Interview with Laurence Vittes

About the results of Music competition "Colors of Life"

We asked our main juror, Laurence Vittes, to share with us his thoughts about the results of "Marriage" of Art and Music in our on-line show "Colors of LIfe"

Parviz Azad Lower Upper Canyon
Artwork chosen by musician: Upper Canyon by Felice Willat

Serious, abstract in a very genuine way, adhered to the contours of Willat's photograph in such a way as to emphasize and bring out its already striking dimensionality. The brilliance with which the solo violin opens the piece, evoking all the great predecessors of the genre, give way, with the entrance of piano and cello, to a wild ecstasy of short-lived intensity.

Catherine Semple Morning Glory
Artwork chosen by musician: Light As Sound by Juan Rosenfeldt

It's so charming, using instruments that the Toy Story characters would have in their silly happy symphonies. Alone among the harps, chimes, bells, xylo and mellophones, flutes, a clarinet emerges from the instrumental sound as it had been given life by the other sounds. The picture itself is a series of brilliant radiant symmetries broken by color patterns corresponding to the player's fingers and the instrument's keys.

Elena Beresnjak Autumn Valse and Ragtimes 2
Artwork chosen by musician: Chat" & You and Me by Elena Beresnjak

Seems impossible to choose only one; together they are dynamite. The ordinary rhythms of popular song is caught in moments of fleeting emotional intensity; otherwise, it's total mindless mechanistic insanity as danced by Nijinsky. The art work is strikingly reminiscent of inuit drawings especially in the curvature of the lines and the highly individualistic use of color, both for accent and, less frequently, background.

Stig Pettersson Romeo and Juliet Prologue
Artwork chosen by musician: Breeze Of Eternity by Lark

It is the ultimate love duet, the waltz between Romeo and Juliet in their only moments of physical contact, extremely detailed foreplay for intimacy that was denied them. Pettersson's music revolves around the dancing couple, reflecting each thought, each slight twinge of love and desire. Lark's serene landscape seen from inside the palace, tells of pastoral delights with no hints of the prison that they ultimately become trapped in.

Alan Derian "Father and Son"
Artwork chosen by musician: "Broken Earth" by Narine Isajanyan

Who could not like a song with this title, especially when the two voices, of father and son, are so deeply, affectionately and gently handled that they cannot help being reflected in the strange landscape on a satellite map in someone's life that the artist, Derian's wife has created. Even more, there is the composer's ability to create moments of indelible beauty that must surely paint the intimacy of his love for Narine.

Jeannette Koekkoek Schubert Sonata in A major Andantino part 1

Artwork chosen by musician: Friends by Elisse Pogofsky-Harris

One of Schubert's most beautiful, sad melodies, played by the great Dutch pianist herself with the kind of tender, touching empathy with the innocent unreality and fantasy of wolves lying down with sheep which has been forever lost to us. The elements which make the painting so striking, the doglike pose by the sheep, the red landscape, the animals grazing in the fields, are mirrored in Schubert's parallel universe waltz.

Pamela Stein Stockhausen: Wassermann (Tierkreis)
Artwork chosen by musician: Pray for best days by Yelena Kutuzova

Stockhausen's cycle following the signs of the Zodiac, originally written for a series of Swiss musical boxes and here sung by a soprano deep in emotional thought, continues to exert its charm due to the brevity of each piece, and the intrinsic fascination of hearing your astrological personality so clearly and yet so abstractly realized. The music creates a perfect foil for Kutuzova's vivid Klimt-like woodcuts brought to life by the demons that inspired them.

Project Eranos - Sous le dome epais- Delibes
Artwork chosen by musicians: The Direction of Cranes by Rachael McCampbell

There is something undeniably charming about collegians taking on one of opera's greatest love duets. At first, it seems clearly intended for the couple of birds in the medium background of Rachel's painting peering skyward. However, McCampbell's exploitation of the eye's naivete leads to a complex, large space inhabited equally by nature and artifice. Deeply involving.

Julia Torgovitskaya - Zdes' Horosho by Rachmaninov
Artwork chosen by musician: Colors of Palouse at Sunset by Felice Willat

This is a well-known, much loved song that was better known in Russia than the piano concertos or the Paganini Rhapsody. It is sung with a kind of bright-eyed shining warmth that immediately draws you to the "there's no place like home" detailing of Willat's landscape. It is an affirmation of why music and art are so powerfully and expressively linked together, and it is a striking reminder of how subtly Willat transforms her photography into art masterpieces.

Norman Sachs - musical Beautiful
Artwork chosen by musician: Box Lady by Georganne Heller

Sachs, who has enriched the musical stage on both coasts and earned the love of one of the most exceptional women on any coasts, here performs a sad love song which is a perfect tribute to the woman Heller has created in her collage. It is a portrait that is true in a way that only collage can be, like a tattered cloak of colors, shapes and sounds inhabited by a face of perfect beauty.