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Night

When I first saw Tony Smith’s Night I instantly thought of Brian Eno’s ambient series - specifically, Music for Airports. Although the sculpture’s size and flat black color command attention, standing in its presence invites a sense of calmness to an otherwise chaotic environment. Just as Eno created a series of music pieces that strive to change the audio atmosphere of a bustling airport, Night invites a break away from its environment riddled with color, movement, and texture. With that in mind, it seemed obvious to pair Night with a piece of Airport-esque ambient music.

Chris Grabau St. Louis 2014

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Kindly Gepetto

Both Tom Otterness’ Kindly Gepetto and Kevin Buckley’s musical interpretation nod to the complexity of Gepetto’s intentions in the story, Pinoccio. Otterness’ sculpture is a large round bronze figure who is crafting an identical figure in his hand with a mallet. Both figures are childlike - almost innocent looking.

Buckley’s musical score shares a similar aesthetic. The piece is almost cartoonish in tenor and sounds as if might be a slightly more lethargic cousin of Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse.” I can easily hear the track back a Looney Tunes cartoon of a toy manufacturing company.

However, both pieces hint at something a little more ominous. The larger of the two figures in Otterness’ sculpture is frowning while preparing to to strike the smaller figure with a mallet. Its unclear to me what the frown suggests - perhaps danger, caution, sadness, or maybe even anger.

Buckley’s score has darker overtones as well. There is a jarring percussive edge to the score that hints of the sound of grinding of machines - like a caucaphonous toy factory cranking out toys by the thousands.

Perhaps both pieces ability to contrast innocence with danger suggest a bit of a cautionary tale of the potentially outcomes between man (Gepetto) and machine (Pinoccio). After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Chris Grabau St. Louis 2014

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Untitled, Two Rabbits

In the mid 1990s, a magazine was launched that chronicled Japanese youth culture and the fashion styles worn by the “kids” hanging out in the Harajuku district of Tokyo. “FRUiTs” spawned a global movement with its images of brightly clad, thoroughly original, self-assembled examples of self expression. FRUiTS is inspired by punk’s legacy and thrift store chic and has a distinctly Japanese visual style and sense of fun, play, and confidence.

When I first saw Tom Claassen’s two white rabbits, I immediately imagined a group of Japanese teenagers standing around these smooth, shiny cartoon rabbits. They were texting each other, laughing, and making plans for that evening’s adventure. The texture and layering of their fashion colliding with the simplicity of the rabbits. Their colorful and patterned clothes in stark contrast to the plasticine white of the sculptures, but, in the end, united by a sense of playfulness and humor.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis 2014

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Adam and Eve

Nikki de Saint Phalle sculpture. Adam and Eve looks like summertime. Two lovers sitting at a picnic. He is dressed in solids and squares. She is in patterns and curves.

When writing for this sculpture, we wanted to make a pseudo classic rock ballad. Something that might blare out of a Subaru Brat as it cruses through main st. Hopefully, the piece compliments the optimistic mood present in Falle’s sculpture.

- Chris Grabau, Magnolia Summer St. Louis, 2014

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Tai Chi Single Whip

Taijitu is the Chinese word for the symbol we commonly know as Yin and Yang. We are all familiar with the classic icon where white and black share equal parts of an interlocking circle. This Taoist symbol generally represents the idea of opposites living in harmony.

Practitioners of the martial arts ascribe to this ideology of opposites when they speak of and execute techniques that are either hard or soft. Hard is opposing, responding with to force with force using the attackers momentum against him or her. Soft is yielding, responding to force by deflecting the attackers force by exerting the least amount of energy possible while pushing the attacker off balance.

Ju Ming’s Tai Chi Single Whip presents a substantial, chunky stone figure performing the moving meditation of Tai Chi. When I first encountered the sculpture, I was attracted to the softness of the pose as it contrasted to the hardness of the materials. The physical weight of the piece balanced against the litheness of the figure calls to mind the essence of the Yin/Yang symbol and martial artists concept of hard and soft. This guy can move gently if he chooses, but can also crush you with his substantial weight if you antagonize him.

My musical approach to it erred on the side of the softness, enhancing the perceived gliding motions our sculpture man is attempting to make. I didn’t want to get crushed…

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Aesop's Fables

Some compositions in this collection hue closer to the stories about the individual artworks and play a real role in enhancing the narrative or uncovering new meanings to that narrative.

That is certainly one way to approach the problem, but that is not quite what is happening in Andre Anjos’ Aesop's Fables. Inspired by the sculpture by Mark di Suvero, this composition is all about the synthesis of process and materials. This composition, much like the sculpture by which it is inspired, has enormous weight and power. One can hear the sounds of steel manufacturing: trip hammers, rivet guns, acetylene welding torches, and beautifully colored parks bouncing off the concrete floor. All these sonic cues are tied together by a powerful drum beat that sounds as if large girders, swinging from massive cranes, slam together midair.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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White Gloves Four Wheels

Freedom is at the core of Kevin Buckley’s interpretation of Jim Dine’s sculpture White Gloves, Four Wheels. We see Pinocchio, that wooden boy we know so well from childhood stories, arms outstretched, back arched, reaching for the sky. His body language suggests that he is celebrating. Maybe his freedom from the tyranny of being wooden? Maybe his acceptance of that same fate? Whatever the metaphysical achievement we are witnessing, Kevin Buckley brings it to life with his simple, charming and uplifting melody.

But do we notice a hint of melancholy underlying this celebration? Is it bittersweet? Maybe Pinocchio, enjoying the freedom from his wooden body misses the familiar limitations? Or now that he has once and for all come to terms with his limitations he has a twinge for the dream he has let go? I think that is the beauty of Kevin’s composition, it encourages us to ask as many questions as we are challenges us to answer.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Lifestyle

Digital Technology consumes our contemporary lifestyle. We have created it to serve our needs, but in many ways, we serve technology instead. I will be the first to admit this cultural criticism is far from original. It is as old as computers themselves. But that concept is what comes immediately to mind when I look at Jonathan Clarke’s Lifestyle. It strikes me as a classic mainframe computer that has been put out to pasture, sitting in the most unusual of computer graveyards.

Andre Anjos composed a truly foreboding funeral march, a requiem for all technologies past, referencing bleep and bloops of punchcards and dot matrix printers, while slipping in a little Philip K. Dick, dystopian warning about the power we place in that technology. If someone were to write a eulogy for HAL 2000, this is the music that would be playing underneath it.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Zenit

Mimmo Paladino’s Zenit is such a unique creation. With its elongated neck, slender legs, and long torso, this is a regal horse that integrates both a deep, noble sadness and a certain whimsy into its design. It has all the markings of a Rodin sculpture, imperfect and hand-made, but with none of Rodin’s realism. This horse is a sketch, an impression cast in metal.

The grace of the animal is in stark contrast to the very solid, geometric 10-sided dodecahedron that is the horse’s rider. This juxtaposition leaves us with so many unanswered questions…How did these to characters meet? Where are they going? What could they possibly have in common?

To interpret such a piece takes the ability to fuse the disparate perceptions of what these objects mean and the notions of why they have been united. Composer Rick Deja does that with aplomb. Much like the horse and its star companion, Deja’s composition strikes the ear in very different ways. First with a melodic groove that lulls the listener in a steady rhythm and then tops it with the intense moan of a saxophone that hints at the chaotic freedom of free jazz. It’s like if Dave Matthews Band and Ornette Coleman took a vacation together to Mali and after a night of drinking, they decided to play on the streets for money.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Voyage

When Magnolia Summer met to compose songs for this project, Voyage was the first track we created. Jean-Michel Folon’s sculpture displays a solitary figure traveling alone in a boat to an unknown destination. Whether the person is leaving or arriving is unclear. The voyage is what is the focus. The track is a fiddle and mandolin tune (thanks for Kevin Buckley on violin) that I hope resembles the persistence, optimism, and solitude of the journey.

- Chris Grabau, Magnolia Summer St. Louis, 2014

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Samarkland

Samarkand is place on the Silk Road, centrally located between China and the West. It is also known as a center for islamic studies. The artist Jack Youngerman is Jewish. I was taken by the collision of what these cultures represent and, of course, sound like.

At its root, my interpretation of Samarkand is inspired by the Islamic call to prayer, Adhan, but is filtered through Youngerman’s Jewish heritage. The melody is rooted in the harmonic minor, which is distinctly Middle Eastern and wafts playfully over the synth bed in unusually (for me) long phrases. The choice of the clarinet, plays on that heritage, by giving the melody a very Klezmer inflection.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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230.5 Degree Arc x5

Bernar Venet’s sculpture, 230.5 Degree Arc x5, is a structure so large and commanding it seems to suggest that it is a monument of historic significance.

Although (I think) the sculpture does not commemorate anything in particular, I am confident that the sculpture will outlast us all. Long after our imminent collapse, 230.5... will likely be one of the structures that remains as proof of our existence.

I tried to create a score that resembles the cacophony of sounds the sculpture will absorb throughout the passage of time. Tibetan drums and horns, cassette tape loops, a baritone ukelele riff, toy piano, lawn sprinklers, crickets - and even my wife’s recording debut on the egg shaker - weave around the constant drone of a morse code ticker transcribing the sculpture’s name.

- Chris Grabau St. Louis, 2014

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This is Bruce and Sara Walking

André perfectly nails the 80s overtones of Julian Opie’s sculpture, This is Bruce and Sara Walking. The computer LCD screen of two silhouettes walking side-by-side portrays a couple who are in motion but headed nowhere.

Perhaps Bruce and Sara are strolling around the shopping mall. Maybe it's a date night! The couple just ate at the food court and is headed to the movies to catch the newest John Hughes flick.

Maybe I have spent a little too much time looking at Bruce and Sara, but there is definitely more talk in Sara’s walk. She exudes all of the confidence and poise of someone who knows who they are. Bruce, on the other hand, seems to walk with a little more weight - he looks sluggish, tired, and can barely keep up. (BTW, who hikes up their tube socks anyways?)

Why Sara keeps walking with Bruce is anyone’s guess. Perhaps she’s asking herself the same question. Maybe they will walk together forever and ride into the sunset in a Pontiac Fiero.

Or maybe she is slowly pulling away only time will tell.

Wolverines!

- Chris Grabau St. Louis, 2014

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Four Rectangles Oblique

When I look at this George Rickey sculpture I see a giant Kalimba. I happened to have one sitting in my studio. I picked it up, plucked out a simple melody, did an overdub and called it day.

-Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Femmes au Perroquet

When I was in college I worked at a museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan called The Frick Collection. The museum was Henry Clay Frick’s former residence and it was chocked full of great masters and a few impressionists. No Modernists, of course, this house was a relic of the gilded age and so were Frick’s tastes.

Once a month, the museum organized a chamber music concert in its interior courtyard, a beautiful, meditative space filled with bronze sculpture and old paintings. On breaks from selling tickets or books in the gift shop, I would stroll around the space and enjoy the art and listen to the string quartets filling the space with their gorgeous sounds.

Férnand Leger was a modernist and Boogie Woogie seems on the surface a more appropriate foundation for an interpretation of this piece. But there is something very “classic” about bronze relief sculptures to me and as I first laid eyes on this Leger relief, I was instantly transported back to to those days at the Frick.

-Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014

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Big Suit

Our sculpture was of a huge guy in a pink leisure suit with no head [Erwin Wurm's Big Suit]. It gave us the the feeling of a good time gone wrong. We started out kind of slick and funky - but, forced it to quickly disintegrate into electromagnetic sound design by our collaborator in Denver, CO Paco Proano (who sent us some audio based on his take of the sculpture). Then we sent it back into this fast 6/8 groove that gives an almost out of control feeling, cutting it back in and out of the sound design. I suppose we are all guessing why this guy lost his head and this juxtaposition of noise and hard driving, explosive groove seemed to capture that curiosity. We also placed the groove in D minor, the darkest and most mysterious of all keys.

-David Lazaroff St. Louis, 2014

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La Riviere San Socle

We as humans typically celebrate strength. We find vulnerability very uncomfortable and often equate it to weakness. We hide those vulnerable moments from others. We apologize for crying or for showing any authentic emotion, we project facades of happiness when all we feel is sadness. We rarely ever know what another person is struggling with at any given time and we certainly won’t reveal our heaviest burdens to them.

That is why Kevin Buckley’s score for Aristide Maillol’s La Riviere is so unique. This spacious and pensive composition maps the internal world of a woman about whom we know nothing, but can make certain assumptions given the vulnerable pose she strikes. Something has happened that forces her pose, but we are too uncomfortable to ask why. We avert our eyes. That vulnerability and its accompanying feelings of unease are very clear in Buckley’s melancholy melody.

- Benjamin Kaplan St. Louis, 2014