Strings and Serpents is a multi-cultural collaboration currently in development between two pianists (Andy Milne’s Crystal Magnets Piano Duo with French pianist Benoit Delbecq), an animator, and two Japanese koto players. Merging musical and visual forms into a unified experience, Strings and Serpents features a 60-minute animated film in conjunction with the live performance of the combined piano and koto duos.
Crystal Magnets is a piano duo
from two masters of contemporary improvisation, Canadian Andy Milne and
Frenchman Benoît Delbecq. In 2007, they received the French-America Jazz Exchange
commission from Chamber Music America to develop and record “Where is
Pannonica?” Using the sonic landscape of the 5.0 surround sound format for
inspiration, the music was composed in part to exploit the unique potential for
placing specific compositional elements in distinct regions of the mix.
The New
York Times lauded the recording as a “strangely beautiful new album” from two
“resourcefully contemporary pianists, both drawn to quixotic interrogations of
harmony and timbre.” Both Milne and Delbecq are recipients of the prestigious
Civitella Fellowship and, individually, lead and compose for numerous projects,
tour extensively throughout the world, and are highly regarded within the jazz
and creative music communities of New York and Paris, respectively.
Musically, the project explores a synthesis of Japanese
and Western structures in terms of form, improvisational language, and
rhythm. Seamlessly blending traditional and modern koto textures with
the language of jazz and contemporary improvisation, the compositions
explore a polymetric approach for prepared piano and koto, expanding the
interaction of rhythmic forms and sonic colors between the music and
the animation.
The theme of the animation is based on the
Rainbow Serpent mythology and employs 2-D and 3-D computer-generated
imagery (CGI), inspired by the music. The story is told visually,
without dialogue or subtitles, and elegantly projects a visual
composition that experiments with color, shape, texture, light, and
motion to enrich the relationship between the pianos and kotos.
Tickets
are priced at $26 (regular), $22 (discount for senior
citizens and groups of 15 or more), and $14 (I-Card holder, students,
and
children).