CONCERTS in art museums are nothing unusual, but one in which musicians improvise while an artist creates a painting is a twist on the standard offering. That will happen next Saturday night at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.
Spotlight | Southampton
Painters and Musicians, Improvising Simultaneously
By STEVEN McELROY
Published: April 23, 2011
Grace Jeon
PERFORMING The Sinopia Quartet will take part in “The Parrish Percussion Project” at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.
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The paint-and-play piece is part of “The Parrish Percussion Project: Process, Polyrhythm and Performance Art” being presented by the Long Island Composers Alliance. It will feature works by five composers played on the marimba, vibraphone, cymbal, synthesizers, piano and, naturally, drums.
Herb Deutsch, who co-founded the Alliance with Marga Richter in 1972, called the event “exciting” because a focus on percussion, which can be integral in any number of musical styles, allows for a varied program. In addition to performing pieces by him and Ms. Richter, the Sinopia Quartet — two pianists and two percussionists — will also play works by Julie Mandel, Alexander Nohai-Seaman and George Cork Maul. And while the event is mainly a concert, during intermission and after the show there is likely to be lively discussion with the composers.
Whenever the Alliance gives a concert with the composers there, “it’s like a think tank, because there is always a wide variety of ideas; there is always good discussion,” said Mr. Maul, the Alliance’s treasurer and the organizational force behind this event. “All the composers are there to talk, and they’re glad to talk whenever they get the chance.”
The Alliance presents more than a dozen concerts each year at a variety of locations, but Mr. Maul says this one is particularly suited to its setting. The Parrish is “such a uniquely visual space,” he said, because the museum is the gateway to the concert hall. “And there’s something about percussion instruments that are always interesting to look at,” he added. “They’re interesting shapes and sizes, and they always look like odd contraptions in some way.”
For the final piece of the night, the paint-and-play, the artist Alan Bull will create a painting while the musicians — joined for this jam by Mr. Maul and Mr. Deutsch — play. Everyone will improvise, the idea being that the painter will respond to the music, or paint what he hears, while the musicians simultaneously express what they see.
“From a musician’s standpoint, it is very exciting,” Mr. Deutsch said, “because a line, a color, a shape immediately means something, and you trade it back and forth.”
