by Kevin McLaughlin
On Friday, April 14, a packed LatinUs Theater audience in Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood enthusiastically greeted Columbian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia. They in turn were treated to an unforgettable evening of music and art in a compelling black box venue.
The concert, titled “Ascenso,” is also the name of Cañón-Valencia’s latest recording — copies of which the cellist graciously signed in the lobby after the performance.
The experience of each of the five musical works was enhanced and enlarged by the projection of paintings onto a wall at the back of the stage. Each picture, rendered by the cellist himself, served as a kind of commentary on, or in some cases, visual representation of the music, done in the performer’s own abstract, mostly black and white style (“I’m not really a painter,” he declared, modestly). Musicians who paint may not be an unheard-of concept — composers Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin and cellist Aldo Parisot all painted, as does pianist Stephen Hough — but seeing the artwork on display while the music that inspired it is being performed makes for a special occasion indeed.
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