Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sam Viviano's Recent Concert

     Last weekend, Sam Viviano gave a recital of music and poetry at Shady Grove Presbyterian Church, in Memphis. He played two of his own compositions, his metamorphoses on Chopin’s Nocturnes and his work for piano and reader entitled “Sports and Commotions.” I studied piano with Sam for almost ten years, and have heard him play on a number of occasions, but the experience is always both startling in its intensity, and deeply moving. For those of you who missed this performance, I hope you’ll get another chance to hear this brilliant performer. Sam, thanks for all you have done for me over the years. Your teaching, performing, and mentoring, has been of almost inexpressible value to all the musicians your life has touched.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Definition

     Often, the more precisely defined a thing is, the more limited is its potential.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Many Hands

As this website nears completion, I would like to thank the many helpful friends who contributed in some way to its development.  Anna Rae Palmer has patiently, creatively, and beautifully designed the site.  Guy Hillyer  hosts, is full of answers when I am full of questions, and has been my friend for these many years.  Shady Grove Presbyterian Church, and Jarad Bingham, have provided me a safe haven so that I am free to pursue my muse.  Nikii Richey and Spencer King have contributed poster designs to my performances over the last several years, and some of their designs grace the Interview page.  Murray Riss superbly photographed the paintings that appear in the Paintings page.  I humbly thank Josh Oxford, Richard Faria, Lecolion Washington (L-Dog!), Kristin Wolfe Jensen, and others whose recordings of my music either appear or are soon to appear on this site.  Michelle Vigneau indulgently collaborated with me on the interview, as well as premiering several of my works.  Others have contributed to my artistic progress in ways they may consider small, but were nonetheless important to me.  So, I also thank Dottie Pounders, Sam Viviano, Charles Mosby, Myron Myers, John Baur, Davis McCain, Carina Washington, Henning Washington, Matteus Washington, John Elmquist, Earle Donelson, Eric Mandat, Rhendle Millen, Julie Millen, Lea Queener, Allen Rippe, Richard Wornat, Caroline Fruchtman, Susan F. Wood, Norma Miller, Maria DeBacco, Paul Becker, Joe Davis, Lynn Raymond, Sharon Momany, Cullen Holliman, Ben Lewis, John Ingle, John Sullivan, Philip Gayle, Susan Snyder, Rene Miska, Hayes Biggs, Bobby England, Mary Strnad, Jerry Strnad, Andrew Jackson, James Richens, and others I may have either inexcusably overlooked, or knowingly omitted out of respect for their modesty.  I also thank my father, William Hardy Gray, and my paternal grandmother, Laura Hardy Gray.  My children, Ian Gray, and Christina Benn Hanlen, provide untold inspiration.  And finally, I wish to thank my lovely, loving, and awesomely supportive wife, Shelley Gray, without whose patient encouragement I would undoubtedly accomplish less.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

About the Painting Process

     Each color element, and its attendant texture, has a distinct personality that is partly inherent, partly predicated upon the space that it must occupy, and also partly predicated upon its perceived relationship to adjacent color elements. I usually develop my concept for a new painting by first engaging in what one might consider a sort of dramatization. This is a process of thrusting an imaginary scenario onto the unsuspecting color elements, thereby providing an invented foil against which the color elements then strive to define themselves, acquiring detailed personalities and characteristics in my mind. Vital to the overall process is the sub-process of textural accretion that occurs in a large number of my canvasses, by which I complicate the surface, thereby muting what would otherwise be an unqualified dominion of color interrelationships. The painting is usually complete, or nearly so, when the variform elements have arrived at a state of accommodation with one another. Note that this accommodation does not necessarily imply harmony, only relative stasis; a willingness, perhaps, to remain in a certain fixation for a brief stasis in time. The finished painting is therefore a frozen moment in a dance, a snapshot, if you will, of a single frame in an animation of poise and counter-poise that has neither beginning nor end. The image, if there is a generally perceivable image, is always secondary to the interplay of the color/texture elements. The universally identifiable image is, for me at least, a largely untrustworthy quantity that I feel the need to conceal with greater fervor than the accompanying urge to reveal.  The mood engendered by a painting's subject is of much greater concern to me than the subject itself.