And now we come to “Inwood,” Bill Osborne’s video impressions of the largely Hispanic, upper Manhattan neighborhood where he lived on his recent stay in New York. The images convey a very different city from both the glamorous hustle of Times Square at night, in Part 1, and the austere presence of the art deco Chrysler Building, in Part 2.
The music, by Maurice Ravel, is a setting of “Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé: no 1, Soupir.” Besides expressing his own moody sense of the neighborhood, Osborne illustrates Mallarme’s belief that “within the nothingness of reality” there is “an essence of perfect forms,” which the poet/artist “crystallizes through a central symbol, idea or metaphor.”
Put on your headphones, and click the photo or the title. Give it time to load. The music, by Maurice Ravel, is performed by Catherine Robbin (mezzo soprano) and André Laplante (piano), with Nora Shulman (flute); Camille Watts (flute); Joaquin Valdepeñas (clarinet); David Bourque (clarinet); Mark Skzainetsky (violin); Mi Hyon Kim (violin); Steven Dann (viola); Thomas Wiebe (cello). It’s recorded by the CBC Records/Musica Viva label on the CD “Ravel: Mélodies” (Cat. #: MVCD1128).
If you prefer the videos sequentially more or less as Osborne intended, instead of backwards (per the usual top-down chronological order of posting), just click here from top to bottom:
Part 1: “Times Square at Night.”
Part 2: “Chrysler Building.”
Part 3: “Inwood.”
