Sculpting Time: Patrick Burke & Florent Ghys
The Time-Based + Media Art area continues Sculpting Time, a new series of conversations for members of the WashU community, featuring invited media artists, composers, and researchers who work with and investigate time. Curated by Monika Weiss, professor of art and faculty affiliate at the Department of Music, the series is inspired by the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s notion of “sculpting in time” and his book of the same title. On November 17, two guest speakers will address issues related to music history and practice, invited as part of the syllabus of Time Based Art Practice | Sound Environments studio.
About Patrick Burke
Patrick Burke is associate professor and chair of the Department of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2013-14 and 2022, he was a guest scholar at the University of Oslo, and he served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Musicological Society from 2013 to 2018. He was project director, researcher, and writer for the digital humanities project “Music and Racial Segregation in Twentieth-Century St. Louis: Uncovering the Sources.” Burke’s current research addresses the role of the Norwegian shipping industry in establishing Western ideas and stereotypes about music of the global South during the Age of Empire. His book Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (University of Chicago Press, 2008) addresses nostalgia, and the coexistence of “modern” and “historic” jazz styles that relate to the broad theme of Sculpting Time. He is also the author of Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
About Florent Ghys
French double bassist and composer Florent Ghys’ music has been described as “highly contrapuntal, intelligent and inventive” (WQXR-FM), and a “thrilling breed of post-minimal chamber music” (Time Out NY). His pieces “blend elements of minimalism, pop music, and a dose of extravagant wit” (John Schaefer, WNYC) while his cat videos “have attained viral fame” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). Ghys has written music for some of today’s most influential ensembles and soloists, including the Bang on a Can All-Stars, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, So Percussion, Nick Photinos, and Jack Quartet. His music has been performed at the Lincoln Center, BAM, the Barbican Center, MIT, Sydney Opera House, and the Muziekgebouw. Ghys holds a Maîtrise in ethnomusicology, a Diplôme d'Études Musicales in double bass performance, a MM in music theory and composition, an MFA, and a PhD in music composition and technology from Princeton University. His most recent double album Ritournelles & Mosaïques is available online. .