From One to Eight Hands

This past weekend I went to a music festival in Staunton, Virginia to see a "Piano Extravaganza": a performance of eight different pieces by a mix of four pianists.

The first piece was “Prelude for the Left Hand” by Scriabin. Just as its title suggests, the pianist played it with only his left hand. The next piece, “Duet in G from Klavierbung III” by Bach, was written for two hands.  The piece was performed by two musicians, each using one hand. Next was a work for three hands, then four, working all the way up to eight hands--still with all the players sitting at the same piano. The different pieces spanned many genres and eras of music from Bach to Scriabin, German baroque to American Jazz.

My favorite piece to watch was “Piano Roll Blues” by David Liptak. Even though the piece requires seven hands, only three pianists sat on the bench. The fourth sat behind them, sometimes moving his hand in very dramatic ways to the music and at other times coming up behind the musicians to play notes over their shoulders.

The pianists not only used great technical skill to play the pieces, but also incorporated physical humor into the performances. Each work was filled with crazy hand motions, shoves, and careful attempts to gain more room on the bench. They even made the classical music funny. I loved to watch how the different pianists’ hands flew back and forth, often over the top of other players’ hands, in order to get to the next notes.

John Cage's 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence

My father loves to sing along with this piece:



I don't usually listen to Metal, but I do like this cover of Cage's piece--even though he really pushes the tempo:

Head in the Clouds

For this envelope and postcard, I tried to explore the overlap between my dreams and my memories of the past. Many of my dreams feel like memories. I wake up fully believing I have had conversations and adventures that happened only in my dreams. Sometimes I also forget that favorite moments of my life have actually happened and believe they were merely dreams.

The psychedelic brain on the cover of the envelope reminds me of my subconscious. It emanates the waves of thoughts that make up both my everyday world and the altered world of my dreams. I found the picture in a newspaper article about hallucinations. Could a dream be considered a hallucination of memory?

The back of the envelope is cut out of a long-exposed photograph of the night sky. Night reminds me of sleep and dreams, but also of the time where I first got my interest in the sky, looking through a telescope in Pennsylvania. Around the edges of the cut-out photograph, I continued the design of the photograph with colored pencils.

The inside flap is a rubbing of the brain and sky. I like how they both became clouds (or perhaps thought bubbles) when the images were transferred through the paper.

The postcard inside is composed of three main images. The squirrel can be a symbol of home. Many of my earliest memories are of my home, the only home I have ever lived in. The squirrel could also be the small, energetic me of my youngest childhood. The central figure might be the more contemplative me. The music is an intentional reference to two things: how music triggers memory, and how it is one of the things that I remember best.

Arp Notes

After looking at Jean Arp’s "automatism" or "chance" work, I began to think about the randomness of different actions and what meaning is constructed out of random results. As a musician, I was interested in experimenting with the randomization of music. I thought about how musical improvisation is really a kind of composition on the fly. So what if I just threw notes onto a sheet of music paper?

I scattered each of my cut-out notes and other musical symbols randomly onto the music paper. While I did adjust the notes’ orientation, I tried to retain the essential randomness of the process. Because my goal was to create art rather than music, I used large blue notes.



Unfortunately, the result was just like that of trying to play totally random music. It is close to impossible to play random music; the musician’s instinct takes over and corrects for the “mistakes”. In the process of making my art, I experienced the same thing: it was very hard to put the blue notes down without thinking about the aesthetics of the result.

The result of fully random music isn’t typically audibly appealing (even though it may be an interesting concept). The same is true with a sheet of essentially random notes. While I like the idea of my artwork, I don’t enjoy the visual result.



The process of putting the notes on the page imbues the artwork with a sense of time. The visually static marks become organized in time when they are seen as notes placed on linear music paper. A page of sheet music is read left to right to create a dimension of time. This kind of artwork challenges the viewer to look at it as both a static picture and a developing piece of art through time.

Visiting the Hirshorn

Today I took my grandparents to one of my favorite museums, the Hirshorn in downtown DC. While I love their permanent exhibits, I really enjoyed the current showings as well.

One of the best parts:

Venus of the Rags by Michelangelo Pistoletto

I think Venus's closet was raided by this artist, whose installation made out of coat hangers is displayed on the same floor:

Sculpture by Dan Steinhilber (and photo by Lia)

The Winter's Tale...in the summer

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is hard to classify. In the first half of the play, everything is bleak and cold. As one young character says, “A sad tale’s best for winter.” The king of Sicilia suspects his wife is unfaithful, precipitating tragedies including the loss of both his children and his wife. He is cut off from his family by his intense jealousy and fear that others are deceiving him.



Following intermission, the tone of the play changes dramatically. The setting is now summer in Bohemia, a colorful and crowded land full of fluttering butterflies, drunken shepherds, and young lovers. During these scenes, the play becomes a comedy darkened only by conman Autolycus who lies and cheats the residents of Bohemia. At the end of the play, the characters reunite in Sicilia. The tone is neither clearly tragic nor clearly comic. Shakespeare scholars often classify this play as a romance.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production has a cast of only nine actors, quite a feat for a play with many more characters. Six of the actors play two characters apiece, one in the Sicilian court and one in the Bohemian countryside. By choosing to cast actors like this, director Rebecca Taichman emphasized the similarities and differences between the doubled characters.

The transitions between doubled characters were sometimes shown deliberately rather than being concealed behind the curtain. Actor Mark Harelik, for example, changes out of the tattered remnants that clothe Autolycus into the formal black suit of the mourning king, while never leaving the stage. He slicks back his hair with his hand and steps into the character of the king. The transformation allows the audience to connect the deceitful rogue (whose lies hurt all around him) to the jealous king (whose lies to himself do the same).

Alongside the actors are three musicians who play their parts beautifully. Composer Nico Muhly’s compositions contrast Sicilia and Bohemia with both echoes of the same musical themes and dramatic shifts in mood. The final scene is enhanced by the magical music, the outstanding acting of Hannah Yelland (who plays Hermione), and the set design of Christine Jones.



The Winter’s Tale is a play about transformations, magical and otherwise, as well as love reunited. This production brings out depth and meaning carefully. The most famous stage direction in all of Shakespeare (“Exit, pursued by a bear”) is safe in the hands of these actors.

Homer's Different Heroes

Homer’s epics present two conflicting images of the hero. In the Iliad and the Odyssey we see two different heroes with two different goals. Achilles in the Iliad chooses death and glory over a long happy life, whereas Odysseus chooses life instead and makes his way back home through all the perils of his odyssey.

In the Iliad, Achilles believes that without a glorious death, he will not be remembered in the far-off future.

In contrast, Odysseus lives through the war, not dying for glory, but living to (finally) make it back home. In the final two books of the Odyssey, he begins to regain his role as king and husband. He sleeps in his own bed with his wife, he reunites with his father, and he purges his house of all traces of the suitors. He begins to live the life that Achilles might have led, if he had not chosen to die for everlasting glory.

Odysseus does get fame and glory, if perhaps of a different sort. At the beginning of book 24, we see some of the dead heroes of the Trojan War, stranded in the afterlife. They are not happy; all they can do is stand in the mire of the Asphodel fields reciting their deaths to each other. After Apollo leads the suitors down to the underworld, they tell of Odysseus’s reclamation of his throne in Ithaca. Without dying, his actions are known even in the Meadow of Asphodel where his deeds are even praised by Agamemnon. Without dying in battle, Odysseus tricked the Fates and wove his own everlasting glory.

In book 11, Odysseus summons the dead and hears Achilles state he wishes that he had not chosen to die. In book 24, we hear this theme restated (which is also hinted at in other parts of the Odyssey) and expanded as we hear that Odysseus has gained the glory that Achilles sought.

Book 24 seems essential in Homer’s explanation of how glory can be achieved in a way other than death. And this theme seems essential to the Odyssey. Instead of dying a heroic death, Odysseus lives a heroic life.