“It’s going to be a real aesthetic jambalaya,” said Sid Richardson, a Duke University doctoral candidate and co-organizer of “Music in the Galleries: Experimental Music Study Group,” before the show.
The Ackland Museum’s Music in the Galleries program and Experimental Music Study Group, which was founded by UNC and Duke graduate students, came together to create Sunday afternoon’s event.
It was centered on connecting the work of abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann to the work of experimental music composers, some of whom were influenced by Hofmann. These New York School visual artists and composers were influenced to make abstract, informal and non-representational art for its own sake.
These artists included familiar names like Jackson Pollock and John Cage.
All of this was covered in an opening presentation by UNC doctoral candidate and co-organizer Joanna Helms.
Performers from the Duke New Music Ensemble opened the concert with a piece by Morton Feldman called “Voice and Instruments 2.”
Richardson said Feldman treats pieces like art canvases.
“He talks a lot about time canvases — basically music as similar to visual art, but in a time-based medium,” he said.