I was recently asked when I started designing slideshows/projections for the Newberry Consort. My current bio pinpoints 2012 as the date, and it’s close enough, but the semi-formal question got me thinking about the details. So I dug out my main trove of saved programs and tried to put together the timline.
Ellen and David hired me as projectionist for the Cantigas de Santa Maria program in March 2011. I thought the slideshow could be showier, asked if I could make a few changes, then spent every spare moment over the concert weekend punching things up. When they revived the program for the Boston Early Music Festival in 2012 (or 13?) and a few other venues, I completely redesigned the slide show from the ground up. Dissertating cost me the next opportunity — the “Feast of the Pheasant” program in January 2014 — but I was onboard for two other medieval programs: Roman de Fauvel in 2016 and Oswald von Wolkenstein in 2017. Fauvel is one of three-ish plausible instances of medieval multimedia. We started with the first (the Cantigas de Santa Maria), and in 2017 Blue Heron invited me to collaborate with them on Machaut’s Remede de Fortune. Oswald was my first foray outside of that small walled garden, as it were. As a scholar and purist I was slightly appalled, but it’s such fun to do and engages audiences in novel ways. That show went better than I dared hope — audiences loved it, and I discovered just what a narrative contribution a visual backdrop could be. The Consort invited me to design a slideshow for every concert of the 2017-2018 season, and I’ve been doing it ever since. How lucky am I?
The trove of programs is a reminder that I’ve been involved with the Consort for over twenty years. For several years, back when the Consort was a newly minted ensemble-in-residence at UofC, I was both Consort “intern” and departmental coordinator of Early Music. At some point I took over putting together the program books, which I fully redesigned in 2005. (The wrap-around cover for the 06-07 season still pleases me no end.)
