By Heidi Liscomb | Dec 2, 2022
One particular comment in Nathaniel Williams’ wonderful opening remarks for the presentation of the “Of Light and Song, Of Earth and Fire” multi-media gallery event on Thursday, December 1 at Lightforms Art Center in Hudson, has stayed with me over the last 24 hours since I experienced the event. It was his reference to the idea of hearing colors or seeing sound, of having the desire to paint music or hear a painting. Or, perhaps that’s not exactly what he said, but it’s what I took away from it and what permeated the exhibit. It reminded me of my flute professor, Jan Vinci encouraging me to see the color of the high D as I struggled to hit it and how linking a color to the tone as I breathed into the flute helped me to focus the air, thus making the note ring true. This introduction to the relationship between color and sound led me to a deeper exploration of the intersection that exists in many creative forms and that is what I saw at Lightforms last night. A meeting at the intersection of art forms.
As I sat in the darkened room, breathing in concert with a few dozen people, lights, began to appear on a screen, ever so gently and slowly becoming brighter as the colors morphed and blended into one another. They seemed to tentatively ask, “May I have your attention? Will you listen, will you see…just for a moment?” And then, almost as if coming from a great distance, sound began to filter in, providing a soundtrack for the colored light show. Voices, female and male, perfectly tuned to each other and the stringed instruments, began to sing lyrics of great portent, urging the lights into further action. What lyrics they were! Steiner! Goethe! Berry! Such titans of language and meaning! Here, in this room, we heard the poetry and thoughts of the ages brought to life through song and light.
The earnest, yearning score as composed by Don Jamison, played on violins and created instruments and sung by a wonderful choir of community singers, provided a framework within which to explore the meanings of the words; of whether or how they intersect with light and sound and what they might mean, sitting there in the dark on a winter’s night during this particular time?
The music was at times quiet and flowing, reminding me of water and sky, stars and the moon. The screen showed blue and green, silver and gold, a touch of carmine here and there. All of the music and light manipulation were performed behind a black curtain with an acute focus on how the sound mingled with the visual event taking place just beyond the curtain; of how and when to sing or draw the bow across the body of the violin in order to support the colored lights as they danced before our eyes.
The setting made me think of what my Celtic roots family is always referring to as “the veil”, that diaphanous layer between the living and the dead. The intersection where we might meet those who have gone ahead. We are always talking about how the veil is thin during the end of the year and, from that perspective, this event made perfect sense to me. We were, just for a little while, allowed to imagine that we were hearing angels from behind the veil, calling to us, asking us to ponder and perhaps to understand that light and music and poetry are the things which bind us all together in this human experience, if only we would pause and listen, pause and see that we can meet at the intersection, just there.
Artist: Nathaniel Williams
Composer: Don Jamison
Local choir and musicians
Read works of Steiner, Goethe, Berry and more
Two more performances are scheduled: Friday, December 2 at 5:30 and Saturday, December 3 at 5:30pm.
All performances are at Lightforms Arts Center in Hudson, New York.
Donations accepted.