Arts harmonize in visual symphony

The Winston-Salem Symphony will take a rare step next season, teaming up with a visual artist as he creates sculptures during a concert.

In 2013, the May 12 and 14 performances will feature German Andreas Nicolas Fischer, who will stand by the symphony's musicians and create works in response to what he hears in three compositions.

The collaboration will highlight the 2012-13 season, which Robert Moody, the symphony's music director, announced Jan. 14 during an open rehearsal for symphony donors at the Stevens Center.

The aim is to keep live orchestral music vital in an increasingly visual world.

"We're pushing all the right buttons as far as pushing the envelope in the right direction," Moody said.

The season begins Sept. 21 and ends May 14. Other highlights include Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele virtuoso, at a "Plugged-In Pops" concert Nov. 3. Matthew Troy, the symphony's associate conductor, will lead his first complete "Classics" program (Oct. 14 and 16). And the symphony and its chorale will team up in Ravel's "Daphis and Cholé" (Feb. 9-12) and in "The Hour Has Come," composed by the late Srul Irving Glick in 1985 (Nov. 18 and 20). The latter will also include the Cantata Singers of UNC School of the Arts.

Although orchestra performances with a visual artist is rare — Moody said he has done something similar once before, with the Phoenix Symphony — there is precedence for music influencing visual art, and vice versa.

For example, Ana Prvacki, a flute-playing artist, created "Music Derived Painkiller with Wandering Band," a 2009 piece of performance art in which she and other musicians practice their instruments as they wander around rooms of a gallery in Boston. (See it on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/8548yec).

Another example: "For Internal Use Only," a painting by Stuart Davis (1892-1964) in Reynolda House Museum of American Art, conveys the syncopation and overlapping rhythms of jazz.

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Steven Matijcio is curator of contemporary art at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. He recommended the collaboration, calling Fischer an ideal artist because of "the way he translates intangible sound into intriguing forms that hover between material and abstraction."

Fischer may do further work on a piece after the concert. It will be sold at auction, with the proceeds to be split between the symphony and SECCA.

The music on the May program will be Alan Hovhaness' Second Symphony ("Mysterious Mountain"); Mason Bates' "Liquid Interface"; and Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." "Pictures" was inspired by the paintings of Victor Hartmann.

Bates, now the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's composer-in-residence, is a leading composer of classical music. He wrote "Rusty Air in Carolina," which the Winston-Salem Symphony performed in 2006 to celebrate Moody's appointment as music director in 2005.

Bates' music "fuses innovative orchestral writing, the rhythms of electronica and techno, and imaginative narrative forms brought to life by cutting edge sound design," his biography at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's website says.

As for other highlights in the 2012-13 season, Matthew Troy, the symphony's associate conductor, will lead a "Classics" program that includes Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony; Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Italian Antonio Pompa-Baldi as soloist; and Chinese-American Zhou Tian's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" (2009).

Troy started working for the symphony in 2008. He has conducted parts of "Classics" programs as well as several complete pops and children's programs. Moody said Troy is seasoned enough to handle an entire "Classics" cycle.

"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to conduct this set of concerts with the Winston-Salem Symphony," Troy said in an email.

"The opening work, 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,' (has) a title drawn from the Chinese proverb which acknowledges the difficulties in human relationships and says that a successful relationship depends on a thousand years of good prayers. This concert takes the listener on a journey through some of these struggles, eventually to a triumphant finish," he wrote.

The other guest soloists in the 2012-13 season will include Jennifer Koh (in Jean Sibelius' Violin Concerto, Sept. 21-23) and Saxton Rose (Wolfgang Mozart's Bassoon Concerto, Jan. 12-15).

Rose, an instructor at UNC School of the Arts, is the symphony's principal bassoonist. He has soloed with the orchestra in a performance of concertolike literature once before, albeit with other members of the symphony.

This time, he will highlight a "Happy Birthday, Mozart!" program. This will also include Mozart's Symphony No. 39 and Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in C, which is influenced by the Classical-period symphonies Mozart wrote. Mozart was born Jan. 27, 1756, and died in 1791.

* * * * *Guest artists will figure into three of the four "Plugged-In Pops" concerts at Reynolds Auditorium. In addition to ukulele master Shimabukuro, performances will include the Piano Men, in a tribute to Billy Joel and Elton John (Dec. 31), and the Jeans 'n' Classics Band performing hits by the Eagles (April 20).

Like last season, there will be four "Kicked-Back Classics" concerts on Saturday evenings: Sept. 22, Oct. 13, Jan. 12 and Feb. 9, 2013. These are abridged versions of "Classics" programs that include visuals and commentary. The "Classics" and the "Kicked-Back Classics" will take place at the Stevens Center.

Three "Discovery" concerts for children are planned, and the symphony intends to present Handel's "Messiah" again. Information about these concerts is incomplete; details should be announced within a couple of months.

The full schedule is available at www.wssymphony.org. Patrons with subscriptions have from Tuesday until March 9 to renew them. New subscriptions are also on sale.

Single tickets will go on sale Aug. 1. The symphony's box office can be reached at (336) 464-0145.