The Metropolitan Music Community's schedule is filled to the brim with performances: May and June feature four performance dates for our three ensembles!
Kings County Concert Band will end an amazing first year with their Spring Concert on Saturday, May 20 at 3 PM. Grand Street Community Band is preparing two final performances: An American Tapestry on Saturday, June 3 at 7 PM and Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, June 13 at 8 PM. Brooklyn Wind Symphony will close out their season with No Strings Attached on Saturday, June 10 at 3 PM. Mark those calendars, RSVP, and invite your friends!
Social media is jam packed with beautiful art promoting these sure-to-be incredible performances! The MMC blog spoke with members of the design and marketing teams about the inspiration for their work, and you can see all of the pieces below!
Flying into spring....
Kate Kerbel: I began thinking about springtime in the sense of plants and animals and then found my way to Charley Harper. One of the first places I was exposed to his art was in an ornithology lab upstate surrounded by nature. He's known for his modern and colorful animal artwork - especially birds. He describes the musical song of the bird as his inspiration which resonated with us for the "spring concert".
Ally Chapel: Charlie Harper 's birds scream spring and evoke nothing but joy. Charlie Harper wrote a lot of prose about nature; like the music of birds, animals, and [about] spring specifically; so I like that we included a bit of the prose in the program.
Creating "An American Tapestry"....
Alex Rice: I wanted to avoid making the concept art for this cycle too political, which led me to brainstorm something simple, like incorporating music notes into a map of America. I opened an image of a map in Photoshop and began drawing notes into the states on a new layer, then eliminated the map and made adjustments to my drawing to make it feel more cohesive. From there I brought the drawing into Illustrator to clean it up a bit and played around with colors.
Whilst working I listened to a playlist of the music. I find that in general if I’m working on a design project that is music-related, listening to the music I’m designing for helps keep me focused and in the correct mindset.
Modernizing a Classic....
Alyssa Pry: I liked the idea of contrasting the classical and ornate feel of Carnegie Hall with a modern and clean design. I don't have much of an artistic background, but I love doing layout design--it plays into my type-A, detail orientated personality! So I started working with the shapes and then incorporated simple typography.
Grand Street will be performing pieces from all three cycles, so I wanted to highlight the ensemble as a whole, using images, instead of working off of a specific piece of music as a central theme.
Feeling Free...
Kate Kerbel: BKWS is playing pieces typically performed by string orchestras that have been transcribed for wind band. This imagery was a bit of a play on words: the images are created from a series of Degas' famous ballerina paintings - the organic form of the ballerina has no bounds and moves "with no strings attached".
My favorite piece that BKWS is performing this concert is Bernstein's Suite from Mass; we have a running joke about making it sound as light as a ballerina.