So, as it turns out, it’s WAY fun to have our audiences making art right alongside us! We hit the jackpot by partnering with the Chicago Mosaic School for our most recent Close Encounters event – titled Facets of Earth & Sound – and if the participant response was any indication, this was one of the most inspiring and entertaining Chicago-area classical music events of the year.
As with our Painting Party last season, we were bowled over by the levels of focus and creativity that listeners brought to the table. We performed excerpts of Beethoven’s enigmatic Op. 135 and Hans Thomalla’s on-the-precipice-of-silence Bagatellen while our friends – many of them Spektral first-timers – designed not one, but two original mosaics, inspired by the performance. Or “performances” as it were, since we played each piece twice so that the assembled could immerse themselves in the sonic environment before chipping away at glass and smalti.
We hope you’ll join us for our next Close Encounters show, but in the meantime, enjoy these photos by Loyola University photographer Mary Grace Ritter!
