How visuals will enhance Tuscaloosa Symphony's Orchestra's 9/11 concert
Aside from the visceral joy of being in the room where the music happens, symphony performances can offer visual appeal, from watching sections nodding in concert, to seeing soloists lean in, to studying a conductor pulling the mass of moving parts together.
At Monday's season-opening performance by the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra, "Land of the Free," eyes will most likely be drawn to a 42-foot screen hanging above the musicians. Multimedia artist Nicholas Bardonnay, CEO and creative director of Westwater Arts, will be live-projecting photos choreographed to the concert.
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The first set, "No Man's Land," features archival World War I photos, set to Samuel Barber's "Essay for Orchestra No. 1." "Citizen Soldier" shares images from 25 years later, during World War II, set to Aaron Copland's "Symphony No. 3." After intermission will come Bardonnay's "National Park Suite," featuring his own photos matched with the "Largo" movement from Dvořák's ninth symphony, "From the New World."
Bardonnay will be literally in the crowd at the 7 p.m. performance, running three projectors from the back of the Moody Concert Hall, showing a triptych of images, sometimes overlapping and overlaying. He'll also be at the 6 p.m. pre-concert "Cheers-n-Chat," hosted by the TSO Guild. For a $15 admission, guests can taste wines and hors d'oeuvres during a "Signature Series" mini-concert by Joe Ortiguera, principal second violinist. Maestro Adam Flatt, the TSO's music director since 2011, and Bardonnay will be on hand to visit and answer questions.
The choreographed performances fuse Bardonnay's interests in the musical and visual, and in a way, link to another passion.
"In a different life, I was a pitcher," he said, laughing. Bardonnay arrived in Tuscaloosa the night of Sept. 6, planning to set up equipment as the weekend began, then rehearse with Flatt and the orchestra Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning. "I was once quite serious about baseball. And while there isn't a direct parallel, when it comes to the live projection (from the rear, orchestra level of a concert hall), I feel like I was weirdly prepared.
"It's almost like being on the pitchers' mound, the kind of focus and concertration it requires."
Westwater Arts, founded by Bardonnay's mentor James Westwater 50 years ago, has become the standard in visual concertos, he said, having worked with more than 200 orchestras worldwide.
Bardonnay took over in 2009, and has since performed about 125 concerts. They're initially created with one classical piece in mind, he said, but can be fitted to other works. Orchestras choose, and they adapt the imagery as needed. Flatt has worked with Bardonnay twice before, while the maestro conducted Oregon's Newport Symphony Orchestra at the Ocean.
The first two were created to commemorate the 100th anniversary or World War I, and the 75th of World War II, drawing photos from the Library of Congress, military organizations and elsewhere. The national parks piece stemmed from Bardonnay's extensive travels, and feature his photography exclusively. That was created in 2016 for the centennial celebration of the National Park Service.
"I'm a big fan of mixing the emotional substance of a concert, as well as thematically giving the audience something to chew on," he said. So while war-time photos call to mind the extraordinary efforts and sacrifices, the parks series willl close with reminders of what's worth fighting for, those vast, relatively unspoiled and untouched landscapes.
Some projections will be panoramas, spanning the width of the screen; other times there'll be two or three images that "inform each other," Bardonnay said, including dark sections, negative imagery. There are action shots, of course, but also posed photos of soldiers and supporters, or factory workers building munitions, or preparing cockpits for aircraft. Some stir with a violent immediacy, while others show training, or other more down times, points where people were able to breathe, and smile.
There are images of the crucial work women added to the war effort, though not allowed to fight on the front lines, and there's a brief section with the Japanese interment campus, as Bardonnay tried to show the widest possible set of perspectives.
"I tend to pick kind of slower renditions of music, depending on the weight of the topic," he said. "It gives the audience chances to soak in the moment, to bask in the nice, relaxed, serene tempo."
Music's abstraction lends itself. Even when a composer might have meant a work more literally, Bardonnay doesn't typically draw from that.
"I look at the emotional landscape that it paints, and use that to interpret something new," he said.
The TSO will perform its 2023-2024 season opener "Land of the Free," at 7 p.m. Monday in the Moody Concert Hall, 810 Second Ave., UA campus. TSO season tickets are on sale through www.tsoonline.org. Individual tickets range from $30 to $40; all students are admitted free.
Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Visual choreography will accompany Tuscaloosa Symphony's 9/11 show
