Hot ICE does Slow Frieze at Lincoln Center!

At Monday night's Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) burned up the stage with the help of two luminaries of the contemporary music world: conductor Ludovic Morlot and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The New York Times' review of the concert was glowing.

It was with great delight that I could photograph their rehearsals for the four days prior to the concert and watch such talented musicians work on these challenging musical pieces.

Claire Chase, the founder of the ensemble, during a practice session at the ICEhaus in Brooklyn with fellow flutist, Eric Lamb, who recently performed at Noble Arts Piano Studio in Historic Downtown Easton, Pennsylvania.

Last Tuesday evening (8/10) I attended the pre-concert recital with Claire Chase on flute and Jacob Greenberg on piano.  With her first selection Claire came bursting out of the gate like a race horse with an adaptation of Bach's massive organ piece, "Toccata and Fugue in D minor", unaccompanied on her magic flute!  After that astounding opening established her virtuosity, the audience hypnotically followed her pied piping into the second, more challenging contemporary piece, Donatoni's "Fili". The final piece, was her own jaw-dropping arrangement for flute of Paganini's "Caprice No. 24",  considered one of the most difficult pieces ever written for solo violin!  It was all over in 30 minutes but made a lasting impression. 

After days of experiencing "surround sound" music, everything began to look like sheet music, bars, measures and notes.

It looks like the top of a missile, and creates its own explosive sound --it's actually a tympani drum turned upside down!  (Adam Silwinski and Greg Beyer on percussion)

Visual rhythm inspired by musical rhythm.

(David Bowlin, Erik Carlson and Yonah Zur on violin)

It was also wonderful to see my friends Ellis Finger, director of Lafayette College's Williams Center for the Arts and recipient of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters William Dawson award, and his wife Phyllis, in attendance at this exciting musical adventure.

Gnarly Bark-ing Beasts

Lafayette College's campus is home to a matching pair of magnificent 100-year old Japanese cutleaf maples. So when I discovered that my latest photo subject liked trees and climbing, I had to show him my favorite trees and get this 'Avatar-like' environmental portrait.   It looks like he's high up in the canopy of a tropical jungle.  I also suggested that he check out the North Summit Climbing Gym in Wind Gap...the people there are kind, cool and knowledgeable.

Lafayette's five-year plan to reduce cars and turn its hilltop campus into a pedestrian-friendly academic haven is already underway. And work has begun on the walking and sculpture trail along the Bushkill Creek leading toward the Silk Mill Project!

Arshille Gorky Retrospective in Philadelphia

I was lucky enough to see the Arshille Gorky retrospective exhibit on its last day at the Philadelphia Art Museum.  Gorky holds a place in art history as the last of the great surrealist painters and a pivotal precursor to American Abstract Expressionism.  As a teenager he witnessed the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent death of his mother.  His iconic self-portrait with his mother is shown in the museum's pamphlet for the exhibit, displayed above.  After coming to the United States in 1920, he studied art, worked and befriended the artists Max Ernst, Andre Breton,Wifredo Lam and Yves Tanguy.  He was a prolific painter and, following a series of personal tragedies, took his own life at the age of 46.

The process itself of creating art is fascinating to me and so it was with great interest that I heard about his artistic influences and his "self-imposed" apprenticeships to masters like Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and De Chirico. I really liked seeing his preliminary sketches displayed right next to his finished paintings, which made the artistic process much more transparent.

I usually resent being funneled into the gift shop, but this time I noticed an album by Hasmik Harutyunyan and the Shoghaken Ensemble which performed at Lafayette College's Williams Art Center. They also were playing my favorite Armenian flute music, performed by Djivan Gasparian.  I thought I heard it playing in the background of the self-guided audio tour of the exhibit.  So mournful, so beautiful...