“At a recent classical-music concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra, one key performer stayed offstage. In the projection booth, Tal Rosner pecked at a keyboard that controlled the vivid images unspooling on large screens above the musicians,” writes Arian Campo-Flores in Wednesday’s (4/30) Wall Street Journal. “Rosner’s work—in Philadelphia, performed with Benjamin Britten’s ‘Four Sea Interludes’—shows how symphony orchestras are collaborating with video artists to create immersive, multisensory performances that reimagine the traditional concert-hall experience. ‘Increasingly, that is where this art form is going,’ said Chad Smith, vice president of artistic planning at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is also experimenting with video…. The trend is driven in part by orchestras’ efforts to attract younger concertgoers…. In 1973, James Westwater presented for the first time what he calls ‘photochoreography’ at a concert by the Columbus Symphony in Ohio. More than 40 years later, he is still at it…. But video is a more recent phenomenon.… What distinguishes many video pieces today, including Mr. Rosner’s, is the visual artist’s ability to adjust to the orchestra’s playing, thereby freeing the musicians…. Composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison … [are] now working on their fourth orchestral piece, commissioned by the New World Symphony, that will seek to convey the ‘gestalt’ of Miami in music and film.”
Posted May 2, 2014
Pictured: New World Symphony plays Stravinsky with digital animation by Emily Eckstein. Photo by Rui Dias-Aidos
