Creative Cross-Fertilization

Recently, I attended a concert at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Orleans, performed by the chamber orchestra I Musici de Montreal, founded and conducted by Yuli Turovsky. They played some Mozart to start, and then the work of a composer I'd never heard of before – Modest Moussorgsky, called Pictures at an Exhibition, but with a twist. The screen above the musicians, showed an animated version of the art of Viktor Hartmann, a friend of the composer. It was Hartmann's art that inspired Moussorgsky to write the music he did.

In the performance I attended, the art and the music came together, with the art cleverly reinterpreted with surrealistic flow and movement (animated, if you like) by the composer's daughter.

I love the idea of art inspiring music which in turn inspired the flowing animation of the art we saw, all of which inspired me to write this entry in this blog.

It reminded me that any form of art inspires and stirs creativity. That exposure to other artistic mediums can enrich, inform, and enhance our own.

For example, when I was writing my picture book story, Roses for Gita, (a sequel to my picture book Lights for Gita) a crucial, and I think magical, scene in the story fell into place during a Suzuki violin concert in which my daughter was playing. The inward expressions of the kids as they made beautiful music together made me suddenly realize that music is a language of its own, and that a difficult character in the story Roses for Gita, Mr. Flinch, might just be reached through music. I had an image of him, this grumpy, cantankerous old man, playing the violin, his face inward and absorbed with the music, caught in its delight.

That image sent a chill through me and I knew it was right for the book.

In my next post on Oct 22th, I'll suggest some ways in which you can use music to enhance your writing as well as find out more about your characters.