One of the frequent charges leveled against composers over the last few decades has been that they are increasingly distant from, and even uninterested in, their audience. A special interactive concert made an effort to reconnect the two this weekend in New England: three composers each presented new works to the audience, and spoke briefly about their inspirations and objectives in composition. Then, the audience got a crack at questioning the composer, speaking up about what did and didn’t make a connection, and even asking for segments of some works to be repeated. “It sounds like the very thing that composers dread,” says Keith Powers, and yet it seems to have made everyone involved a little wiser, and a lot happier.
Tag: 06.14.03
Recreating The Sistine Chapel Paintings On The Streets Of California
A dozen top street painters converged on the Bay Area to re-create Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The painting will be “about half the size of the original. Parts of the ceiling have been done at various international festivals, but this 75-by-25-foot work is apparently the first to re-create the entire biblical epic, which contains more than 300 figures arrayed in a richly detailed architectural setting of spandrels and pendentives and putti-adorned pilasters. It took Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512 to complete the great work for Pope Julius II. These artists are replicating it in six days. ‘We want to make it as true to the actual ceiling as possible, but allowing each artist to bring their expression into it’.”