Guiding Lights: Music and Art from Impressionism to Jazz with Emilie Conway

Mon 27 November, 4, 11 & 18 December

The Studio, dlr Lexicon

Booking essential via dlr Libraries Eventbrite

“Music and Art are the guiding lights of the world.” - Pablo Picasso

Join vocal jazz artist, Emilie Conway for an exploration of the relationship between music and art from the light play of Ravel's Jeu d'Eau and Monet's Water Lilies to the pulsing tri-colour rhythm of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and Monk's In Walked Bud!

Following the sound of the music and the smell of oil paint, we will journey through time to la Belle Époque Europe, Paris, Munich, Vienna, east to St. Petersburg, through World War I, the Spanish flu, back to Paris for Les Années folles, the Jazz Age, the Roaring '20s and at the outbreak of World War II, fleeing to the safety, lights and glamour of New York in the 40s, a city astir from the Harlem Renaissance, the end of Prohibition, vivid and fizzing, shaken and stirred, with the mixing of artists from old Europe and the New World.

By looking at the paintings and listening to the music of artists like Monet, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Kandinsky and more, we will discover the musical and artistic movements to which these artists' restless quest for inspiration, authenticity and expression gave rise: Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Bebop, ultimately Jazz!

Topics covered in each session:

Week 1

Salon and Conservatory Rejects: Debussy, Ravel, Monet, Renoir

A premonition of things to come: Satie’s and Mondrian's prescience

A year of synchronicity: 1909! What do Schoenberg Stravinsky, Kandinsky, Jung, and more have in common?

Picasso and Braque's Cubism

Paris 1930: Sacre!: Stravinsky's/Roerich/Diaghilev's Succes de Scandale

Week 2

1917: War! Parade, Surrealism, Jazz

Paris in Les Années Folle, the Charleston

Jazz, Josephine, Gershwin and the City

Futurism: the Moving Parts of Russolo's Noise Music & Art

Week 3

World War II: Entartete Kunst

Flight to the New World

New York in the 40s, Abstract Expressionist Fëte

Boogie Woogie, Bebop and Jazz

Week 4

Performance!

Emilie Conway and musicians perform works inspired by this program including original music in response to the work of Piet Mondrian, commissioned by the National Gallery, as well some jazz seasonal favourites!