Welcome to “Harmony of the Spheres”! a distributed art show and performance by Amy Lynn Freeman and anyone else who cares to participate:)

The idea of the “Harmony of the Spheres” - that there is an inherent harmony, or sense of rightness, that over-rides our daily experiences of the exact opposite!, is a theme that has been popular for many hundreds of years, going back to Kepler’s “Musica Universalis” and including many contemporary artists such as Paul McCartney and Coldplay.  For a more general discussion of the history, check out this great article from Wikiepedia at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis.

My music composition is inspired by Terry Riley’s “In C” for orchestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_C.

I was introduced to this piece at a class on using technology to enable distributed music performance at Stanford’s Center for Center for Computer Research and Acoustics at https://ccrma.stanford.edu/home.  I have included the related video below.

“In C” by Terry Riley consists of a set of note patterns - all in the key of C - that may be played by any instrument at any point in time - making it occur to some of us - that it would be  the perfect composition to be played by two orchestras in two different places - as the delay on the network that brings the sound across to the other side will always be somewhat unpredictable:) - which means that any pattern may be playing with any other pattern - on any point in the timeline.  

OK - so I know that may sound really geeky to some of you - but it is so rich in potential directions of discussion - it needs to be described here for the purposes of explaining the painting/performance in which I currently exist.  The idea that a pattern of notes could start at any point in the timeline - and combine with other fragments doing the same - is kind of why improvisation in music works.  There are a lot of combinations of notes that go together well:)

I have been experimenting with distributed music performance ever since, most significantly by transitioning my traditional piano studio to an online operation during the Covid pandemic.  I have LOTS of upcoming projects in this space, so if you are and artist or musician interested in collaborating please get in touch!

But back to thsi piece - this musical composition has an A, B and C Section, each represented by a third of the painting.  And beyond that, I leave it up to the audience to tell me what you see:)

The full painting is a set of three 24” x 24” oil on canvas paintings, one for each section of the musical composition.  There is a secret code hidden in the patterns of each painting that contain the instructions needed to play the music on the piano, but once understood, on any instrument.  I invite you to see if you can see the pattern and connect it with the tune.

I wrote the piano piece for my students to play with and for learning improvisation and have used visual concepts in teaching music for years, but never to this extent before.  

For more information on this project, please see:  https://symphone.tv/harmony-of-the-spheres