burchfield penney art center

July 15, 2024July 16, 2024

Burchfield & Whitman in Opera and Song on August 4th in Buffalo, NY

Detailed watercolor landscape painting depicting a forest and babbling brook in the transition from winter to spring — Charles Burchfield, “The Coming of Spring” (1917-43)

SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2024 AT 2:00PM

Burchfield & Whitman in Opera and Song:
Buffalo Opera Unlimited Performs the Music of Nell Shaw Cohen
Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY

Next month the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY presents a full concert of my opera and art songs comparing the works of two iconic American artists: painter Charles E. Burchfield and poet Walt Whitman.

Tenors Joe Dan Harper and Alexander Kosmowski join Matthew Marco, pianist and Artistic Director of Buffalo Opera Unlimited, in this special event presented in conjunction with the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s exhibition Embracing Earth: Burchfield & Whitman.

My musical interpretations of Whitman’s Poem of The Road and Laws for Creations will be performed alongside the exclusive World Premiere of Proofs of Coming Fullness, which is based on text from Whitman’s memoir Specimen Days.

This will be followed by a staged production of my 2014 work The Coming of Spring: a one-man opera illuminating Burchfield’s artistic evolution. In this work, a series of poignant chronological episodes reveal how perceptions of nature framed Burchfield’s life experience: from days collecting insects during his rural Midwestern childhood to the years in which he supported his large family by producing popular images of industrial and suburban scenery in Buffalo.

Burchfield’s mission to develop the expressive power of his art—and to convey the transition from winter to spring in a single image—leads to a revelation in 1943 with the completion of the monumental titular painting.

Originally scored for tenor with a six-piece chamber ensemble, The Coming of Spring will be performed here in piano-vocal reduction.

Free and open to the public, with limited seating. More information here.

September 23, 2011September 24, 2011

Beyond the Notes: Music Inspired by Art

I’m very excited to announce my upcoming recital, Beyond the Notes: Music Inspired by Art. The concert will be a multisensory, multimedia experience featuring live chamber music performed by wonderful NEC student musicians coordinated with video and slide projections of the art that inspired it.

Beyond the Notes: Music Inspired by Art will be presented at the New England Conservatory of Music on November 2nd, 2011, 6:00-7:30pm in Pierce Hall (241 St. Botolph St, Boston MA). Reception to follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Beyond the Notes screen capture — Beyond the Notes website as seen on a mobile phone

The concert will be enhanced by an accompanying digital companion, which will be launched within the next couple of weeks. Visitors are invited to browse the website ahead of time, or before and after the concert in the hall or on their phones, and explore video clips, audio excerpts, photographs, and information about the artists and music.

The new website will highlight Watercolors, a wind quintet inspired by the paintings of Charles Burchfield, in addition to the portion of the website featuring the string quartet The Course of Empire, which was posted in July.

The section on Watercolors features video clips from a fascinating interview with Nancy Weekly, Curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center; Carol Steen, painter and co-founder of the American Synesthesia Assocation; as well as a movement-by-movement analysis of the connection between my music and the paintings, which is interspersed with audio excerpts and relevant images from the paintings.

While The Course of Empire and Watercolors are being highlighted on the website/app, every piece on the program has its own dedicated page and content. Other pieces featured on the program and the accompanying website include:

Setsugekka for violin and piano, inspired by Japanese woodblock prints by Hiroshige. The website will include videos introducing the genre of Japanese woodblock printing, and the traditional theme of setsugekka (snow, moon and flowers). This section features text and narration by independent print scholar John Resig (ukiyo-e.org).
To Create One’s Own World for soprano, flute, bass clarinet, and marimba, and The Faraway Nearby video piece with chamber score, both inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. The website will include audio clips, song text, and the online video of The Faraway Nearby.
Revealed in Stone, a song cycle for tenor and piano inspired by the sculpture and poetry of Michelangelo. The website will feature an analysis of the English translation of the poetry used in the cycle.
Triptych for solo guitar, inspired by the formal structure of triptychs (especially as seen in Medieval art). The website will include a comparison of different genres of triptychs.

Both the concert and website have received support from the Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department at NEC.

May 28, 2011June 1, 2011

A Charles Burchfield Pilgrimage

I’m currently on my first road trip shooting footage for Beyond the Notes (see this post for a description of the project). The primary purpose of this trip is to collect material for online videos about American painter Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), the artist who inspired my wind quintet, Watercolors, and orchestral tone poem The Sphinx and the Milky Way. (See this post for more about my interest in Burchfield, and the paintings that inspired Watercolors.)

My pursuit of all things Burchfield has taken me to Buffalo, NY and surroundings, where the painter spent much of his life. Yesterday I visited the Charles E. Burchfield Nature & Art Center in Gardenville, a community center and park on Buffalo creek. There I caught a glimpse of his former home and studio where he lived and painted from 1925 to his death in 1967 (a private home across the street from the park), and filmed and photographed woods and flowers that evoked some of the nature scenes in Burchfield’s paintings.

Charles Burchfield, The Moth and the Thunderclap (1961)

I continued onto the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo to visit the stimulating exhibit Sensory Crossovers: Synesthesia in American Art, which “provides an unprecedented opportunity to consider synesthesia through the work of some of the 20th century’s most significant artists, luminaries such as Charles E. Burchfield, Arthur Dove, Max Weber, Joseph Stella, Georgia O’Keeffe and Adolph Gottlieb.” (source) It was intriguing to see diverse works from both Modernists and later artists that dealt with the translation of music and sound into visual art. The exhibit features a number of wonderful works by Burchfield (including the bold The Moth and the Thunderclap); excerpts from his sketchbooks on display document a language of abstract forms and symbols, through which he sought to express the music of Sibelius and Wagner.

Filming at the Burchfield Nature & Art Center

After taking in the exhibit, I had the pleasure of filming an interview with Nancy Weekly, longtime head curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, co-curator of Sensory Crossovers, and author and editor of a number of essays and books on his work. (I recently enjoyed this book by Weekly.) She was wonderfully generous with her time and expertise, and spoke with me on a number of topics relating to Burchfield’s work, including the importance of music in his paintings; and the phenomenon of synesthesia in art.

With this informative interview, I am hopeful that Beyond the Notes will become a valuable and entertaining resource for anyone interested in exploring Burchfield’s art, especially visitors who may not have the motivation to seek out books on the topic.

Tomorrow takes me to The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY, where I’ll be shifting my focus back into the 19th century and the monumental landscapes of the Hudson River School.

May 25, 2011June 1, 2011

Beyond the Notes: companion for arts events

For the next few months, I will be focusing on the development of Beyond the Notes (beyondthenotes.org), a new kind of multimedia companion for arts events. Each “digital program note” on Beyond the Notes will accompany an event, and may include video interviews, audio excerpts, slideshows, and other interactive features, which will be accessed by audience members on a website or in the concert hall (but not during the performance!) via a mobile application supporting iPhone, iPad, and Android.

By producing websites and mobile apps rich with interactivity and substantive content, I hope to inform and enhance audiences’ experiences of the performing arts and visual arts, and to facilitate communication between artists and their audiences.

From now through September, I will be producing a pilot Beyond the Notes website and mobile app to complement a performance of my string quartet The Course of Empire, based on paintings by Thomas Cole, at the Peabody Essex Museum on July 30 in coordination with national touring exhibit Painting the American Vision.

Beyond the Notes will also accompany my recital at New England Conservatory in October, which will feature The Course of Empire and other music inspired by visual artists including Charles Burchfield (Watercolors and The Sphinx and the Milky Way), Georgia O’Keeffe (The Faraway Nearby , From the Faraway Nearby [orchestra piece], and To Create One’s Own World), Michelangelo (Revealed in Stone), and Hiroshige (Setsugekka – mp3s coming soon).

I will be closely blogging and tweeting the production process for the Beyond the Notes pilot. My first exciting step: a road trip this weekend to film an interview with Nancy Weekly, leading Charles Burchfield scholar and Head of Collections and Curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY.

I’ll also be heading to Catskill, NY to do research at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and to film landscape footage in the region that inspired Cole’s monumental paintings. In June, I’ll be interviewing Linda S. Ferber, Senior Art Historian at the New-York Historical Society, an expert in Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School artists; as well as Carol Steen, artist and founder of the American Synesthesia Association, for a segment on synesthesia in art and music.

The first Beyond the Notes website/app is being funded in part by an Entrepreneurial Grant from the Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department at New England Conservatory. (My first Entrepreneurial Grant, awarded in summer 2010, supported the creation of The Faraway Nearby, a multimedia video piece inspired by the New Mexico paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe.)

This pilot project is an experimental vehicle towards developing a new model of media enhancement for music and arts events. If successful, I plan to start a service creating websites and apps for small arts organizations ranging from galleries to theater companies.