For me, it’s the listening and the seeing that count.

There’s a strong link between music and the visual arts. French Impressionism found its realization in the paintings of Monet and the music of Debussy. American minimalism evolved in the music of Steve Reich and the paintings of Frank Stella. Found objects started showing up in the visual arts around the same time that found sounds or samples insinuated their way into contemporary music. This Friday, May 9th, The Signal spends most of the evening lining up music that’s been influenced by or makes a reference to the visual arts.

Some people’s creativity is both aural and visual. Arnold Schoenberg wasn’t just a ground breaking avant-garde composer, he was also a member of the Blaue Reiter group of painters. The legendary folk singer Joni Mitchell’s painting has taken up more of her creative energy as the years have passed and Temple Bates and Amy Bowles from Pony Da Look split their creativity between music and the visual arts. A recent show at the Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto showcased the visual work of a number of Canadian indie-rockers, from Buck 65 to Chad VanGaalen.

Some composers are just inspired by the visual arts. Gunther Schuller used his Seven Studies on Themes by Paul Klee as a platform to bring jazz into new classical music in the late 50s. Harry Freedman gave up his dream of being a visual artist, but wrote quite a few major works inspired by paintings and his friends who were painters, including Harold Town. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s new Composer-in-Residence, Vincent Ho has tried to transmute the emotion of the visual medium into music in his Nighthawks (interpreting the famous painting by Edward Hopper) and Four Paintings by Leestemaker – we’ll hear the second movement on the show.

Is it possible to convey the same emotions or sensations that can be expressed with visuals in the temporal dimensions of sound? I’m not sure that’s answerable, given the current state of scientific research. But I don’t think there’s any question that all of the different art forms try to express the spirit of their times. And in our diverse age, there are many simultaneously existing aesthetics. The ultra polished and DIY often appear side by side. We value the pure emotion of Kyrie Kristmanson singing a cappella in her Song for a Blackwind and we’re thrilled by the total control that comes through in Cornelius’s Fit Song (The Books Eat White Paint Remix). The extremes of the virtuoso and the naïve seem to attract us. Perhaps it’s the non-verbal nature of most music and visual art that allows them to take in the same territory. We desperately need the grey area that exists beyond language, so we can indulge in our own creativity –interpreting what we hear and see, putting our own kind of order on the world around us.

I’ve given up worrying about the technicalities of this debate. There’s just too much good music and art to experience. For me, it’s the listening and the seeing that count.