This year the Prairie Wind Ensemble of Central Illinois began its 31st season of concerts with a collaborative program, “Portraits in Sound,” featuring great music, fine works of art, and even narrators. Members of the Prairie Winds include some of the finest wind and percussion musicians in the area, directed by composer and conductor Robert Sheldon. With four programs a year, both Sheldon and the ensemble members believe the collaboration of music and art for at least one of those programs creates memorable, educational performances that keep audiences returning, concert after concert.
Selecting music for “Portraits in Sound” is not overly difficult because of the many programmatic works either written or arranged for concert band. Once Sheldon developed the final list of pieces for the program this year, several ensemble members offered to develop a slide show of the paintings that either inspired the music or in some way depicted it, with the goal of projecting the images on to a screen as the band performed.
The Illinois Central College Per-forming Arts Center, where the Prairie Wind Ensemble performs, loaned the band a 10’x20′ projection screen and a computer projector, and band members decided that a Power Point slide show would be best way to display the art. Next, I volunteered to research the art works that inspired the compositions.
While some of the art works were easy to find, others, such as those for Scenes from the Louvre by Norman Dello Joio, required research to locate the actual painting referenced in each movement. The concert also included a recently composed four-movment piece by Sheldon, Art in the Park, in which each movement referred to a specific work of art and the technique used to paint it.
I found several websites with works of art available to copy and paste into the Power Point slide show, and Michael Gray, chairman of the fine arts department at Illinois Valley Central High School, graciously offered to scan images in the public domain from art books and copy them from websites to create the slide show. He later added slides with titles that an-nounced each composition to the audience, eventually including 100 slides for the presentation.
The one technical detail that puzzled everyone was how to get each slide to change at the appropriate time. We decided to use leftover band parts and place numbers in the music showing when to change to the next slide. A band member who was not able to play for the concert volunteered to follow the music and hit the space bar on the computer at just the right place in the music to change the slide. What began as a difficult project, easily came together.
During rehearsals the band found out that Robert Sheldon had one more trick to add to the program. He invited officers of the Peoria Area Art Guild to the concert to be guest narrators, creating the ultimate of collaborations. We would actually have artists talking about art, specifically their experiences using the painting techniques. The artists also had the opportunity to promote local art fairs and exhibits.
One of the works, In Lincoln’s Day by Jeffrey Hoover, had a very special place in the concert because of its all-encompassing nature. Hoover, who is chairman of the Fine Arts Department at Illinois Central College, began the work as a poem about the Civil War. Next it became a work for band and finally a painting, all created by Hoover, who willingly described his creative process as part of the concert.
As you might imagine, the concert was a huge hit with the audience. Everyone especially enjoyed seeing the art presentation in conjunction with the music.
Prairie Wind Ensemble
Music and Art Concert
Art Show by Newell H. Long (Presser). For the first movement, “Grand Opening Fanfare,” we showed photographs of various well-known art museums other than the Louvre, which was featured later in the program. Movement two, “Rectangles of Color,” with Homage to the Square and Star Blue by Josef Albers; Composition in Red, Black and Gray by Piet Mondrian. The third movement, “Noodle Descending a Staircase,” was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. For movement four, “Mobile,” we showed a variety of mobiles by Alexander Calder. Movement five, “‘Pop’ Art On An Easel,” featured miscellaneous pop art works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol; and movement six, “Polacca di Pollock,” was works by Jackson Pollock. The final movement, “Collage,” was accompanied by a rapid-fire display of famous works.
Scenes from the Louvre by Norman Dello Joio (Hal Leonard). We used the first movement, “Portals,” to show exterior shots of the Louvre. Movement two, “Children’s Gallery,” included pictures of children. The original music was meant to depict paintings of the children of King Henry IV in the Grand Gallery. For movements three and four, “Kings of France” and “The Nativity Painting,” we used paintings of royalty in the Louvre and the birth of Christ, respectively. Movement five, “Finale,” brought the piece to a close with a shots of the museum’s most famous works. A good webite that includes information about the music is http://www.bsu.edu/web/fwburrack/webpage/scenesfromthelouvre.html.
Art in the Park by Robert Sheldon (Alfred). Movement one, “Le Cycliste,” was inspired by cubist painter Gino Severini, while movement two, “The Shadowed Stream,” was inspired by the art of John Singer Sargent, who painted in the aquarelle style. Movement three, “Excavation,” was inspired by Willem de Kooning’s sgraffito style of painting, and movement four, “Transfiguration,” showed a representation of the great Raphael’s chiaroscuro style.
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Pablo by Richard Meyer (Alfred). Movement one, “Blue Period,” featured Picasso’s Old Guitarist, Le Gourmet, The Tragedy, and La Celestina. For movement two, “Rose Period,” we showed the Harlequin Family, Harlequin Family with An Ape, La famille de saltimbanques, Boy with a Dog, and Girl with a Goat. Movement three depicted Picasso’s cubist works, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Gurenica, The Guitar Player, Girl with a Mandolin, Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde, and Portrait of Ambrose Vollard.
