Music and Art - "Transformations" PART THREE (May 2009)

My friends (Michael Schultz and Chad Hudson) and I started doing what we called "Music and Art" day where we pick a theme, listen to music (my mixes), have a few cocktails, and create something on our separate 12" x 12" white canvases...

This was our third session on the theme of "Transformation" and here are our three pieces of art created on May 30, 2009:









Here is a playlist (the third of four) of the music that I put together, edited, and re-mashed for us to listened to, discuss, and be insprired by that day, along with notes and comments about each section (in yellow):

Transformations Mix No. 3
“Variations and Themes”

(Note on the first section: I dragged Michael and Chad to see “33 Variations,” a new Moisés Kaufman play on Broadway starring Jane Fonda. We loved it. There was so much to take away from it and to think about later. Among other things, it linked the way Beethoven took care to transform a simple tune into something worthwhile, just as a parent does to a child, just as we all do to our lives…This opening skit from a Broadway fundraiser, pokes fun at Fonda‘s high-strung reputation.)

• ‘Voluntary’ Rehearsal — Jane Fonda, Cast of 33 Variations (at the B’way Cares Easter Bonnet Competition)
  

(Note on the next section: So much has been written about this masterpiece. I just suggest you buy a copy of Moisés Kaufman’s “33 Variations” when it is finally published.)

• 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli (Beethoven) Op.120 — Vladimir Ashkenazy
  

(Note on the next section: Most people know Pictures at an Exhibition as a huge orchestral work with the gongs and cymbals of the Great Gate of Kiev testing the power of your speakers. Yet that version was orchestrated by the French composer Maurice Ravel in 1922, almost 50 years after the Russian Modest Mussorgsky wrote it as a set of solo piano pieces (1874). Here, I show how the opening theme is transformed each time it occurs, played by the young Horowitz, a master of colorization.)

• Promenades Nos. 3/5/8/13 from Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky) — Vladimir Horowitz
  

(Note on the next section: One of the most popular and most-performed of all works for piano and orchestra, Rachmaninoff‘s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a set of 22 variations. At the time of its premiere -- given in Baltimore 1934 with the composer performing -- the great Russian pianist had already transformed into an American. In this work, he transforms the traditional variation form, grouping the variations into three distinct sections, that actual create an overall “fast-slow-fast” Concerto.)

• Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Rachmaninov) — Lang Lang, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Gergiev