Music has that peculiar power to put us in seemingly altered states of mind and into...the realm of dreams. Each piece on the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra' s February 7, "Where Does the Music Take You?...Dreams concert has been carefully selected to transport the audience into this realm.
And the original works of art inspired by the music and displayed in the lobbies of the concert hall will offer a vast range of visual interpretations of these dreamscapes.
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis has revealed himself to be that special kind of artist who is inspired by the important connections between the visual arts and music. This cross-arts interest is manifested in Marsalis' most recent artistic involvement with the history-making Romare Bearden exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, culminating in his latest CD, "Romare Bearden Revealed." His distinct style and artistic poignancy make Branford Marsalis a natural collaborator in this season's thought provoking and soul searching explorations of "where the music takes you."
Marsalis will begin the "Dreams" concert/art exhibition with special arrangements of Satie's Gymnopedie and Ravel's Pavanne — two of music's most hypnotic creations. Once, as a performer, I was so drawn into the Satie during a concert that I lost all sense of time and space...it was my subconscious that pulled me through. A scary, yet exhilarating experience, indeed. These two works move through time and yet defy it, eluding it with dreamlike fluidity.
Also chosen for this Dreams program is Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the setting of Stephan Mallarme's poem renowned for its stunning dreamlike quality. The words of the poem are a monologue of a mythological faun, who wakens in the sunlit forest and tries to recall an experience, or a dream, he cannot tell which, of an encounter with two beautiful nymphs, white and golden semi-goddesses who shrank from his firey wooing and resisted his impulsive embrace. But the forest grows warmer, the faun's mind drowses, perhaps after all they were a dream. As he falls asleep, he murmurs: "Farewell! Oh Nymphs, I go to see the shades that ye already be."
The languid sensuality is all in the music. So is the suggestion of glittering water, of sunlight and warmth, the hush of a passing breeze, the drowsing forest, the blurring senses of the faun, and at the end of the music the dream fades into thin air...
The beauty and mystery of dreams are woven all throughout Ravel's Daphnis & Chloe, a featured work on the program in which music and myth merge in a tale of adventure, passion and ecstasy. From within the dreamlike realm of Daphnis & Chloe emerges what has to be one of the most spectacular and sensual evocations of nature and sunrise in all music.
THE MUSIC ON this "Dreams" Concert/Art Exhibition event has a special way of getting under the skin...of penetrating the mundane regions of of our experience. For me, therein lies the power of...dreams.
The Dreams concert is only the beginnning of this Branford Marsalis weekend which continues on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 2:30 p.m., with a Marsalis Masterclass at The Lyceum in Old town, Alexandria. Marsalis will be imparting his special brand of musical wisdom to three national finalists of the Mary Graham Lasley/SOLA Collegiate Concerto Competition of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra. Branford Marsalis comes from a family that is devoted to education and the fostering of emerging talent, and he has expressed great enthusiasm about conducting this masterclass during his stay in Alexandria.
So Where Does the Music Take You? To the Realm of Dreams... Join Branford Marsalis, the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, visual artists and musicians on February 7 & 8, for ASO's Branford Marsalis Concert and Masterclass.
Happy Dreaming.
Kim Allen Kluge is Music Director, Alexandria Symphony Orchestra.