'For a visual artist, a musical score is a drawing'

The Blue Rider Ensemble has premiered many works by young composers over the years, but they’ve never worked with an artist providing them with a score in real time in the form of a live animation.

This first will take plan Sunday March 19^th at La Vitrola, as part of Blue Elements, a new show featuring five new musical compositions the ensemble is currently touring.

For a visual artist, a musical score is a drawing

The collaboration grew out of a classroom collaboration between flautist Liselyn Adams, who is also associate professor of music and former Chair of the Department of Music, and Eric Simon, the Chair of Studio Arts.

“We were talking about how for a visual artist, a musical score is a drawing.”

“I invited visual artists to our contemporary chamber music class to provide art for our scores. Art students tried to notate music either by drawing what the musicians were doing or by giving musicians a visual representation of what could become a score.”

The exercise stuck in her mind and so for Blue Elements, Concordia MFA (Film Production) student Sunny Stanila agreed to work with the ensemble.

In concert, Adams, cellist Paul Pulford and percussionist Beverley Johnston will improvise music while Stanila paints abstract animations and projects them onto a large screen.

“The idea to do a live performance came when I started rehearsing with the Blue Rider ensemble,” says Stanila.

“I would react to their improvisations as they were unfolding. It is interesting to see how the images I am making evolve and change over time and to hear the performers being influenced by them as well. It feels like I am playing visual music with colour and lines.”

A huge benefit for young composers

In addition to working with Stanila, Blue Rider will play works from Concordia alumni Tram Cohen (formerly Minh Tram Nguyen, BFA’15, music performance studies) and Julia Mermelstein (BFA’13, specialization music composition).

Working with an experienced group of performers like the Blue Rider, who have played together since 1990, helps young composers, Adams says.

“Often their notational skills or what they have in their mind is hard for them to put down and make practical for a performer.”

The ensemble met and workshopped with each of the composers. Performers and composers work out kinks together.

“It gives them a chance to hear their music being played by something other than a computer.”

Most composers begin writing alone, on MIDI software. But digital instrumentation can do things that are impossible on an actual instrument, Adams says.

“It helps them take a big leap, not so much in their composition, but in the way they write it down and give it to performer.”

Interdisciplinary spirit of the department

What Adams does in her Blue Rider Ensemble is an expression of a research-creation interest she has nurtured at Concordia since 1980.

While she graduated from a strict conservatory system, Adams sees the lines between performance and composition as blurry.

“Many composers make you improvise. Performers have evolved to where you have to do improvisation-based composition, collaborative composition and many different kinds of player-based creation.”

“I love this evolution and I am happy to live through it as a professor because I am obliged to evolve along with it.”

Because of its interdisciplinary nature, she believes that the boundaries between composition and performance have never been fixed Concordia’s Department of Music. It promotes the flexibility needed by young musicians to flourish.

“We try to say yes to all those things. All those old lines are dissolving and in too many schools, the boundaries are still too strong.”

Blue Elements

Sunday, March 19, 8 p.m.
La Vitrola
4602 Saint Laurent Blvd.
$15 general admission, free for students with ID
Details on the Blue Rider Ensemble's performance