Red Cedar concerts merge science, art

Science and art find their natural intersection in Red Cedar Chamber Music’s season finale, “Physics, Art & Music.”

The program, which has been playing in smaller Eastern Iowa venues since late March, is coming to Ballantyne Auditorium at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids on April 10. Mainstage concerts will be given where art lives and breathes, in the University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art in Iowa City on April 22 and at CSPS Hall in Cedar Rapids on April 23.

“Red Cedar is well known for its innovative and varied programs which explore many musical styles and frequently include other art forms in the narrative of the concert program,” artistic director and cellist Carey Bostian of Iowa City said in a news release. “We see ourselves not just as performers, but as storytellers and educators.

“This program explores the story of the development of Western music from the earliest recorded history, its relationship to visual art and architecture, and most importantly, the physics of sound and the natural principles which have governed the development of instruments and music over thousands of years.”

Joining Bostian and violinist Miera Kim, Red Cedar’s executive director, are violinist Alex Norris of Iowa City and violist Donghee Han, a native of Seoul, South Korea, who is working on her doctoral degree at the University of Iowa.

They will perform string quartet music by Michael Kimber of Iowa City, Red Cedar’s composer-in-residence for 2019-2023.

Kimber has created three works for string quartet that “celebrate human ingenuity and our path through time as artists,” Bostian said. The story begins with the first known written music, the “Song of Seikilos,” found carved into a 1st century gravestone. “We then explore the harmonic overtone series and demonstrate its application in the engineering of instruments through time and the science of harmony in music.”

The program’s main work, “Music Through the Ages,” delves into 2,000 years of Western art music, accompanied by more than 100 images of art and architecture relevant to the style and time period of the music.

The visual presentation is being curated by University of Iowa Professor of Art History Robert Bork, with assistance from Red Cedar intern Amelia Johnson, a UI undergraduate student double majoring in art history and music performance. The music, arranged and composed by Kimber, includes 30 pieces representing “significant” developments in compositional technique and style over two millenniums.

The final work, “Four Sketches,” by Kimber, was inspired by the art of Monet, van Gogh, Kandinsky and Wood. Each short piece is in the style of the painting — impressionist, postimpressionist, abstract and regionalist — and is accompanied by a descriptive verse by the composer.

Red Cedar recently resumed taking the program into area elementary schools, after the pandemic put it on pause in 2020. The ensemble’s lesson plans typically are derived from their concert programs. This one, however, was designed to create innovative curriculum that explores the relationship of STEM to the arts and the history of civilization, Bostian noted.

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