Photo: End of the Northwest Road, Mouth of the Hoh River, Hoh Indian Tribe Reservation, WA
Northwest “Landscape Painting” With Music
As inevitably as the light piercing the mist, the landscape reveals its story in mysterious, subtle, ever-changing ways — music for the eyes. Painting these NW landscapes with music is an art form that defies description as a genre; it is as much about painting a strong mood and feeling as it is a depiction of a type of music. The art of musical landscape painting can be defined by reference to groundbreaking pioneers who explored the instrumental palette . . . John Renborn, Alex De Grassi, Pat Metheny, Eric Johnson, Steve Kimock, and Mike Stern to name a few.
The Northwest Song Movement
On Whidbey Island, along the Port Townsend coast, and in small towns throughout the Olympic Peninsula, one hears from dozens of active composers creating interpretations of this mist and light landscape -- pilgrims on the path to express the northwest mood. It has been the same with painters in the Pacific Northwest Art School; with poets in Fishtown in the Skagit Valley; and with the innovative glassblowers in the Pilchuck Glass School in north Snohomish County.
These contemporary northern seaboard artists are cut of the same cloth, with different tools and inflections, but they share a common drive to express what is seen and felt in the ever-changing landscape of the NW sea, forests, and mountains. The skill sets vary, but an organic cadre of contemporary musicians in this seacoast region is creating a musical form worthy of distinction. Taken together, the form is a cross-pollination of musical ideas and approaches among writers and players. With very little talk, they listen to each others’ performances and communicate their common descriptions of this place, through music — fortunately for the active listener in the NW, the sky is open, ever-changing, and possibilities seem endless.
On Higher Ground, Tomás Santiago (as he is known on stage) offers his rendition of this northwest mood and form, bringing together a talented group of northwest “A” players active in the local scene. The album emerged in step with the transcendent watercolors of Carole Dawes, a Whidbey Island painter, bringing her well-grounded interpretations of the island landscape to the canvas. The steel string guitar recordings on Storm is Gone and Higher Ground ring out because of the unique, in-place recording engineering artistry of Port Townsend’s George Rezendes. Please join us in supporting this emerging northwest song movement, the Pacific Northwest Art School on Whidbey Island, and all of the continually evolving groups of artists on the Peninsula and in the Islands of the Salish Sea.