Illumination(s) in Motion
Like so many in 2020, I took my show off the road.
It was an opportunity to transform some of my projection designs into videos and to create entirely new work as my friends and colleagues took to cyberspace. The experience will influence what I do once we’re all back in the concert hall, and I have an entirely new appreciation for the very idea of “motion pictures”!
shades light and dark
This #NCGreatPerformances video pairs Byrd’s lighthearted “This Sweet and Merry Month of May” with the dark motet “Tribulatio proxima est,” a contrast matched in the imagery: a landscape miniature by court painter Isaac Oliver and a tapestry depiction of the burning of the books at Ephesus. The latter was commissioned by Henry VIII and may have been known to Byrd, a Recusant Catholic who may have found solace in the psalm text he set.
peek into Isabella’s study
This program of music written for Isabella d’Este was a collaboration between The Newberry Consort and Piffaro. The video features two paintings: Lorenzo Costa’s “Allegory of Isabella d’Este’s Coronation” (ca. 1504–06) and Pietro Perugino’s “The Battle Between Love and Chastity” (1505), both held at the Louvre Museum. They were among the five paintings commissioned for Isabella’s studiolo.