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Chicago's 'Ten x Ten' Paired Composers with Visual Artists...'Hear x See' the Results

Exploring the relationships between sound and color, ten composers and ten visual artists were tasked to create ten collaborative works for "Ten x Ten," an event conceived and organized by Homeroom in Chicago.

And now, the resulting music and art will be unveiled on November 16 at Chicago's Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art.

The event will also serve as a release party for Ten x Ten, a vinyl LP of the musical works for chamber ensemble, accompanied by a booklet of the art prints published by Spudnik Press Cooperative.

Doors open at 6:00 p.m. for an exhibition of the art works, followed by a performance of the musical ones from the Palomar Ensemble--the resident ensemble of Access Contemporary Music.

Seth Boustead, executive director of Access Contemporary Music, is one of the composers who participated in the "Ten x Ten" project. He worked with visual artist Renee Robbins to create Deep at Sea, a collaboration Boustead describes as artistically rewarding.

He spoke further: "Renee and I went back and forth constantly. She sent me sketches, and I would send her musical sketches back in the form of MIDI files. She wanted to do something with the ocean that involved depth, stillness and motion. The idea of 'depth' I took to mean seriousness. The concept of motion became a kind of stormy section in the piece that subsided into stillness at the end. Some of her sketches reminded me of Japanese watercolors. I ran with that musically too."

The collaborative process innate to "Ten x Ten," Boustead maintains, led him to write music that was very different from any he had written before.

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