Wednesday 9 May 2018

Painting The Sea


Painting "The Sea" 
with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla & the CBSO
February 16th. 2019

I'm delighted to share the announcement of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra that in February 2019 I shall be making kinetic paintings live in concert to The Sea, by the Lithuanian composer/painter M.K.Čiurlionis (1875 -1911), conducted by Music Director Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla in Symphony Hall Birmingham. The date for this UK première is now confirmed as Saturday February 16th. 2019, which by the way is Lithuania's Independence Day.

It's still a work in progress of course, but here's the Link to my first 4-minute Trailer on YouTube for a few quick glimpses of the beginning and the end of this twenty-nine minute work.   


And here's the Link to my blog from last September - Serendipity: Mirga, Norman and Čiurlionis, written after I had done some serious research in Lithuania on the audio-visual work of this prodigious creative spirit. Čiurlionis had a significant influence in early abstract art, symbolism and art nouveau and became a cultural legend in Lithuania. As a synaesthete, he was so finely tuned to the correspondences between visual art and music, that had his life not been tragically cut short at the age of thirty-five, I'm sure he would have become one of the composers of early film music. At last, in 2019, I shall be creating the movie to his music. Music that is ideally suited to my flowing colours. 



Čiurlionis probably had Chromesthesia, as I do. I'm not going to copy his paintings, but rather create my own kinetic flowing images inspired by my own automatic involuntary reactions to his music. How wonderful it would have been to meet! You can imagine that we might have embraced as brothers.

Mirga's concerts with the CBSO are regularly sold out, so here's the Link to book your concert tickets early (from June 4th. for general public). After all, this concert has a somewhat unusual added visual attraction! It's been twenty-five years since I performed with the CBSO in Symphony Hall under Sir Simon Rattle, televised by BBC in 1993 as Concerto for Paintbrush and Orchestra. Born in Birmingham nearly eighty-five years ago, this is quite an emotional milestone in my career in visual music and I shall be thrilled to be back in Symphony Hall.

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