Picture Studies

Album No. 32 | Released 2016

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About the Album

“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another to cause vibrations in the soul."

-Wassily Kandinsky

The title of this recording is drawn from American composer Adam Schoenberg’s collection of musical studies focused on transforming what we can see into what we can hear. For centuries, composers have endeavored to create pictures entirely through music, fueling the imagination to fill in the virtual colors as each listener hears them. Some music aims to paint a very specific tableau in the mind’s eye, while other music simply strives to capture an impression or a feeling that might be shared with the sight of something physical. Many of the major works for winds in this collection bear direct connections to the United States Marine Band, and several are represented here in their première recordings. Each piece explores a specific aspect of the notion that images of all kinds can live within the world of sound. From musical portraiture and tales from film and literature to representations of photographs, paintings, sculpture, and architecture, each work reveals the power music possesses to engage our senses, ignite our emotions, and conjure vivid pictures in the mind.

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