Premiere: New Art New Music Concert at Rice Gallery, Houston, TX, April 16th, 2016

 

Duration:  ca. 5'30"

 

Program Note:

 

Bric-a-Brac was composed as a fanfare for Thorsten Brinkmann’s exhibition The Great Cape Rinderhorn at Rice Gallery. The work explores Brinkmann’s self-proclaimed title as a serialsammler, or serial collector. Just as Brinkmann takes everyday objects and trash and complies them into an imaginary “decaying palace” complete with a constructed living room with paintings, a movie theater, hallways, and a bedroom, Bric-a-Brac complies quirky musical materials in the trumpet, bass, and vibraphone, and accumulates them on top of each other over the progression of the piece. The work references "Guilty," an old standard by George Shearing and Al Bowlly playing continuously on loop in the interior room’s record player, evoking the musty old living filled with cobwebs and antiques mixed with the gaudy colors of pop art.

 

Visit the Rice Gallery website (http://www.ricegallery.org/thorsten-brinkmann/) for more information and pictures of the exhibition.