While in Chicago for business reasons we visited the Art Institute to see the show The Silk Road. This show is mainly a tour through the museum, highlighting pieces from the permanent collection that have a connection to the Silk Road - a wonderful way to take a closer look at some of the departments of the museum we sometimes skip in order to see the show of the moment.
Leaving the museum a brochure about upcoming concerts caught our eye with the announcement of a concert the next morning by the Yo Yo Mah Ensemble. It sounded exciting enough to return the next morning by 10 am. The concerts would take place throughout the galleries of the museum, not just in one place and it turned out that there would be story telling too. We started out with a small group at the starting point of the exhibition, the narrator was joined by two percussionists and started with a centuries old Chinese story about how silk was discovered. Now this was story telling at it's best, it took us back to the long gone days of childhood fairytale telling where you would sit speechlessly entranced in the story, following the voice of the narrator through magical landscapes and adventures.
The morning developed with several performances and very diverse and wonderful music, there were a Japanese and Persian flute player together with a Persian Shanu player who played in an almost dark gallery where all artefacts of a Japanese interior were displayed, they improvised and you really felt like you were inside a Japanese house. Musicians talked in an informal way with the ever growing group of people following them from room to room, while the ensemble grew to a group of ten with violins, a double bass and more percussionists performing music that varied from old folk music to modern classics.
The (world famous) story teller performed two more times capturing both young and old with his performance. Experiences like that make you realise how much is getting lost in an age of technology where hardly anybody takes the time to tell a good story anymore. Just like when I was a child, his words evoked pictures in my mind, pictures that are way more special as any movie can show me because they are mine and mine alone. Probably this is where my painting started, to paint the pictures that my mind made inspired by words...
Leaving the museum a brochure about upcoming concerts caught our eye with the announcement of a concert the next morning by the Yo Yo Mah Ensemble. It sounded exciting enough to return the next morning by 10 am. The concerts would take place throughout the galleries of the museum, not just in one place and it turned out that there would be story telling too. We started out with a small group at the starting point of the exhibition, the narrator was joined by two percussionists and started with a centuries old Chinese story about how silk was discovered. Now this was story telling at it's best, it took us back to the long gone days of childhood fairytale telling where you would sit speechlessly entranced in the story, following the voice of the narrator through magical landscapes and adventures.
The morning developed with several performances and very diverse and wonderful music, there were a Japanese and Persian flute player together with a Persian Shanu player who played in an almost dark gallery where all artefacts of a Japanese interior were displayed, they improvised and you really felt like you were inside a Japanese house. Musicians talked in an informal way with the ever growing group of people following them from room to room, while the ensemble grew to a group of ten with violins, a double bass and more percussionists performing music that varied from old folk music to modern classics.
The (world famous) story teller performed two more times capturing both young and old with his performance. Experiences like that make you realise how much is getting lost in an age of technology where hardly anybody takes the time to tell a good story anymore. Just like when I was a child, his words evoked pictures in my mind, pictures that are way more special as any movie can show me because they are mine and mine alone. Probably this is where my painting started, to paint the pictures that my mind made inspired by words...
1 comment:
Marina, I know I am going to enjoy this blog! and what a great experience you had at the Art Institute--
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