by Mike Telin
“When I was growing up in rural Mississippi my mother was very good about taking me to Jackson or New Orleans to see whatever the new, big art exhibition was,” composer and keyboardist Buck McDaniel said during a recent telephone interview from his home in New York. “It must have been in 2008 or 2009 that there was a retrospective of Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy. There were some of his paintings, and his textiles.”
On Friday, February 11 at 8:00 pm, McDaniel returns to the Bop Stop with his long-time collaborator, electronic producer Jacob Kirkwood. The evening celebrates the release of the Duo’s latest CD, Patterns on Dufy, featuring saxophonist Noa Even. The recording will be made available on all streaming platforms that same day. Click here for tickets to the in-person performance. The event will also be livestreamed on the venue’s Facebook page.
McDaniel noted that Dufy’s textiles are full of bright-colored patterns. “As an adult with a more advanced relationship with patterns, I saw how musical his textiles are. And how these small beautiful cells can, through repetition, become a beautiful dress.”
The composer noted that while we don’t often associate the minimalist musical movement with early 20th-century French painting, he’s always felt that there was a connection. “I wanted to write a piece that exemplifies the beauty of that.”
How does Dufy’s art influence McDaniel’s piece? “In the avant-garde at large there is a disapproval of charm, humor, and wit,” he said. “The color palette of Fauvist paintings are so whimsical, and when you think of the wind writing of Debussy and Ravel there’s often a lot of glittery, sparkly textures, and I wanted to bring that to the repetitive nature of minimalism. Jacob and I have such an affinity for the works of Glass and Reich that it became a very easy collaboration.”
The Bop Stop event will feature the first live performance of Patterns on Dufy in a new arrangement for solo violin (Ariel Clayton), piano (McDaniel), percussion (Mell Csicsila), reed quintet (Ekklesia Quintet), and electronics (Kirkwood). The evening will also include performances of Nico Muhly’s Drones and Piano and A Hudson Cycle, and Arvo Pärt’s Fratres. “The Ekklesia Quintet will be playing a work of mine called Two Part. There will also be a new piece by Jacob and a couple other works by us — a dance score we made for Cleveland Public Theater and some excerpts from another collaboration for CPT called Fire on the Water.”
McDaniel said that it feels very good to be coming back to the Bop Stop. “This is our first performance since pre-pandemic times — I’m looking forward to it.”
Published on ClevelandClassical.com February 2, 2022.
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