ArtSounds

ArtSounds kicks off its sixth year of collaborative performances by composers, performers and visual artists.  Initiated by faculty from the Kansas City Art Institute and University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, ArtSounds explores cross-media expression through creative concert-making. Co-directors Mara Gibson and Paul Rudy set the stage for concert events outside the box and inside the mind's eye and the eye's ear.

Faculty partners from each institution work as conspirators from vision and sound to produce provocative events that explore media and music, demonstrating how art sounds and music sees. In ArtSounds performances, vision informs hearing and hearing guides sight in this essential dialogue at the messy intersections of human experience.

 
ArtSounds performances take place at 7:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month in Epperson Auditorium in Vanderslice Hall on the campus of the Kansas City Art Institute, unless otherwise noted.
 
 
Oct. 11, 2011       Mythic Pathways: World Woodwind Duo & Collaborateurs
Collaborators:  Dwight Frizzell, Thomas Aber, Patrick Conway, Rhondda Francis, Daniel Warneke, Chuck Haddix, Russell Ferguson
 
"The Mythic Pathways" concert opens with "Astra," music mapped by our hemisphere's stars, and concludes with "The Amduat," a ritual dramatization of the Egyptian sun-god Ra's trek through the underworld.
 
These new works feature Dwight Frizzell and Thomas Aber on a plethora of reed instruments and flutes, with their collaborators Patrick Conway, director of Gamelan Genta Kasturi, on percussion; vocalist Rhondda Francis, priestess-hierophant in the Fellowship of Isis; Daniel Warneke, UMKC M.F.A. student in sound design for theatre; Chuck Haddix, director of the Marr Sound Archives; and set designer Russell Ferguson, KCAI chair of the School for the Foundation Year.  
 
 
Nov. 8, 2011        Where Is My American Dream?  Stories of Secrets, Liberty and Luck
Collaborators:  Mauricio Salguero, Nihan Yesil, Vi Tran
 
The show uses interviews to explore the diverse American experience of long-time immigrants. Enlightening and provocative, this production will question the meaning of the American dream while showing how your starting point can make or break your game.
 
 
Feb. 14, 2012      Absence and Presence
Collaborators:  Andrew Seager Cole, Tyler Galloway and David Steele Overholt
 
"Absence and Presence" explores the existence or non-presence of a thing as a means for communications. The absence and presence of a thing will initiate, interrupt and alter video and audio in a performance environment that is augmented by audience interaction.
 
 
Mar. 20, 2012      Light, Shadow, and Sound
Collaborators:  mccoycarl (Karen McCoy, Robert Carl)
 
Karen McCoy (artist) and Robert Carl (composer) form the collaborative team, mccoycarl." Light, Shadow, and Sound" is an installation featuring videos by McCoy, from her "Light and Shadow" series, accompanied by an original score written by Carl. McCoy has recorded the often surprising and abstract effects of shadows, animated by such phenomena as wind and the passage of the sun, on various surfaces from locations as varied as Japan, Italy and Kansas City. Carl will create an accompanying soundscape performed by live musicians for a simultaneous projection of several of those videos. Carl's piece will have an open form that will guide the performers in their interpretation and response to the visual imagery. The resulting is a sound both controlled and improvised. The visual and sonic elements are autonomous, yet also structured to create a cohesion that will become evident to listeners as they pass through the piece. The audience will be encouraged to move about during the performance in an attempt to achieve a sort of meditational state by walking in participation with the sound and imagery presented by the artists.
 
 
Apr. 24, 2012      UMKC-KCAI Creative Collaborations class
Mara Gibson's cross-institutional Creative Collaboration class will present the final ArtSounds of the 2011-2012 season.