DACAMERA's Fall 2020 Season Continues with HEARING COLOR, SEEING TIME

DACAMERA's Fall 2020 season of online concerts, curated by Artistic Director Sarah Rothenberg, continues this month with the debut of a new series, Hearing Color, Seeing Time.

Hearing Color, Seeing Time: DACAMERA at The Menil Collection presents top artists performing specially curated repertoire in the galleries of Houston's Menil Collection, a Renzo Piano-designed museum that is home to superlative collections of African, Ancient, Byzantine, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern, Pacific Island, and Surrealist art, among others. Each Hearing Color, Seeing Time program includes discussions of the art and musical connections.

In the first program, Sarah Rothenberg performs music by Ravel in dialogue with Hybrid Vigor, a major painting by Abstract pioneer Helen Frankenthaler (October 20).

In the second Hearing Color, Seeing Time program, Rothenberg performs Morton Feldman's sublime late work Palais de Mari, surrounded by ancient objects from the era that inspired Feldman's composition (November 17). In the third, flutist Claire Chase performs in The Menil Collection's Cy Twombly Gallery, playing recent works by Marcos Balter, Suzanne Farrin, Felipe Lara, and Erik Ulman, who had a friendship with the late painter (December 8).

Hearing Color, Seeing Time exemplifies a key value of DACAMERA's mission: to "nurture rich and often unexpected connections among musical genres, art forms, and ideas; between people and places; between the past and the present."

All concert streams in the Hearing Color, Seeing Time series are free with registration at dacamera.com, and begin at 8 pm Eastern time. The streams will be available on demand following the premiere. All events are safely produced, observing social distancing and health protocols. Further details follow.

Tuesday, October 20 - HEARING COLOR, SEEING TIME: Hybrid Vigor: Frankenthaler and Ravel

Sarah Rothenberg, piano

In this first Hearing Color, Seeing Time program, Hybrid Vigor, a major painting of Helen Frankenthaler is paired with Maurice Ravel's sensuous Une barque sur l'ocean. Following her live performance in the Menil gallery, Sarah Rothenberg leads the audience, from the piano, in a close look at color, line, texture, harmony and rhythm in abstract painting and music. Touching on Kandinsky and Baudelaire, she will trace the evolution of painting from representation to abstraction, and how that has affected the way we see and listen.

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Tuesday, November 17 - HEARING COLOR, SEEING TIME: Music and Time: Feldman in the Ancient Galleries

Sarah Rothenberg, piano

With a concert grand dramatically installed in the Menil Collection's ancient art galleries, Sarah Rothenberg performs in a filmic treatment of Feldman's last piano work, Palais de Mari (1986). She will be surrounded by objects from the same area and era as the ruined palace of 2400 B.C.E. that inspired Feldman's composition. The video will interweave these artifacts with images of Rothenberg at the piano, edited to reflect the music's rhythms, its thematic recurrences, and the larger compositional structure.

"Many of us are noticing how, with the interruption of our normal daily routines, our sense of time is disrupted," wrote Rothenberg when the pandemic began. "For some, without the stimuli of engaging with others or moving about physically, this time may be become unusually slow, and even empty. It is as though our lives are missing the musical bar lines by which we usually measure the day. Contemplative and questioning, Feldman's is a nearly static music in which fixed components rotate, slowly forming new figurations. The musical materials are suspended, like a constellation of stars in the sky. Our sense of time expands to something much larger than ourselves."

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Tuesday, December 8 - HEARING COLOR, SEEING TIME: Cy Twombly and Music

Claire Chase, flute, with Giancarlo Latta, violin

This recital by flutist Claire Chase, a noted specialist in contemporary music, is filmed at The Menil Collection's Cy Twombly Gallery, a Renzo Piano-designed building dedicated to the iconic artist's work. Chase's program includes works by Felipe Lara, Marcos Balter, Suzanne Farrin, and a world premiere (with violinist Giancarlo Latta) by Erik Ulman, who developed an unusual friendship with the painter through years of correspondence. Conversations with composer Ulman and Sarah Rothenberg illuminate the painter's abstract works and recount the composer's friendship with this towering figure.

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As noted, all concerts will stream free of charge; to register to view, visit dacamera.com.