The arts have always gone together well.  Music/dance, dance/visual art, poetry/music etc.  Collaboration is something that can create something greater than the sum of its parts.  However, as we all know, sometimes we get bogged down in our own field and forget to seek inspiration through collaborative processes.  I thought that I would highlight some that I have experienced.  I find that many of these collaborations are some of my fondest memories in the musical world.  As I am a musician, most of these will pair music with something else.  As I’m working from memory, the details might be a bit fuzzy.

A colleague of mine, while at the University of Oklahoma getting my masters, once did a recital where an artist did paintings inspired by his life performance of music.  The idea was the capture the emotion of the music in a different medium.  The paintings were done out of sight so as not to impede on the performance of the piece.  They were later displayed after the recital.

I attended a marimba festival a few years back where there were a couple different uses with music and video.  One performance used a live chamber ensemble to accompany a film.  The performers played behind the screen if I recall correctly.  This pairing is certainly not something new, but the use of live performers made the experience much more real and interactive.

Also a few years back, I remember a performance at my school of a pianist who presented what she termed a “lexital” combining the prefix “lex” referring to words and “recital”.  She would read a poem and then perform a piece.  Poetry is often used as inspiration or portraying the text through parts of the performance.  For example, using light sporadic high notes to show rain or loud low notes to portray thunder or bombs.  However, her pairings were not original to the music, so it was her conscious efforts to put them together.  So while pondering the recently heard words, there was music to help you along the way.

Unfortunately, there are times when these established pairings split.  It’s not always a conscious effort, but often changing of aesthetics and social constructs changes how pairings are perceived.  Here are just two quick examples just from talking and studying music.  The first is one I’ve discussed before in the field of old time music.  Although we can now fairly easily find a performance of this music (especially in the Appalachian mountain areas), what is sometimes missing is the aspect of dance.  This music traditionally existed with the main purpose of accompanying dancing.  Although there is certainly dancing still going on at local contra dances and square dances, you can see a decline in the pairing.

The same thing happens with our American study and performance of West African drumming.  This too was used for the purpose of dancing and taking out the dancing definitely changes the performance.  During the drum solos, the performer would take cues from the dancer and interact with the dancer’s movements.  Without the dancers, the feel of the experience is completely different.  The practice of the drums and the music is much more popular in the US than the dancing aspect.  I’m not trying to make a value judgment on either of these situations, but simply stating the reality.

And just in case you ever doubted the subliminal power of music, I would encourage you to look up information on Muzak.  Sure, we tend to think of this is simply elevator music, but this company has been controlling our behaviors for years!  I didn’t think much of it until taking a psychology of music course where an entire chapter of the textbook was devoted to this company.  Put simply, they can tailor music to make you eat faster if a restaurant needs to clear people out, or slow down if you’d rather keep the customers there (like in a bar or similar establishment).  They also know what hours of the day people are more productive in office environments.  They then change the mood of the music to affect your work performance.  This isn’t exactly a pairing of artistic endeavors, but certainly one that affects many of us in our daily lives, whether we know it or not.

I’ll leave you with a very enjoyable collaboration that I’m sure many of you have already seen. This is the new video from a band called OK Go with brings together a music video with engineers to develop an amazing video.  Here’s a link that talk about the “making of”, or just enjoy the art without paying attention to the man behind the curtain.