Painter-Pianist Duets…
With Piano Sketches, painter Jeremy Harrison and pianist-composer Peter Saltzman merge two art forms to create a third.
Click the posts below to experience a brand new artistic medium and read more about the backstory and process here.
Dark Morning, Take 1
Jeremy tries to create painterly space in time as he uses his Buddha board to follow Peter’s slow-moving piano ostinato.
Merged: Painted Music
It’s painted music, as Jeremy Harrison improvises an impermanent painting on his Buddha Board to a frenetic Peter Saltzman piano improv.
Dark Blues Landscape
A short, bluesy piano improvisation yields a beautiful dark blue landscape in record time. Jeremy needed to really strategize before going to work in order to paint this, our first representational effort.
Minimalist Blues in Black and White
Jeremy’s Buddha board painting perfectly captures the musical mood, subtly picking up on the three elements of Peter’s minimalist blues improvisation.
Poppy Asymmetric Bounce
The suprises in this otherwise straightforward groove trip Jeremy up at times—but in a good way that leads to a really trippy painting.
Scaling the Arpeggiated Heights
Jeremy finds that by using plastic Yupo paper there is an afterlife to each stroke as it continues to morph—perfect for syncing with music.
Peter Paints Sound to Image
In his first attempt to improvise to Jeremy’s painting, Peter realizes he has to quickly translate images into sound in a way that makes musical sense.
Chambers 1
As he tries to try to figure out how to improvise to this near-13-minute painting, Peter ponders how we perceive a static image in time.
Two Fisted Painting (and Piano)
Jeremy is forced to paint with both hands, in a two-fisted approach that reminds Peter of, well, playing the piano! And that two-fisted cliché has often been used to describe the pianistic style of Cecil Taylor who happened to inspire this track.
Song of Wrongs (by Saltzman)
Jeremy makes several attempts before settling into a groove with the quickly shifting tempos and rhythmic patterns in Peter’s improvisation here. It’s like a singer doing multiple takes of a track until she nails it. Jeremy nailed it.