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Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: The Mint Museum
What a whirlwind of emotion this past week. I wish to share, but my main thought right now as I type is that it’s hard to write genuinely knowing these journal entries will be pressed to the blockchain and publicized in perpetuity. Daunting. I guess the solution in the face of that is to just be sincere. If my vision manifests and art music succeeds I imagine these entries will be read and studied in the way that Brahms’ or Schumann’s letters were. It’s reassuring to know that I can’t be emba...
Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: Tokenized Art Music Compositions
On the PersonGreetings. My name is Niles Luther. I am a classically trained cellist & composer currently on the National Tour of the Les Misérables broadway show. Performing nightly in this show provides stability while I pursue my deeper musical interest: Art music, or bespoke scores that attempt to transmedialize the narrative content of visual art into music. This article aims to provide a brief introduction to a collection of Art Music NFTs that I’ve been developing since October of 2022 ...
Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: Milwaukee Art Museum
Dear reader, Milwaukee! I’m very excited to share this city with you, particularly because my expectations for what I would find here were far exceeded. I’ll get into that in a bit. First, some casual updates. My studio is traveling well; everything feels dialed in. On Tuesday mornings I head to the theater and bring back my gear to be setup and calibrated. I break it all down again and bring it back to the theater on Sunday evening, just before our final show in each city.Studio setup and my...
Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: The Mint Museum
What a whirlwind of emotion this past week. I wish to share, but my main thought right now as I type is that it’s hard to write genuinely knowing these journal entries will be pressed to the blockchain and publicized in perpetuity. Daunting. I guess the solution in the face of that is to just be sincere. If my vision manifests and art music succeeds I imagine these entries will be read and studied in the way that Brahms’ or Schumann’s letters were. It’s reassuring to know that I can’t be emba...
Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: Tokenized Art Music Compositions
On the PersonGreetings. My name is Niles Luther. I am a classically trained cellist & composer currently on the National Tour of the Les Misérables broadway show. Performing nightly in this show provides stability while I pursue my deeper musical interest: Art music, or bespoke scores that attempt to transmedialize the narrative content of visual art into music. This article aims to provide a brief introduction to a collection of Art Music NFTs that I’ve been developing since October of 2022 ...
Niles LutherHERE ON TOUR: Milwaukee Art Museum
Dear reader, Milwaukee! I’m very excited to share this city with you, particularly because my expectations for what I would find here were far exceeded. I’ll get into that in a bit. First, some casual updates. My studio is traveling well; everything feels dialed in. On Tuesday mornings I head to the theater and bring back my gear to be setup and calibrated. I break it all down again and bring it back to the theater on Sunday evening, just before our final show in each city.Studio setup and my...
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Dear reader,
We are back for more art adventures in America!
On to Providence RI, a city which I quite enjoyed for its excellent restaurants and the beautiful Woonasquatucket River which runs through the city center.
CITY: Providence, RI
MUSEUM: RISD Museum
PAINTING: Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills
ARTIST: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
OBSERVATION DATE: Nov 16, 2022
CITY: Providence, RI
HOTEL: Graduate Providence
AUDIO SKETCH: First melody, for Corot
COMPOSER: Niles Luther
CREATION DATE: Nov 16, 2022
I loved RISD Museum. It felt like I had once again discovered an oasis, however this time the culture of the surrounding city was in full support. It’s interesting to me how important location and environment can be, and the impact they have on your ability to see, almost as if your sight is clarified or muddied by the way you feel in any particular location.
Despite my love for the museum, in particular the student exhibition on the second floor, nothing jumped out at me. No painting begged me for music. Of course there were works that I was touched by, works that gave me pause, but none that I could immediately hear on sight.
I began with the idea of creating something inspired by porcelain china. Throughout history, decorative arts has been something that has been spread throughout the globe not through appreciation, but through exploitation. While I wanted to comment on the injustices of the rise in Asian hate crimes, the foundation of the protests for the movement began with the Civil Rights movement and continues more recently with Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd. Using the George Floyd transcript and traditional china patterns on the crouched form, I began to ask myself questions such as, is the pose one of subjugation or more like the power that comes from child's pose? Is the person vulnerable or protecting themselves because of the natural human instinct for survival? What can we learn about our past to move forward in the future, and what have we clung onto in this current society of blatant systemic racism?
Wall text for When Can we Breathe?**.* RISD Museum, Rhode Island*
Contemplative once again, I meandered through the museum corridors until I happened upon a quiet, seemingly mundane landscape by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Unobtrusively it hung, in a gallery centered around its opposite: a magnificent and inimitable sculpture, The Hand of God, no less, by Auguste Rodin.
Despite the beauty of this room, and the classical works contained, it was contemporary art that swirled through my head, pulling my attention in, demanding space. The student exhibition and its call for eyes, call for emotion, desperation to be seen, was right, and so due attention I gave.
But perhaps it was because my attention was still on that student exhibition, that the peace in this Corot landscape pulled me in. Staid and quiet as it was. Shallow in depth perhaps, but not without the subtly of a master. My eyes were directed more towards the atmosphere that Corot captured than the physical stroke itself.
None of this was intellectualized in the moment. At the time I had no idea what I would compose or which painting I would compose for. No, I left the museum unresolved, and walked the banks of the Woonasquatucket river on a day that was grey and unremarkable, not dissimilar to the one painted here.
I love this idea though, that you can approach a goal by not approaching it. I’m reminded of a concept from the Tao Te Ching: “The way that can be spoken of is not the way.” I wonder if it is in that indirectness, that adjacent nature of Being without be-ing that brings one closer to the answer they’re searching for.
Throughout his life, Corot painted the ponds and forests around Ville d'Avray, a village outside Paris where his family had a home. As here, the scenes he depicted were still and intimate, shallow in depth, and infused with an atmospheric blue-gray haze. He painted many versions of these views, calling them souvenirs in reference to their recurrence in his memory. His landscapes sometimes provided the backdrops for overtly classical subjects, but in this example the view itself is as significant as the figures gathering wildflowers.
Museum Appropriation Fund 24.089
Wall text for Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills. RISD Museum, Rhode Island
The following music NFT is my initial response to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills, recorded on Nov 16, 2022 via voice memo at the Graduate Providence in Providence, RI. The cover art is a sineprint (a graphed room frequency response) of my room in the hotel.
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x278246a8239f998ddcdd347b2eb8bcdd2a69841e/3
This melody came out of a place of depression. I couldn't help but be effected by the grayness of the day, the reality of my life on tour (and its various hardships), and the general malaise I felt in my bones. The mood feels sullen and dark, perhaps too much for the narrative content of the painting. However, I hear this melody as a solo introduction played on clarinet, and as my imagination listens, the quality changes from one of darkness to one of contemplation.
That’s all for now.
Most sincerely, Niles Luther
Dear reader,
We are back for more art adventures in America!
On to Providence RI, a city which I quite enjoyed for its excellent restaurants and the beautiful Woonasquatucket River which runs through the city center.
CITY: Providence, RI
MUSEUM: RISD Museum
PAINTING: Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills
ARTIST: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
OBSERVATION DATE: Nov 16, 2022
CITY: Providence, RI
HOTEL: Graduate Providence
AUDIO SKETCH: First melody, for Corot
COMPOSER: Niles Luther
CREATION DATE: Nov 16, 2022
I loved RISD Museum. It felt like I had once again discovered an oasis, however this time the culture of the surrounding city was in full support. It’s interesting to me how important location and environment can be, and the impact they have on your ability to see, almost as if your sight is clarified or muddied by the way you feel in any particular location.
Despite my love for the museum, in particular the student exhibition on the second floor, nothing jumped out at me. No painting begged me for music. Of course there were works that I was touched by, works that gave me pause, but none that I could immediately hear on sight.
I began with the idea of creating something inspired by porcelain china. Throughout history, decorative arts has been something that has been spread throughout the globe not through appreciation, but through exploitation. While I wanted to comment on the injustices of the rise in Asian hate crimes, the foundation of the protests for the movement began with the Civil Rights movement and continues more recently with Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd. Using the George Floyd transcript and traditional china patterns on the crouched form, I began to ask myself questions such as, is the pose one of subjugation or more like the power that comes from child's pose? Is the person vulnerable or protecting themselves because of the natural human instinct for survival? What can we learn about our past to move forward in the future, and what have we clung onto in this current society of blatant systemic racism?
Wall text for When Can we Breathe?**.* RISD Museum, Rhode Island*
Contemplative once again, I meandered through the museum corridors until I happened upon a quiet, seemingly mundane landscape by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Unobtrusively it hung, in a gallery centered around its opposite: a magnificent and inimitable sculpture, The Hand of God, no less, by Auguste Rodin.
Despite the beauty of this room, and the classical works contained, it was contemporary art that swirled through my head, pulling my attention in, demanding space. The student exhibition and its call for eyes, call for emotion, desperation to be seen, was right, and so due attention I gave.
But perhaps it was because my attention was still on that student exhibition, that the peace in this Corot landscape pulled me in. Staid and quiet as it was. Shallow in depth perhaps, but not without the subtly of a master. My eyes were directed more towards the atmosphere that Corot captured than the physical stroke itself.
None of this was intellectualized in the moment. At the time I had no idea what I would compose or which painting I would compose for. No, I left the museum unresolved, and walked the banks of the Woonasquatucket river on a day that was grey and unremarkable, not dissimilar to the one painted here.
I love this idea though, that you can approach a goal by not approaching it. I’m reminded of a concept from the Tao Te Ching: “The way that can be spoken of is not the way.” I wonder if it is in that indirectness, that adjacent nature of Being without be-ing that brings one closer to the answer they’re searching for.
Throughout his life, Corot painted the ponds and forests around Ville d'Avray, a village outside Paris where his family had a home. As here, the scenes he depicted were still and intimate, shallow in depth, and infused with an atmospheric blue-gray haze. He painted many versions of these views, calling them souvenirs in reference to their recurrence in his memory. His landscapes sometimes provided the backdrops for overtly classical subjects, but in this example the view itself is as significant as the figures gathering wildflowers.
Museum Appropriation Fund 24.089
Wall text for Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills. RISD Museum, Rhode Island
The following music NFT is my initial response to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's Banks of a River Dominated in the Distance by Hills, recorded on Nov 16, 2022 via voice memo at the Graduate Providence in Providence, RI. The cover art is a sineprint (a graphed room frequency response) of my room in the hotel.
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x278246a8239f998ddcdd347b2eb8bcdd2a69841e/3
This melody came out of a place of depression. I couldn't help but be effected by the grayness of the day, the reality of my life on tour (and its various hardships), and the general malaise I felt in my bones. The mood feels sullen and dark, perhaps too much for the narrative content of the painting. However, I hear this melody as a solo introduction played on clarinet, and as my imagination listens, the quality changes from one of darkness to one of contemplation.
That’s all for now.
Most sincerely, Niles Luther
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