Post 6: Some technical Issues

   There will be a number of technical issues to resolve, most of them thank God being in Adam's court... He has two great 5K projectors, and will have to procure a third one to match.
   The animation I am developing in After Effects for the show is 5640 pixels Wide x 1080 pixels High, to span the entire width of the 3 fabric panels with three 1920 x 1080 projectors.
  We will need a Triple Head Matrox Box or similar device to split that ultra wide image between the 3 projectors. I just went ahead and ordered one from B&H with Mini Display Port Input, and 3 DVI Outputs :

   I am not sure at this point whether we should have a slight overlap between the images or not. This is something we may have to test live...
  The subject of Real Live Tests is critical to me. I am well aware that we will have the third rental projector only a few days before the show, when it is too late to redo anything. I cannot take that chance, and plan to do thorough testing from the start on a scaled down setup.
  I already have a wonderful ultra short throw Mitsubishi 3K 720p projector. For an unexplained reason, these were either unavailable for the last year or so,or very expensive, but just I luckily just found a batch for sale at a very good price. My friend Christophe bought one, and I just ordered a second one for myself. That makes 3 between us. I am actually seriously wondering about ordering a third one while they are available, as I have a Frida Kahlo project on hold that would require four...I will use the Matrox Box to connect them to my computer. Here goes my budget...
  Anyhow, I will shortly have access to 3 identical 3K projectors, and plan to drape a 60" High x 26ft Wide fabric panel high up in my studio ceiling in a configuration similar to the final setup, to be able to test the show at roughly 1/4 size as it progresses to completion along the course of the coming year.

   A very serious technical issue is actually in my and Carlos' court, and we will have to debate the possible solutions very carefully.
The issue is the timing of the images to the music. It is not a huge issue in the slow rather contemplative first parts of the Requiem. But when the Dies Irae hit hard with trumpets and drums, and continues with numerous dramatic moments, it is going to be crucial that the timing be correct within a split second. How do we achieve that, we will have to figure out... It is very difficult to speed up or slow down a video on the fly to match the music. I will no doubt have a separate movie for each section of the Requiem, and click the Start button when the conductor lift's his baton. But what if there is a slight drifting over the course of a particular movement. 
   Movie sound track conductors and drummers commonly use a click track, but it is a big constraint. There is another concept around used in Cubase called "Hit Points", or "Markers". Might we use a version of that?
   It is also possible through live audio analysis to automatically trigger images. Nut that would not make for a very smooth video, would it?
   Back to Square one. Anybody out there, please help!

Pictures of the setup coming soon...

Post 5: Some Preliminary Thoughts

    I have in the last couple of weeks done a great deal of research on our new conductor Carlos Izcaray, on Cherubini's life and work, on Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and on the whole historical context from 1750's to the 1850's, a most turbulent part of French History. I have also listened to "our" Requiem several times, as well as other compositions of Cherubini, and other Requiems of the period.
   I was lucky to have an overnight stop over in Rome on my return trip from Europe, and catch a performance of Mozart's Requiem (my hands down favorite) at the small Chiesa Santa Maria di Popolo. Not quite as moving as the one I experienced in The Prague Cathedral some years ago, but very enjoyable from my front row seat nevertheless. I was kind of reminded that this music WAS designed to be played in a CHURCH, where the acoustics differ from the concert hall.
    My "Team" is having a first meeting with Pierre Ruhe and Carlos Izcaray at my house next week, before and over dinner, and I have a list of questions that will hopefully allow me to get to know our conductor better, and find out how he reads the piece, and what his interpretation of it will be.
   I obviously want the images and the video I create to complement the music, and possibly illustrate and explain the story behind it and the historical context. To this day, this particular Requiem IS Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's Requiem. It is hardly ever performed except in France on January 21.
    The images will flow with the music, and follow the tempo, moving mostly slowly over the rather "Angelic" first three movements, and getting faster and much more rythmic and almost violent in the Dies Irae. That is when heads roll...
    I would really like a bunch of red lasers to fire in the rafters when the tympani rolls and the trumpets blow.

    But the conductor has to remain in charge, and I do see myself in a supporting rôle, under HIS direction. There will have to be a back and forth ongoing conversation all through the creation of the video material to insure we remain on the same wave length, and that he really likes what I come up with.
   When Pierre first mentioned the project to me, I spent a good deal of time on iTunes listening to part of different settings of the Requiem by different orchestras. It often takes only a few bars  for me to know whether I like it or not. I thought Paganini's version was boring. A number of others seemed rather uninspired. I really liked the more flamboyant 1996 interpretation of Matthew Best and the Corydon Singers. Do keep in mind though that the magnificent Marche Funèbre was composed later in Cherubini's life, and is NOT part of "our" Requiem. 
   But ultimately, I will work with Carlos Izcaray's own interpretation, and I can't wait to hear it. From what I have heard so far from our conductor, It should have plenty of fire and energy.

Post 4: A Little Historical Background

    You may be wondering at this time why I used images of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Versailles, and the Guillotine for my mockups.

   The reason is that Cherubini's Requiem in C Minor was commissioned by King Charles X to commemorate the execution of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution on January 21, 1793.
  The Requiem was performed in the Basilica of Saint Denis near Paris, where most of the French Kings are buried, and the ashes of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were transferred there on January 21, 1816.

  It has been performed on the same date nearly every year since, in Saint Denis and other  locations, in a Celebratory Mass attended by famous French "royalists" (including various Bourbon "heirs" to the long defunct "throne".of France), as well as throngs of royal nostalgia kooks... A bit of a Carnaval Show unfortunately.
  Yet, very few today have heard of Cherubini or his Requiem, nor of his thirty Operas and other works...

  Beethoven won the grand prize of Eternal Fame, and justly so if you ask me. And we will get to hear the Fifth just before Cherubini's Requiem next year, with hopefully projected views of the conductor and the orchestra never seen before in such detail and from such angles...
   Cherubini indeed composed beautiful music, and was no doubt a wonderful technician, but he was stuck in a time warp and stubbornly refused to even consider any changes to what he learned as a child prodigy from his Italian Masters of counterpoint in the 1770's.
   Cherubini was in attendance for the first performances of Beethoven's opera Fidelio, to which he reacted sneeringly.
   He also described Beethoven's piano style as  "rough", and more famously the man himself as "an unlicked bear cub". It is remarkable, therefore, that Beethoven, normally so quick to take offence, named Cherubini as the greatest contemporary composer other than himself(!!!). 
    His students at the Paris Conservatory in the 1820's and 30's had to follow his staid regulations, and young up and coming innovators like Berlioz resented his conservative rules, and his rigid devotion to "by the book" (HIS book) Counterpoint and Fugue. 
   I will copy a couple of citations that, though admitedly extremely judgmental and quite nasty, probably give a pretty good idea of the kind of man he probably was:

    "If his melodic invention had been as warm as Gluck's, his immensely superior technique in every branch of the art would have made him one of the greatest composers that ever lived. But his personal character shows in quaint exaggeration the same asceticism that in less sour and more negative form deprives even his finest music of the glow of that lofty inspiration that fears nothing."

   "It is too much to expect that the mighty genius of Beethoven, which broke through all rules in vindication of the principles underlying them, would be comprehensible to a mind like Cherubini's, in which, while the creative faculties were finely developed, the critical faculty was atrophied and its place supplied by a mere disciplinary code inadequate even as a basis for the analysis of his own works.

   However, one has to admit most of his music sounds quite good, if somewhat uninspired, definitely lacking the originality of a Mozart, a Beethoven, or even a Vivaldi in my book.
   I am neither a musician nor a musicologist, just a guy that was raised on "classical music" in the 50's and 60's, and kept listening to it  all day every day for more than forty years. I am using the term "classical music" very loosely, including in it anterior Baroque Music, even down to Early and Renaissance music, and the posterior Romantic Era, and Modern Music. I didn't catch on to most of the more recent HighModern and Contemporary "experiments", and things stop for me with Satie, Ravel, Chabrier, Carl Orff, Debussy, Copeland, Gershwin, Villa Lobos, Albeniz, Piazzolla, Bernstein...
  Sorry Carlos, Ginastera didn't make my list...
  My favorite contemporary composer is a nearly unknown Belgian genius called Nicholas Lens. Unfortunately, I like his work less and less as he evolves over the years, and still prefer by far his first two Oratorios: Flamma Flamma and Terra Terra. I would love for the ASO to tackle these some day...

Post 3: The Set Up

    We have miles of ivory colored fabric at Alys Stephens left over from covering the building for the Light Dreams shows in 2012 and 2013. Adam now has two large professional 5K projectors that are actually incredibly bright. He used them to project movies on a large scale, and we tested them projecting on fabric he had draped from the ceiling down to the top row where the chorus sits, and at an angle on the sides. The results were very satisfying, and confirmed we could do a show on three large fabric panels with three 5K projectors(one will need to be rented outside) hung in the rafters. This installation goes a long way to help keep us within budget.
   It will probably not quite be the full immersive experience we envisioned for most of the audience behind the front rows, but it will be impressive nonetheless because of the sheer size of the fabric panels.

   I worked up some mockups of what things might look like with the orchestra and the chorus in place:

Post 2; Where are we Culturally?

  Until the turn of the new century, most people were more or less able to sit and just listen to music, whether live, on stereo speakers, or inside their skull on their mp3 player.
   But the 15 years of this 21st Century have seen an incredible shift in the behavior of the average 20 something, and even the 30 and 40 something crowd has been largely affected by the incredible worldwide spread of the SMART PHONE. 
  No kidding, just like the birth of the iPod and iTunes had changed the way we bought and listened to music, the advent of the iPhone has changed everything about he way we live and behave every hour of the day. Apple has been the single most important game changer.
  When I say WE though, I leave myself out, with the few other old farts that resist the trend and leave their (unfortunately necessary) smart phone OFF and mum in their pocket, just in case it might be needed in an emergency. I have no monthly plan, nobody knows my cell number, not even I, so it never rings (except occasionally to wake me up), and I don't know the first thing about texting of getting messages I don't want to read anyway...
   I know, I am a dinosaur, but the GOOD THING is that because I don't spend (I actually wanted to say waste) any time talking, texting or playing games on a touch screen (I just read a report that the average Japanese youth spends 10 hours a day on their smart phone, a statistic that boggles my old fashion mind...) I have a lot of time on my hands to think and work on the computer to produce Audio Visual Works of Art. 
   After a lifetime of designing, building things, drawing, painting and sculpting, the computer has since the turn of the Century become my main tool. I use it to create Photography, Animation, 3D sets, Produce Mapped Architectural Projections, and collaborate with other Artists on various Projects involving dance, music, live video feed, computer processing, and projection of processed images.

   We have a new multi tasking younger generation on our hands that is unable to just sit still and silent in a dark concert hall, close their eyes, and simply listen to beautiful music. They will at the vey least be working their smart phone at the same time, snapping selfies and emailing them to their friends, while texting their mom, playing games, and answering phone calls. 
   In order to hold this new "Smart Phone Generation" attention, projected images accompanying the music seem a very good idea, and some of the major Symphony Orchestras around the world have been doing it.

   The latest State of the Art "super duper" Concert Hall, The New World Center in Miami, was designed by leading American Architect Frank Gehry to include both a huge projection wall on the outside:

 and huge curved white sound panels on the inside that double as projection screens:

    I believe Gehry's design will become the standard for all future concert halls.
   The same Frank Gehry had designed previously the very graphic Disney Hall for the L.A. Symphony, with it's "extravagantly deconstructed" Organ:

 and it lends itself to projections too, though more limited in nature before of the numerous complex geometric shapes, and the wood color. It possibly lends itself better to Architectural Mapping:

   They have successfully done projection on suspended stainless steel "sails":

    The Sydney Opera has been leader for years in this movement, going as far as having a live projection performance on the whole huge outside "sails" and inside of the building during a performance of the Symphony Orchestra. They have done innumerable projections of every style on the outside:

as well as a few memorable ones inside:

    I have only seen the shows on YouTube, and they looked fabulous... I wish I could travel on a magic carpet there to see them in person.
   BUT this kind of large scale show costs A LOT of "green". The large 40K projectors they use are worth several hundred thousand dollars each, and rent for 3 or 4 Grands a day. They probably need at least five or more. Over the years, they have spent millions of dollars on light shows.
   Out of the question for the ASO in little Birmingham, Alabama, at least for the moment. We can always drool and hope for generous sponsors
   For this "Première Projection", we can afford three 5K's on three fabric panels, and that will do just fine.
   I am confident we can do a great show with our limited ressources, and hope it all works out so well that we can go to 5, may be 7 projectors next time to get a more fully immersive "wrap around" effect.

Post 1: Getting Started with the Project

    I was originally informally approached months ago by Pierre Ruhe about he possibility of doing a "wrap around" projection in the Symphony hall together with the performance of Cherubini's Requiem Mass in C Minor. I was immediately interested in the project, as it is along the lines of what I did with Light Dreams, but different, and audio visual has become such an integral part of our lives that the new generation of multi tasking audiophiles cannot even think of music by itself. I believe it will become increasingly important to draw the younger crowd back to the Symphony Halls to replace the aging Season Tickets Holders.