MUSIC ON CANVAS

With the Album "Portraits" I initiated a research about the links between Visual Arts and Music through Bass Trombone improvisation and sound design.

The perspective of finding an idiomatic link between both appeared while starting composing "Portraits" and I found an endless source of musical inspiration through the spectrum of visual artists and Contemporary Art.

It appeared to me very interesting to try to create a musical imaginative painting representing the work of a visual artist or the visual artist itself.

During Live performances, the audience experiments a deep immersive sound and have the possibility to hear about each artist's work as in a History of Art course as I introduce each piece before performing you can have a look here for my last performance in Italy at Museo San Rocco in Trapani, Sicily.

Therefore, the connection between Visual Art and Music is total for an unique fusion of styles and genres imagined by my own vision of these Arts.

Here are some examples of this work:

Portrait of painter Andy Warhol

Recorded Live on May 28th 2024 at Church of the Advent Hope.

Part of @carnegiehillconcerts

Live Recording by @mixedxjoaquin

Live Video Edit by @rodrigoaranjuelo Mix by Alix Tucou (Headphones on!) . . .

It is my very last composition for this series of Portraits of great Visual artists. For those of you who remember "See you, See You" you will hear a connection between those two compositions as I used the same interview of Andy Warhol...I actually started this sound portrait when the interview stopped in "See you, See you".

I worked on the figure of repetition and slight changes on each of those to apply the modus operandi Warhol used during his career and used a sequence 4 chords in a very "Pop" aesthetic to make it very accessible to the listener. 3 layers of piano (whole takes and no edits) are the frame for the improvisation on the theme of 11 notes that I keep repeating and playing small variations of it.

While playing the bass trombone I try to mix a certain feeling of fragility, resilience, melancholy and force to embody the vision I have of Andy and his work.

As a matter of fact Andy Warhol used to live almost ten blocks away from where this performance was held and this song was the last song of my set, so it has definitely something special emanating from it !

Thanks and gratitude to Carnegie Hill Concerts ❤ for making this happening.

Portrait of painter Jannis Kounellis

Recorded Live on May 28th 2024 at Church of the Advent Part of ‪@carnegiehillconcerts240‬

Live Recording by Joaquin Castillo

Live Video Edit by Rodrigo Aranjuello

Mix by Alix Tucou

In this composition portraiting Jannis Kounellis I used the concepts dear to the Art movement called "Arte Povera". Arte povera means literally 'poor art' but the word poor here refers to the movement's signature exploration of a wide range of materials beyond the traditional ones of oil paint on canvas, bronze, or carved marble. While using a soundscape made of sound samples inspired by his work (horse sounds, stone, wood, flame) and using instruments like celesta, piano, and guitar, I chose to use only a simple C minor pentatonic scale as a tool to improvise, as if this scale could (sometimes) be considered as a "poor" scale in Western classical Music. With altering from a sequence of four notes (F Bb C Eb) and increasing tension cadenzas sequences I intended to embody the power of Arte Povera, the more you look at it the more you perceive its simple yet powerful message residing in the rawness of the material. Big Thanks to Carnegie Hill Concerts for making this possible and to have welcome my Music inside their beautiful and cutting-edge year-long program!

Portrait of painter Hilma Af Klint

Recorded Live on May 28th 2024 at Church of the Advent

Live Recording by Joaquin Castillo

Live Video Edit by Rodrigo Aranjuello

Mix by Alix Tucou (Headphones On!)

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish painter who was fascinated by spiritism....she used to hold spiritism sessions as it was en vogue at the end of the nineteenth century and used those sessions as a moment of "automatic painting"....she painted what she "saw" and what is considered now as the first work of Abstract painting....decades before the first works of Abstract painting, she had been a true precursor and went forgotten from Art history books, strangely...

At the time she decided to hide her work from the public and her paintings were re-discovered at the end of the 1960's (!!). With the music, I tried to translate the frontier between reality and spiritism with a deep natural, and telluric force represented by a Moog bass drone.

The trombone notes navigate between sounds of the baltic sea, winds, and sperm whale clicks and I play with the half valve of the trombone as an extended technique with a C note and mode of the song that is used to embody force in the Greek philosophy.

Many heartfelt thanks to Carnegie Hill Concerts for making this possible!