ICE making music from art
Columbia’s artist-in-residence ensemble has a musical response to French artist’s exhibit
By Mark Byrne
A&E Editor
The Columbia Chronicle
October 23, 2006
original
link
Last month, Claire Chase walked into an art gallery and dreamt of writing music for an exhibit based on dreams.
On Oct. 27, she’ll be able to do just that. Chase is the executive director and flutist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the artists-in-residence chamber musicians at Columbia College and New York University. The exhibit, at Flatfile Gallery, 217 N. Carpenter St., is the work of French artist Alexandra Loewe. It features numerous exhibits in a variety of mediums, which all relate to dreams. Chase wasted no time, and set up a show at Flatfile on the closing night of the exhibition, during which ICE will improvise a performance as a response to Loewe’s art.
“When I looked at her series I immediately thought, ‘we have to play this piece’,” Chase said. “We need to get a bunch of musicians standing in front of this painting and we need to play the painting.”
The show will feature several performances, including a percussion piece, written specifically for ICE by Huang Ruo, a composer they work with often. There will also be pieces penned by well-known modern composers Takemitsu and John Cage. Chase said that all of the compositions they picked fit with Loewe’s exhibition because they are reminiscent of dreams. Chase describes the music as anything from “the very bizarre and abstract and dark [to the] the childlike and innocent and sweet”—all of which she thinks will fit nicely with Loewe’s work. The highlight of the show will be 20 improvised vignettes for 20 of Loewe’s pieces.
“We do a lot of interesting things, but we’ve never done this exact thing before,” said Susan Aurinko, the owner and director of Flatfile Gallery. Aurinko said the gallery occasionally hosts events such as poetry readings, but an ensemble playing music to art is a new to both her and the gallery.
ICE plays a series in New York that merges visual art with music, so Chase is more familar with the concept. This is the first time ICE has worked with Loewe, though it won’t be the last—Chase said the two of them are already collaborating on another project. Aurinko said that she too would like to do this type of performance in the future, though she recognizes that Chases’ reaction to Loewe’s paintings might have been a factor of “serendipity.”
“It’s unlikely that it’ll happen on a regular basis because you have to have the right musicians seeing the right show at the right moment,” Aurinko said. “I hope that it will be the beginning of a relationship with ICE.”
Chase explained that musicians often enjoy performing in galleries because they typically provide a good acoustic atmosphere.
“[Galleries are] very live and very intimate,” Chase said. “It’s perfect for chamber music.”
Joe Cerqua, the supervising producer of Columbia’s Music Department, said a musical reaction to art is nothing new, but it shows that ICE is trying new things. He said it is one of only a handful of groups in the city who he considers to be “pushing the boundaries” of music. When Columbia chose ICE as artists-in-residence in 2004, Cerqua said they were looking for an innovative ensemble who could regularly perform recitals.
“That was where the search started,” Cerqua explained. “It ended with ICE because they’re brilliant.”
Even though he said the concept isn’t new, Cerqua said he is excited for the performance on Oct. 27.
“This is one of the reasons why we keep them around,” he said.
