Transformations: 6 Paintings of Carolyn Brunelle - David Evan Thomas

Composer: David Evan Thoma

Instrumentation: Solo piano

Duration: ca. 15'

Date Written: 2020 

Program note: Carolyn Brunelle’s April-May 2020 show at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis, Transformations, presented 22 paintings suggestive in their shape and dynamic in their bold and opposing colors. Because the 2020 pandemic had locked us all down, the show went up online. Carolyn’s pieces were so vivid, I immediately started thinking of them in musical terms. The musical process of layering harmonies and sculpting time is a set of transformations of its own. I chose six paintings, keeping Carolyn’s titles.

“Happy to Be Here” is all affirmation, a set of continuous variations on a short idea. “Night Owl” marches forth in ever more cheeky dotted rhythms. “Twist” is a saucy cha-cha that recalls the early 60s, with a few Beatles references thrown in. “Swiftly” is a whirring scherzo with one hand on the white keys, one on the black. I have swifts in my neighborhood, and I was also fascinated by a video of swifts swirling by the thousands, then pouring into a school chimney in Portland, Oregon. “Piano” sings in a voice of deep, vibrant red, cast in that quintessential piano form, the nocturne. “Barn Dance” is an uncomplicated rondo, alive with movement and cheer.