me to paint to that music. But these pieces are cleverly juxtaposed with works by Liszt, Scriabin, Tristan Murail and George Benjamin. And that’s where I come in, with visual harmony. Oh goodness – the composer Murail himself will be in the hall, watching for the first time the kinetic visuals I shall create to his beautifully resonant Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire (In memoriam Olivier Messiaen). It’s always a tense moment, wondering how a composer will react to my treatment of his “off-spring”. Well, I have Pierre-Laurent on my side. (Liszt and Scriabin can’t comment right now). November 30th will be a long day: unload, set up and fine-tune projection gear, paints, brushes at 8.00 am, rehearse with PLA, rest, performance at 7.30pm, then right after the concert a verbal dialogue with the audience. Then, if I’m still alive, no doubt a stimulating discussion over a fine meal with some of the brightest brains in music today. More inter-disciplinary dialogue is exactly what classical music needs right now, as Bob Singleton has been telling us for ages in his blogs. And this day is just one event in an intriguing festival. Can’t wait to get involved! See you there? For more details and tickets, go to: http://www.mozarteum.at/en/concerts/dialogues.html Dialogues Festival - Piano Colours, November 30th. 7.30pm. Stiftung Mozarteum, Schwarzstrasse 26, Salzburg. __________________________________________________
(my notes from November 5th. 2012). From birth, we are in touch with water daily, even bathe in it happily. With fresh air, water is possibly our greatest friend. Yet its power remains to be feared. The sun shines brilliantly this Sunday morning in New York’s Central Park and Ella Fitzgerald sings Autumn Leaves to me. But there’s a lot of sadness in the cold air this morning. I weave my way between thousands of frustrated runners as they demonstrate that the cancellation of the Marathon will not inhibit their daily rituals. And I’m thinking of those still without their homes, without power and their basic needs, as winter sets in. How come we can’t befriend our natural resources instead of misusing them and arrogantly thinking it doesn’t matter? Will we ever heed Sandy’s awful message? In a comparatively microscopic way, I’m totally at home in water(colour), wondering at and manipulating the organic flow, evaporation rates or delicate textures that emerge as I paint. Even on a small surface it has the inevitable destructive potential of a tsunami. The projection of this on a giant screen is awesome. Here’s just one example from my performances of kinetic painting:
The opening calligraphic rhythms on a silken background, kinetic images created for Written on the Wind: Huang Ruo’s music for pipa, vocals and visuals, created for Min Xiao-Fen.
Watch the video of Written on the Wind (parts 1 & 2) on YouTube:
