With plans well under way for a museum devoted to painter Clyfford Still, one of the leading members of the abstract expressionists, Denver is quickly emerging as a major study center for the post-World War artistic movement.
So when Barbara Hamilton Primus, artistic director of the Colorado Chamber Players, discovered composer Bruce Adolphe’s “Tiger’s Ear: Listening to Abstract Expressionist Painting” a year or so ago, she quickly realized the 2004 work would be an ideal fit for the city.
It didn’t take much convincing to sign up the Clyfford Still Museum as a collaborator. The partnership has resulted in two performances of the work, beginning with a concert Wednesday at the King Center that will include a panel discussion on abstract expressionism and Adolphe’s musical depiction of it.
“Even before I knew Still was one of the six artists featured in the composition, I loved the idea,” said Dean Sobel, director of the Still Museum. “We are a museum without a facility, and any opportunity to do a public program is attractive to us, but this one is so perfect.”
The 30-minute chamber work attempts to musically evoke the distinctive look and feel of art created by the six pioneers of abstract expressionism – Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Still.
The movement emerged in the 1940s and ’50s and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York City. It established American art as pre-eminent, a position it held for virtually the rest of the century.
A section is devoted to each of the six artists in “The Tiger’s Ear,” with slides of their paintings projected as each section is performed. The music is written for flute, oboe, violin, viola, cello and piano, an instrumentation requested by the commissioning organization – Armstrong Chamber Concerts of New York.
“It’s actually kind of nice, because the piano is the sort of center of gravity for the whole work,” Adolphe said from New York. “It often determines the harmonic structure in a very clear way.
“In the Rothko, there is a piano solo that tells you exactly what is going to happen. And in the Pollock, it’s almost a piano concerto, with the other instruments wildly throwing themselves all over the keyboard.”
Armstrong Concerts asked Adolphe, a nationally known composer who serves as resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, to create a composition in the spirit of his previous works, especially his tribute to Paul Gauguin, “Red Dogs and Pink Skies.”
At the time, Adolphe had just read a book with reprints from The Tiger’s Eye, an influential artistic and literary magazine published in nine quarterly issues from 1947 to 1949. Along with European and American surrealists and members of the Latin American avant garde, it showcased the young painters who would form the core of abstract expressionism.
Inspired by that publication, the composer decided to create a set of musical depictions of their art.
“I didn’t want to try to do a movie score for the paintings or something that would be cheap, so to speak, or that would be obvious,” Adolphe said. “I wanted to make sure that the pieces stayed in my own composing style. They had to fit into my own way of writing.
“So, with those restrictions, I found it very interesting to try to react to the energy of the (abstract-expressionist) pieces and often the techniques.”
To evoke, for example, Rothko’s contemplative paintings, in which saturated bands of color appear to float above the canvases, the composer turned to a form that dates to the 17th century – the passacaglia. It essentially consists of variations on a submerged bass pattern.
“It’s stated very clearly at the opening,” Adolphe said, “just as Rothko’s clearly has his screens, and then, it becomes like a panel. Things happen on top of it, shimmer and float over it, and it goes through some changes. So, I was trying to write a structure that sounded like his structures look.”
According to no less an authority than Christopher Rothko, the painter’s son who happens to be a former classical music reviewer, the composition succeeds. He became involved when Adolphe sought permission to use slides of Rothko’s works in performances.
“I love the piece,” Rothko said. “I think it’s a brilliant piece conceptually, but then I just love the way he re-creates the feeling that each of these artists give you in music. It’s got its own stamp. It’s definitely a Bruce Adolphe piece, but also it’s definitely very sympathetic to what is going on in the paintings.”
Since 2001, the Colorado Chamber Players has performed five previous Adolphe works, including his Gauguin tribute. But Primus suspects “The Tiger’s Ear” might be the biggest draw yet.
“There’s so much happening in the visual-arts world in Denver, and I think that’s going to influence other disciplines,” she said. “I’m hoping this will be a cutting-edge town for chamber music, too.”
Reach fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“The Tiger’s Eye: Listening to Abstract Expressionist Painting”
CHAMBER MUSIC|Concert and panel discussion on abstract-expressionism with composer Bruce Adolphe; Christopher Rothko, son of painter Mark Rothko; and Dean Sobel, director, Clyfford Still Museum; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, King Center, Auraria campus; concert only with additional work by Kaija Saariaho, 7:30 p.m., Jan. 21, Foothills Art Center, 809 15th St.|$18 general admission, $15 seniors and students and $5 children younger than 10|Wednesday, 303-556-2296 or kennethkingcenter.org; Jan. 21, 866-464-2626 or ticketswest.com.
Bruce Adolphe
Occupation: Composer
Born: 1955
Residence: New York City
Written works for: Violinist Itzhak Perlman, Brentano String Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony
Best-known family piece: “Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto,” performed by 60 American orchestras
Other positions: Resident lecturer and director of family concerts, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; comic keyboard quizmaster, “Piano Puzzlers,” National Public Radio;
Composer-in-residence: Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, 1991 and 1995
