Collaborations:  SMTD @ UMMA

Karen Chassin Goldbaum

Director of Communications, UM Museum of Art

As a meeting place for the arts at the heart of the University of Michigan, the new UMMA aspires to attract creative people willing to reconsider boundaries between art forms and disciplines. In preparation for this fall’s launch of an ambitious range of arts programming, former Director James Steward and Director of Education Ruth Slavin approached Christopher Kendall, Dean of the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance, nearly two years ago and asked him to consider with us what pathbreaking music programming linked to the visual arts might look like at UMMA.

“Often music programming in museums simply matches period art with period music,” Slavin explained. “That’s fine as far as it goes, but our invitation was to consider more deeply what could happen when scholars and performers come together to do some big thinking about music and its relationship to the visual arts—and then create performances that share their insights and discoveries with the public.”

Fortunately, Dean Kendall proved to be a superb and imaginative collaborator with the vision to encourage talented faculty to engage with the Museum, including Jennifer Goltz, whom Slavin tapped to create programming in response to the upcoming exhibition The Lens of Impressionism: Painting and Photography Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874. Goltz, who holds a masters degree in vocal performance and a PhD in music theory from UM, was asked to consider some of the musical ideas and innovations that paralleled the late-19th century revolution in the visual arts. Her thoughts turned to Claude Debussy, who was part of a several-generation arc of composers disenchanted with the academic trajectory of classical music, struggling to reflect an immediacy of perception in their work.

“Debussy was also called an Impressionst,” Goltz notes, “but he didn’t embrace the term. There are connections between his efforts and what the Impressionist painters were doing, however. In searching for his own music, Debussy found a compositional idiom that bypassed many traditional musical practices in favor of a more evocative, unmediated style. How is his achievement similar to Monet’s, and how does it differ? Debussy is a composer whose work makes it relatively easy to hear these ideas.” 

The fruits of Goltz’s research and thinking will be presented on November 7 in a wide-ranging performance of Debussy featuring School of Music, Theatre & Dancestudents and faculty, including Goltz, an acclaimed soprano.

Audiences can look forward to several more exhibition-inspired performances this season curated by Goltz, including an original composition by Kristin Kuster, inspired by the architecture of the Museum’s new Frankel Wing, and a concert of original composition and 19th-century work by MacArthur fellow Bright Sheng, who will be responding to the work of acclaimed Chinese painter Chang Ku-nien. Watch for details of these programs in an upcoming Insight and on the programs section of the UMMA website.

Among the ideas driving these collaboration is the question of how a very special environment like UMMA can be leveraged to enhance the learning, observation, and aesthetic experience that occur during a performance. “Concepts and metaphors like structure, color, line, and mass are common to both the visual and aural realms,” said Goltz. “It can be very enriching as musicians and audiences to engage our eyes as well as our ears and to consider how common ideas and impulses are expressed across different disciplines. The connections between music and visual art can be approached from many different directions—historical, philosophical, visceral—musical can link links up with the art in the gallery in nearly limitless ways.” 

Leadership and support from Dean Christopher Kendall is a critical aspect of this partnership between UMMA and School of Music, Theatre, and Dance students and faculty. Kendall is himself the founder of two groups that set the standard for bringing performance into museum settings—the Folger Consort, based in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, and the 21st Century Consort at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

“Spaces with a distinctive character can do much to stimulate musical performance, to broaden thinking in multiple directions,” Kendall said. “In fact, humankind has a long tradition of bringing music into inspiring visual spaces to intensify the aesthetic experience of both.” Kendall suggests that the Museum can be a sort of crossroads for UM students, a place to encounter ideas and experiences outside of the rehearsal room and classroom. “It is the sort of resource that makes the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Michigan a special place to be. We’re a rarity—a top-ranked performing arts program set in a world-class -class research institution. This exposure to other disciplines is endlessly enriching for our students and faculty, and we believe it will be for their audiences as well.”