Guest pianist plays to the color of sounds
By Roger McBain (Contact)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Most musicians speak metaphorically when they talk about musical colors.
Bryan Wallick, the internationally acclaimed pianist headlining the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra's Classics concert in The Victory on Saturday, uses the word literally.
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Bryan Wallick, the soloist for Saturday's Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra concert, will discuss his music, his synesthesia and Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with music director Alfred Savia at a preconcert talk at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Wallick, soloist for Saturday's performance of Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, says he hears in color.
In a phenomenon known as synesthesia, a "union of the senses," Wallick says, he envisions particular colors when he hears specific notes in the 12-tone scale. His musical palette includes blends of white, yellow, orange, blue, green, red black and brown.
"For instance while playing in C major, I see white (C), green (E) and red (G) in my peripheral mind's eye," he explains.
"While playing in E-flat minor, I see a darker blue green (E-flat), a darker red orange and a shadowy black (B-flat)."
Most of his musical visualizations usually contain at least three colors, he says. "I'm usually not aware of more than five or six different colors, although I can have this experience, particularly in modern music."
Working with a project grant from the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Center for the Performing Arts, Wallick developed a multimedia program featuring a shifting screen display of the colors he envisioned while performing a piece.
He'll keep his colors to himself when he plays with the Evansville Philharmonic, but he'll share all the sounds that have brought him acclaim as a pianist around the world.
Wallick is a Midwesterner from Hammond, Ohio, who went on to undergraduate and master's degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and a postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy of Music in England.
He was still a student when he won international acclaim as gold medalist in the 1997 Vladimir Horowitz International Piano competition in Kiev, Russia. Wallick has gone on to perform in recital and with orchestras around the world.
Wallick makes his home in South Africa, now, traveling to performances as he builds his international career.
Alfred Savia, the Evansville Philharmonic's music director, first heard Wallick play about a year ago, when the pianist, back in the United States to visit his parents, offered to come to Evansville to audition for a soloist's spot with the philharmonic.
"He played for me backstage in The Victory," recalls Savia, "and he just knocked my socks off."
Wallick will discuss his music, his synesthesia, and Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Savia at a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. Saturday.
He'll perform on a program that will feature the orchestra in Hector Berlioz' Love Scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and in Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/jan/15/philharmonic-orchestra-guest-pianist-plays-to-of/
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