Music Project
Residency at DRAWinternational in France. During two months in 2016 I dedicated most of my time here drawing to musical pieces performed by Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say and Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The two musicians are extraordinary artists that bring all their energy and “jazz” into their playing. Here in Caylus I immersed myself in this music and explored different ways to capture its vitality, sound and my emotional resonance.From their CD ‘Beethoven-Ravel-Bártok-Say’ I chose to work on Maurice Ravel's ‘Blues’ (No. II, piano and violin sonata in g major), the Romanian folk dances sz.56 by Béla Bártok. Of Fazil Say's piano and violin sonata op. 7 I picked the compositions ‘Grotesque’ and ‘Perpetuum Mobile’. The starting point was always to listen to a musical piece and trying to analyse it, by sketching strokes of the violin and keys of the piano according to the lengths of time. Is it a high-pitched note, a deep bass tune, a plucked sound or elongated line? I listened to it over and over again in sequences of ten seconds and gradually to the entire length, and through constant repetition a visual composition evolved that I eventually transferred into a final drawing. As sound travels through space I had the idea to make a three-dimensional sound sculpture. A starting point is the linear paper drawing of Andante, No. III, Romanian folk dances sz.56 by Béla Bártok.