Photography Collaboration

Photography Collaboration

During my last semester at Boston University (spring 2015), a friend invited me to take part in a project he had started. He had organized a collaboration between departments at the College of Fine Arts: specifically, between a group of volunteer musicians and a photography class. The goal was to create a visual representation of music, whether the music was improvised or pre-written.

At the time, I was working on a piece by South African composer Peter Klatzow for my upcoming Masters Recital. Klatzow's Sonata for Solo Violin was a captivating piece, but was virtually unknown, even amongst other violinists. There was no recording of the piece--he didn't even have a MIDI file--and so my interpretation was exclusively my own, not influenced by anyone else's work on the piece.

I was incredibly curious to see how non-musicians would interpret this unknown piece of music through their own medium of photographs. We spent class sessions where I played them recordings I had made of the piece and talked about different atmospheres and characters, and then we took a day to take photographs.

The day before my recital, they presented me with 14 prints that they felt most represented the piece and what they felt. I was so moved by the photos that I displayed them onstage at my recital and invited people to walk up onstage to get a closer look at them while I was playing the piece. The piece and photographs can be seen and heard here on this page.