Around the Table
Academy Library Turns 40 P I A N O C O N C E RT A N D A RT I N S TA L L AT I O N M A R K O C C A S I O N
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TOM WHARTON
t was an evening of captivating sight and sound on November 14 when the Class of 1945 Library became the framework for PEA’s first joint piano concert and art installation, an event to celebrate the building’s 40th anniversary. Adjunct music instructors and pianists Jon Sakata and Jung Mi Lee, with Principal Tom Hassan’s support, collaborated with architects from the Wentworth Institute of Technology to present “Interventions in Memory: Exploring the Interstices of Music and Architecture.” Reams of sheer white, semitransparent scrims—20-, 30- and 40-feet-long—hung from Rockefeller Hall’s high ceilings, elegantly encircling two black concert pianos. Each scrim was rolled out, measured, cut, stitched together and hung over the course of two days. “The process was tedious and laborious, and yet the finished product was graceful and soothing,” says Academy Librarian Gail Scanlon, who began working on this anniversary event only a few weeks after beginning her new role. During the event, Sakata and Lee performed while four data projectors displayed shadowed images onto the layered scrims. Like memories, the closer images were clear and focused, and those farther away were blurred. The concept behind the event was the exploration of how two different mediums begin to interact and respond to each other. “I didn’t have a clear concept of how the music and architecture would unite within the building,” Scanlon says. “After working on this event . . . I will not be able to listen to music without a sense of my surroundings.” Sakata and Lee performed selections from Robert Cogan’s Contexts/Memories: Version C and The Art of Fugue, by Johann Sebastian Bach, as their audience milled around and through the installation on various floors of the library. “The music was like a soundtrack for a movie and my eyes were the camera,” says Janice Ziemba, administrative manager in the Dean of Students Office. “I also enjoyed that the concert gave me permission to move and relocate to different areas of the library and bring fresh ‘cinematic’ eyes to spaces and architectural elements that I did not have time to reflect upon previously.” She recalls the scrims as mysterious, “. . . drawing [your] eyes upward to contemplate the vast height of the hall and the amazing achievement of the architecture.” Since 2009 Sakata and Lee have collaborated with architect and Wentworth’s Graduate Studies Chair John Ellis, examining the relationship between music and architecture. Earlier this year the “Interventions in Memory” concert and exhibition, including the two pianists, toured contemporary and modernist architectural landmarks in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Germany.
Semitransparent scrims shrouded two pianos, creating an interplay of music and space during the performance.
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The Exeter Bulletin
W INTER 2012