Editor’s note: due to the funeral event for Louise Slaughter at the Eastman School on Friday, March 23, the Ensemble Garage concert for Image/Sound has been moved to 9 p.m.
A brand-new Rochester event seeks to bring together audiences
with an appreciation for experimental film, music, and avant-garde art in a
two-day celebration of image and sound. Presented by Eastman Audio Research
Studio (EARS), the inaugural Image/Sound Festival kicks off this Thursday, and
its organizers are excited to give attendees a chance to enjoy works wildly
different from anything they’d traditionally see performed at the Eastman
School of Music.
The
Image/Sound Festival will present a lineup of US premiere concerts, workshops,
and talkbacks on Thursday, March 22, before culminating with a concert by
internationally-acclaimed artist collective Ensemble Garage on Friday, March
23. A full schedule can be found at esm.rochester.edu/ears. All events are free
and open to the public.
EARS is the
Eastman School’s platform for research, experimentation, and the realization of
new music and sound art. It’s a mission that this new festival continues as it
provides a showcase for work from international artists who delight in playing
with the foundational elements of the music and film mediums.
“We live in
the age of image, and the increasing visual paradigms in our culture raise many
questions. In putting together the festival program, we’ve involved a
collection of artists who are actively questioning the relationship between
image and sound, and finding some intriguing answers,” says EARS Director
Oliver Schneller.
These
artists are using musical ideas or musical composition qualities to create exclusively
image-based pieces. This “visual music” combines elements of music, film, and,
performance art in ways meant to highlight the varied interactions between the
visual and auditory senses.
The festival
first begins with a symposium, featuring presentations by artists and scholars who
will explain and demonstrate different ideas and approaches to this
relationship, ranging from the collaborations between Alfred Hitchcock and
composer Bernard Herrmann, to contemporary VJing.
Thursday’s
schedule includes a screening in Hatch Recital Hall of works by eminent
Austrian videographer Claudia Rohrmoser, who
specializes in audio-visual constellations using animation. Following that
presentation will be a concert by Eastman’s own Empire Film Music Ensemble, an
Eastman student group that has been dedicated to the performance of classic
film music.
Their
performance here sees the group branching out into multimedia work that will
place an emphasis on sound, light, and color, through works by Philip Glass as well
as new compositions by Ensemble members and contributing artists Claire Caverly and Jose Escobar. The three presented pieces seek
to “push the boundaries of what we think traditional composition or traditional
performance can be,” Escobar says.
The anchor
of the festival will be German composer and performer Brigitta Muntendorf, who will be performing with her very own
collective, the Ensemble Garage. This ensemble specializes in works that
involve complex visual components — video art, live-video, performance, and
theater, Schneller says. “And the group commissions and performs works by
contemporary composers from all over the world.”
Following
the Empire Film Music Ensemble concert, Ensemble Garage will be holding a live
masterclass at the Visual Studies Workshop, which will bring visual artists and
composers together to share and discuss their work. Appearing before their
Friday concert, the ensemble will provide a platform for young artists to
exchange ideas and experiences while allowing participants to gain access to
the composers in a way that audiences rarely get in the more formal concert
setting. As with the rest of the festival’s events, the workshop is free though
pre-registration is required.
Though the
idea behind visual music can seem like heady stuff, Eastman students Caverly and Escobar are quick to emphasize that the medium
remains entirely accessible, since it isn’t after any specific interpretation.
Visual music performances delve into the arena known as Psychoacoustics (the
modern scientific study of sound perception and its physiological effects), and
as such, are open to whatever emotion it stirs within the audience. The medium
only requires that viewers pay attention to their physical reaction to the
sounds and images they’re experiencing, which means there’s truly no wrong way
to enjoy it.
“Visual
music can be an overwhelming experience,” Caverly
says. “But that sense of being overwhelmed with feeling can be beautiful when
you allow yourself to just watch, absorb, and let yourself kind of fall into
it. I think that when it’s done really well, it’s a totally amazing experience —
like nothing else.”
This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2018.
