Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt will be performing at 92Y Tribeca with painter Anna Schuleit, who will use an ipad to create and project images accompanying Tift's performance.
Note from Tift...When I met painter visual artist Anna Schuliet, I was looking at her paintings and I could not find the bottom of them. They were so emotional, and reminded me of my favorite painter Cy Twombly. When I met Anna herself, she was so open and giving and beautiful. I felt like I had met a kindred spirit, someone who inspired me, a better version of who I wanted to be. We talked for hours and hours and naturally, I wanted to find a way to combine the way we see the world.
I've always been fascinated by how creating in any medium is a kind of private performance - a parallel intensity of mind. While I wrote Traveling Alone, stops by Anna's studio were a refuge of color and calm. Anna came to the studio to peer into our world, too. To see what the emotional journey within an album like Traveling Alone would look if Anna painted it is fascinating to me, and I think sound is fascinating to her. We speak different languages and are drawn toward that language we can't speak fluently in order to translate ourselves. Performing together seemed like an amazingly tangible and sensitive way to entangle ourselves.
About Anna Schuleit...Based on her daily drawing practice, Anna has developed a new drawing technique that uses a tablet and a projector to project live drawings across the stage. Anna premiered this type of line-drawing in a recent set design at New York Live Arts, in which she rehearsed with dancers to form a dialogue between dance and drawing. In this new collaboration, Anna's line-drawings will become part of the live performance by Tift Merritt