CBSO Deaf Project
Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' Gets a Visual Twist
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and the Deaf Cultural Centre worked in partnership to explore visual and aural links of Mussorgsky’s orchestral work ‘Pictures at an Exhibition'.
As part of a newly established education project, CBSO musicians including Deaf musician Sannah Gulamani and Deaf artists Fiona McLean and Iva Tetauerova worked with four local hearing impaired schools to develop creative performances that explore how musical themes can be represented visually, enabling creative music making opportunities.
Deaf Artist Fiona McLean creating a piece of art work with the children
involved in the project.
The main focus of the workshops has been to establish how Mussorgsky’s work can be interpreted through motion and colour, as Lisa Davies, co-ordinator explains; “Colour has always been an important part of life representation. We are accustomed to its connotations; red as danger or black meaning sombre.
“We are hoping to introduce this kind of visual representation into the performance at the Cultural Centre and although audience members won’t hear the music, they will be able to understand its content through symbolic movement and colours in the paintings.”
Deaf Artist Iva Tetauerova with the children from Longwill School for the Deaf
The final performance, took place on Monday 30th June 2008 and was attended by the pupils, their families and the teachers involved in creating the performance.
“It is really important to everyone involved that they are there to see the creative ideas and input on stage. Everyone involved in developing the creative performance has contributed ideas and it will be really great for them to see it come to fruition through a very unique style of performance.” continued Lisa.
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The Deaf Cultural Centre is a community driven environment created to explore Deaf cultural expression through art, music, theatre and film. Our dedicated team work alongside the community and a diverse array of partners to develop new projects that will allow for cultural development to continue.