If you’ve attended a Vancouver Symphony Orchestra concert, you’ve seen maestro Bramwell Tovey’s exuberant conducting in action. But did you notice his green thumb?
Turns out Tovey, who, upon departure from the VSO in 2018 will be the company’s longest-serving music director (he’s led more than 700 concerts, winning a Grammy, several Junos and composing a full-length opera along the way), is, too, a passionate gardener—an additional talent that’s inspired local painter Sheri Bakes’ upcoming collection, Bramwell’s Garden, which examines the relationship between sound and sight via Tovey’s love of lush botanicals.
“While preparing for this show, I wondered what it would be like to be a conductor who works with a symphony orchestra. It seemed possible that this experience might be similar to painting. What if all of the musicians and their different instruments were simply another medium, equal to colours on a painter’s palette?" says Bakes, whose oil-on-canvas works seek to transmute orchestral energy into a visual form. She refers to this process as "ideasthesia," but we’d argue it might be good, old-fashioned ekphrasis.
Decide for yourself at Bau-Xi gallery, September 12th-26th. —Adrienne Matei
Bau-Xi Gallery, 3045 Granville St., Vancouver, 604-733-7011, www.bau-xi.com
share:
Be the first to comment