Art and Music Collaboration Aims to Please Concert Audience
An upcoming UC concert performance will incorporate large-scale paintings by a DAAP artist.
Artists from two of the University of Cincinnati's internationally ranked colleges are collaborating in a performance project that will combine music with painting.
As part of a Feb. 27 concert performance at UC's College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), Mark Harris of the university's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) will exhibit four large-scale paintings that reflect and visually comment on the music.
To accompany a performance of composer Morton Feldman's "Rothko Chapel," to be conducted by Annunziata Tomaro, award-winning CCM instructor, Harris will exhibit four large 11-by-8 feet collage paintings. These paintings will be strategically placed along the periphery of the audience's seating area.
Harris, director of DAAP's School of Art, explains, "Annunziata Tomaro put out a call for a collaboration, and I remembered these paintings that I had produced in the early 1990s. In mood and title, they are appropriate to the theme and music composed by Morton Feldman in his "Rothko Chapel" piece."
Tomaro adds, "I'd initially planned to project images of Rothko's paintings during our performance of Feldman's music, but as I considered the idea of recreating the experience of Rothko Chapel, I began exploring the possibility of presenting the work of a local artist. I was thrilled to discover Mark's compelling paintings, which resonate both with the music and Rothko's original panels."
That piece of music is meditative, reflecting upon the contemplative environment created by American painter Mark Rothko in 14 large canvasses specifically for placement in a Houston, Texas, chapel.
Similarly, Harris states that his textural works, very dark and atmospheric, will serve to immerse audience members at the recital into a sense of solitude and introspection.
It's especially appropriate, he adds, that his CCM performance incorporates painting since Feldman's music "Rothko Chapel," composed in 1971, reflects upon the work of a painter (Mark Rothko).
"The best part for me as an artist," says Harris, "Is to continue the already established collaboration between the visual arts and music. I've been in that recital space many times as an audience member at concerts. Now, I'll be there engaged as a participant as well."
To go:
Cafe MoMus: CCM's Contemporary Music Ensemble performance
8 p.m., Feb. 27, 2009
Cohen Family Studio Theater, CCM
Admission is free.