New film to accompany QCSO concerts
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Patrons at next weekend’s QC Symphony Orchestra Masterworks concerts will be in for a rare treat.
For just the second time in the past 13 years, a spectacular film from the science and arts group KV 265 will be shown accompanying a live performance, this time to the 10-minute “Liquify” by Michael Abels, which was commissioned by the QCSO and premiered here (without a video) in 2017.
Abels (a close friend of QCSO music director/conductor Mark Russell Smith and 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner) wrote in the program notes that “Liquify” represents “a brilliant waterfall representing its source, a murky and vast commercial waterway with boating traffic, a fast-moving stream over rocky rapids, a peaceful, silent river in the moonlight, and watersports and waterspouts on a bright warm day. However, I do encourage everyone to listen with their own imagination and decide what visual depictions fit the music best.
“Also, now there is this wonderful film by Jose Francisco Salgado, which is also water-inspired but conceived independently of the descriptions I’ve given,” the composer said of the KV 265 visuals, filmed in Iceland. “So another way to listen to this music is to notice which of the original inspirations are offered in the film and which are not, and to appreciate how one artist’s inspires another.”
The Feb. 3-4 concerts overall are an homage to the natural wonders that surround us – which include Franz Joseph Haydn’s “The Depiction of Chaos” from The Creation; Mary Howe’s Stars and Sand, and the main piece on the program, the pictorial countryside and storms of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony.
The new water-themed film was made by José Francisco Salgado, an Emmy-nominated astronomer, experimental photographer, visual artist, and public speaker who creates multimedia works that communicate science in engaging ways.
As executive director and co-founder of KV 265, a nonprofit science and arts education organization, Salgado collaborates with orchestras, composers, and musicians to present films that provoke curiosity and a sense of wonder about the Earth and the universe.
His Science & Symphony films have been presented in 260 concerts and 215 lectures — reaching a combined audience of more than 480,000 people in 21 countries. Orchestras that have presented these works include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino.
His first two films were named by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO as Special Projects for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. In 2012, his film “Gustav Holst’s The Planets” was chosen for Ravinia Festival’s One Score, One Chicago initiative.
That was the first one he made (premiering in 2006) and the first one performed with the QCSO, in 2011.
The mission of KV 265 is “to communicate science in a non-traditional venue,” Salgado said in a recent interview with Our Quad Cities News. “When it comes to science communication, people go to the museum, to the aquarium, to the zoo, to the planetarium, right? Not necessarily to the concert hall.
“So it’s a way of reaching out to people in a non-traditional venue and when you combine things with music, I think the end result is better and you can present things in a very non-intimidating way,” Salgado said. “The films are not documentaries but are art pieces meant to present, communicate and most importantly, inspire people to learn on their own about what they see on screen.”
Reflecting music on screen
For “Liquify,” or any piece, Salgado listens to it and imagines what visuals would best complement and reflect what the music is saying.
“When I listened to his piece, I said, ‘You know, what would be perfect?’ I’ve been to Iceland a couple of times. So in Iceland I got inspired by water,” he said on Jan. 25. “I can go to Iceland and basically chase the water, follow the path of water from mountain tops to waterfalls to the coastlines and from glaciers to lagoons to the beaches and so on.”
Salgado tries to ensure that he’s telling a story with the visuals, and not simply showing random footage of water in various states.
“I listened to that introduction of the piece and what I picture is, just water flowing down a river and actually me following the water,” he said of “Liquify.” He used a lot of drone footage for this video, all filmed (in super high-def 8K and 60 frames per second) on the southern coast of Iceland.
“Ultimately, the music is king. You know, these films are produced to serve the music because I’m such a big music enthusiast and I have so much respect for the music,” Salgado said. “The mission is, we have these concerts with these beautiful orchestral pieces. How can I serve the music by enhancing the concert experience and presenting something that will follow the music very closely?”
He called Abels’s music “absolutely beautiful.”
“I’m so happy that the orchestra responsible for commissioning this music gets to premiere the film. It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Salgado said. “I have to say watching the end product, I’m very, very satisfied with the result.”
As a film composer, Abels is especially cinematic in his concert music, he noted.
“The challenge that I had, it’s always an interesting challenge,” Salgado said. “It’s kind of like a puzzle if you will.”
“I need to follow the music. I’m not going to impose my will if it goes against what the music is dictating,” he said.
Abels, 61, has achieved great success in a variety of artistic fields, navigating between the worlds of concert and film music. He is best known for his scores to Jordan Peele films — including the Oscar-winning “Get Out” (2017) and “Us” (2019), for which Abels won the World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, an Image Award nomination, and multiple critics’ awards.
The hip-hop influenced score for “Us” was short-listed for an Oscar, and was named “Score of the Decade” by online publication The Wrap. Abels also wrote the score for Peele’s 2022 science-fiction film “Nope.”
Abels collaborated with singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens on their first opera, “Omar,” which earned them both the Pulitzer last year.
Premiered on May 27, 2022 at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., attended by Mark Russell Smith, it was honored this past May as the 2023 Pulitzer winner for music. The composer plans to attend the QCSO concert Sunday, Feb. 4.
Abels was last here in December 2022, to hear the QCSO premiere his new guitar concerto, “Borders,” under the baton of Smith.
What does KV 265 mean?
The name of Salgado’s company (KV 265) comes from the catalog number of Mozart’s 12 variations on the French folk song “Ah! vous dirai-je, maman,”.which has been used for many children’s songs, such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star“, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep“, and the “Alphabet Song“.
Salgado is a big Mozart fan but has not made a film to his music yet.
Among the classical pieces he has made films for are:
The Universe at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky, arr. Ravel)
Moonrise (Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe)
A la busca del más allá (In Search of the Beyond; Joaquín Rodrigo)
Nocturnes (Debussy)
KV 265’s collaborations with contemporary composers include:
The Legend of the Northern Lights (Christopher Theofanidis)
Aurora Triptych: Solaris, Borealis, & Wondrous Light (John Estacio)
Moontides (John Estacio)
As an experimental photographer, Salgado has visited more than 30 scientific sites worldwide in remote places including the Atacama desert, the French Pyrenees, and the South African Karoo, and has contributed visuals to documentaries produced for the History, Discovery, BBC, and National Geographic channels.
He is also a contributing writer for Digital Photography Review. As a public speaker, he has given lectures in all seven continents, including a presentation at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
For more information on KV 265, click HERE. The QCSO concerts will be Saturday, Feb. 3 at 7:30 at Adler Theatre (136 E. 3rd St., Davenport), and Sunday, Feb. 4 at 2 p.m. at Centennial Hall (3703 7th Ave., Rock Island).
For tickets and more information, click HERE.
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