“A multimedia collaboration between the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Northern Kentucky University’s Brad McCombs and Cincinnati Art Museum is an example of the growing importance of partnerships in the performing arts,” writes Janelle Gelfand in Wednesday’s (8/24) Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio). “On Saturday, the Chamber Orchestra presents Darius Milhaud’s jazzy ‘La Création du Monde’ (‘The Creation of the World’), part of a program conducted and curated by Sarah Ioannides, a candidate for music director. McCombs, Schiff professor of art and coordinator for New Media Art at NKU, has created a video to accompany the music…. Because it was originally a ballet, the piece seemed tailor-made for a visual element. McCombs and Ioannides met at the Cincinnati Art Museum to ‘co-curate’ art that would work for the video. The artists include Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Robert S. Duncanson, and Gustav Klimt…. Ioannides contributed several of her own paintings…. McCombs created work to accompany the Overture … using cotton candy to form surreal peaks and valleys…. It was important that the visuals not overshadow the music, McCombs said. The challenge, he said, ‘is to approach it in a way where there’s dialogue and collaboration happening, so that everyone feels like they’re part of creating the piece, and it doesn’t seem weighted one way or another.’ ”
Posted August 25, 2016
Pictured: Paul Gauguin’s 1892 painting “Mahana Ma’a,” which represents the Garden of Eden in Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s multimedia “La Création du Monde.”
