GSCENE 61
ALL THAT JAZZ
ART MATTERS
REVIEWS
This month, with our shared inside time experience which has closed down the live art experience, I’ll concentrate on the virtual experience of the art space, presented by galleries both traditional and modern. The action of viewing artworks even at that distance hopefully being able to invigorate, educate or challenge you from your lived space.
BY S I M O N A DA M S
COURTAULD GALLERY www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/about/3d-gallery-virtual-tour ) Beginning with the Courtauld Gallery, the virtual tour uses a new photographic technique to show the gallery and the works exhibited in exceptional close-up quality. You can roam through each room as it was before it temporarily closed in September 2018, and zoom in to look closely at masterpieces from their collection including Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Édouard Manet’s A Bar at The Folies-Bergère, the applied individual brush strokes and the texture of the paint made visible as if you were peering in at them.
A BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE
) CHRISTIAN McBRIDE The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons (Mack Avenue). Bass player Christian McBride originally intended to write a musical portrait of the civil rights movement, without fully understanding what that complex movement was all about. Luckily, he changed his approach, and finally put together a musical portrait of four personal icons: Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King, with an additional movement dedicated to Barack Obama after his election as America’s first black president in 2008. Four narrators speak the words of the icons, an 18-piece big band and 10-strong choir provide the musical accompaniment and interludes. This is the sort of work one should like and appreciate, given its politics, but while inspired by the words I found the movement musically uneven, the tribute to Martin Luther King in particular too martial, too much like a film soundtrack. Others will disagree, and when moved by the words will also enjoy the fine big-band swing and impassioned jazz.
BY E N Z O M A R R A
NATIONAL GALLERY www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours ) Also opening it’s doors in a virtual manner, the National Gallery offers a tour where you can enjoy panoramic views of the gallery in collaboration with Google Street View, allowing you the opportunity to immerse yourself in Renaissance masterpieces from Northern Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, including works by Titian, Veronese and Holbein. They also provide a virtual reality tour of the Sainsbury Wing, the home to their world-class collection of Early Renaissance paintings, with over 270 paintings to browse within a 360 degree tour on your standard electronic devices. In addition there’s a virtual tour of 18 rooms originally instigated in 2011, which incorporates the experience of the gallery rooms and 300 paintings from their collection. The tour links directly to painting pages, which in turn offers the chance to learn more about each of the paintings.
) JOSHUA REDMAN & BROOKLYN RIDER Sun On Sand (Nonesuch). Combinations of jazz trios and string quartets don’t usually work, for why should different musical traditions bother that much with each other? But in this case, the meeting is magical. The eight compositions on this set are drawn from Aspects of Darkness and Light, a suite composed by New Yorker Patrick Zimmerli, and all represent different expressions of light. The Brooklyn Rider quartet provides the strings, saxophonist Joshua Redman and his trio the jazz. The result is a surprisingly joyful, often ebullient set, which swings like hell.
HAUSER & WIRTH GALLERY www.vip-hauserwirth.com Courtesy of the Hauser & Wirth Gallery, there’s a selection of works by Louise Bourgeois who made drawing a daily ritual across her seven decade-long career. Something a bit rawer and more personal, this will be Saville Row-based Hauser & Wirth’s first online exhibition - a celebration of the French-American artists’ pieces in ink, watercolour and pencil. The gallery is also generously launching Dispatches, a new series of videos, events and features to keep connected with it’s artists in creative isolation.
ALEPH CONTEMPORARY
ENZO MARRA WELL HUNG
) MAYTE ALGUACIL & MICHAEL KANAN Something I Dreamed Last Night (Fresh Sound New Talent). Spanish singer Mayte Alguacil and American pianist Michael Kanan have recorded one set together before now, in 2015, and return with more of the languid same, concentrating on jazz standards and the popular song. Drummer Jordi Rossi remarks that “Mike and Mayte have no interest in over-dramatic expression, extravagance, ready-made emotion or artifice of any kind.” Neither are they interested in anything faster than a gentle amble, as none of the 13 tracks ever picks up its feet and even pretends to dance. Every Time We Say Goodbye is so slow it almost grinds to a halt, Only The Lonely is positively lethargic, while the album’s stand-out track – In The Wee Small Hours – is stripped down to bare vocals and singlenote piano support. But if the two don’t go for drama, they are interested in exploring the emotions of each song, Alguacil inhabiting the lyrics as if she wrote them all, Kanan’s sensitive, withdrawn accompaniment – he only takes brief solos – providing the melodic backdrop with the minimum of harmonic variety. It’s all very simple but heartfelt, and all the more effective for that.
www.alephcontemporary.com/exhibitions/13-enzo-marradeluge/video/ Finally I would like to finish on a solo show I had at the Aleph Contemporary in their viewing room. Deluge (Mar 1-15), which included works on paper and on canvas among the shown selection. The works spanning a number of years, showing the development and alteration that has occurred within my visual practise, in subject matter and in painterly approach.
