Michael Wilson has been taking photographs of Nonesuch Records artists for 25 years, and of me for 15. Above, a portrait as a fresh New Yorker in 2009, included in a special compendium of 25 of Michael’s pictures Nonesuch has just published. I was honored to write the intro­duc­tory note. And here it is:

⁂

Michael Wilson approaches a portrait session as a conver­sa­tion. His pictures become mementos of mutual trust between photog­ra­pher and subject. This ad hoc rela­tion­ship cannot be antic­i­pated or constructed in advance; it must be discov­ered through trial and error, impro­vi­sa­tion, and meeting halfway. Like with live perfor­mances, there’s a spon­tane­ity to the result. For those who know the music of the artists Michael has photographed for Nonesuch Records (drawn here from 67 projects begin­ning in 1998), the photographs suggest potent metaphors without forcing them, fusing sound-images with faces, musical compo­si­tions with visual ones. The rigorous struc­tures of Steve Reich’s music seem to manifest in the grid of a mono­lithic wall filling the frame, the composer’s iconic profile an accent in the lower corner. Audra McDonald’s musical story­telling seems to lead the viewer’s gaze down the wooded path behind her.

In the more formal portraits (Rhiannon Giddens, Ambrose Akin­musire, or Philip Glass) one feels the momen­tary atten­tion of a person­al­ity in a specific place, on a certain day. Such photo­graphic inten­sity would not be possible without craft—that is to say, working within the given constraints to find resource­ful solu­tions to the problems they impose. Michael’s default constraint is the square frame of his medium format Rolleiflex—the closest thing to a physical embod­i­ment of his mind’s eye, as he puts it. Within the square, he arranges subject and setting with a graphic artist’s sense of rhythm, visual echoes rebound­ing. The members of Kronos Quartet, backed into a corner but looking defiant, are crowned by the four cardinal direc­tions of a compass rose. Ry Cooder and Manuel Galbán are dwarfed by a monu­men­tal door, whose pattern of tele­scop­ing squares hangs above the two men like so many empty picture frames.

continue reading →

New little bagatelle for you today—four hands in four minutes. This is Tangent, written for the Yale Schwarz­man Center and premiered in New York City last night. Thanks to the redoubtable Conor Hanick for laying down those triplets.