Music enhancing art, and vice versa

Last year's Music and Beyond soirée at the National Gallery was a hard act to follow, but this year, on July 11th, they repeated that venture, on all three levels of the building. I had been at the Vienna Piano Trio's concert in the afternoon (as described in my previous post) and had walked to the University after that to hear a lecture on Bach's B-minor Mass (cancelled, but it had entailed a detour on my way home), so was too tired to stay at the museum all evening; however, it was worth being there and I enjoyed the chance to take photos. This event also gave me the chance to take a look, for free, at the refurbished galleries of Canadian art in this 150th year of Canada's history. Hearing complementary pieces of music brought the artworks more to life than if I'd merely been looking. Likewise the music seemed to take on an extra dimension when juxtaposed with what was in the background. The exact location of each mini-concert had been chosen with care; it was fun searching for the connections between the music and the visual art on show at each spot, some links being more obvious than others.

In one of the contemporary galleries, a song and dance performance was beginning as I walked in. This was a bizarre, avant garde piece –– the singer/dancer (Heather Sita Black) lying flat on the floor beside the drummer to start her wordless, wailing music, and the long haired cellist-composer (Raphael Weinroth-Browne, increasingly familiar to Ottawa audiences), throwing his head forward and back as he extemporised an accompaniment –– apparently inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as was the artwork his partner danced around.

Individuals, families and groups of friends at the event could wander about at will; I explored further. I'm sorry to have accidentally missed the throat-singing performances in the Inuit Galleries. A brass ensemble was playing Baroque music to a large audience in the Rideau Chapel and, wearing costumes appropriate for the 17th century, dancers and musicians enacted another short programme in the Baroque hall. Meanwhile, 18th century British duets were being played by a violinist and cellist in the gallery displaying 18th century British art.

In the Baroque hall

In the impressionists' gallery a young man in a black suit was playing French music on a harp. Walking across the upper floor, I glimpsed members of the Capital Chamber Music Choir, all dressed alike, taking a rest between performances in front of Barnett Newman's famous "Voice of Fire" (1967), some of them sitting or sprawling on the floor, since there are no seats in that space. The choir sang there later, but by then I had moved on.

Downstairs, in another 20th century gallery, I came across someone playing classical guitar music among the abstract art, while a different guitarist serenaded hollow, 3 dimensional sarcophogi. A saxophonist held a group of people spellbound in front of the triptych by Riopelle, performing modern, abstract music. The theramin player, the Dutchman Thorwald Jorgensen, a regular contributor to the festival, had his spot on the middle floor in front of Claude Tousignant's op-art painting of concentric circles, Chromatic Accelerator, creating magical effects with his other-worldly instrument.

Back into the past, demonstrating music that the flute player on Antoine Plamadon's canvas would have played --- on the same kind of wooden transverse flute and wearing the same kind of clothes --- was a live flautist of today, making an eerie comparison to that 150 year old oil painting! Likewise, sea shanties were being sung by a folk singer in a checked shirt, with a guitar, in the maritime section of the Canadian galleries, just what the sailors on the ships depicted there might have heard in their day.

Julian Armour, Director of the Music and Beyond festival, was introducing his quartet for the evening (he plays the cello) in a gallery of 19th century Canadian art (plus an indigenous birchbark canoe).