By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
On Tuesday night, spectacular starscapes and the night skies will appear before you on a big screen, in time to piano compositions by Mussorgsky and Debussy performed live on stage by an award-winning pianist.
“It’s a really extraordinary combination of art and science,” says Sitka Fine Arts Camp Director Roger Schmidt, producer of “The Universe at an Exhibition.”
The combination music-photography-film program will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Performing Arts Center.
Photographer, astronomer and educator Jose Francisco Salgado put together the photography show to accompany Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Dubussy’s “Clair de Lune,” performed by pianist Christopher Staknys.
Pianist Christopher Staknys rehearses Sunday afternoon at the PAC.
“What makes this a really remarkable show is we’re projecting a film sharing some of the most spectacular pictures of outer space, and illustrating through scientific imagery, how the universe is made, and all the beauty in it,” Schmidt said.
Both Salgado and Staknys have worked with SFAC programs before, Salgado as a faculty member of the arts and sciences festival and Staknys as an accompanist at the Fine Arts Camp.
Solgado’s films have been shown around the world, accompanied by some of the world’s top orchestras and symphonies. “Universe at an Exhibition,” with the piano composition, is a world premiere.
His multimedia programs regularly sell out when performed in concert halls in major cities.
“We’re really lucky he’s coming here,” Schmidt said.
Salgado, a PhD astronomer, will address the audience before the pieces are performed, and answer questions at the end. Staknys will perform the pieces live on stage, while Schmidt, times the images with the music, according to Salgado’s design.
Schmidt says Salagado “is just one of those people you love talking to. He just is so excited about the phenomena of nature and science. You know when you meet someone who finds the world wondrous? He’s that person.”
The photography includes images and film from NASA and the European Space Agency along with Salgado’s own work.
“He does a lot of work using the camera to capture the beauty of the natural universe, using the camera to see things that our naked eyes are unable to see,” Schmidt said of the Emmy-nominated astronomer.
While the music in the program is regularly performed by symphonies, the Tuesday program features works written for piano, before they were arranged for orchestra.
“We’re going back to the original pieces,” Schmidt said.
Both Schmidt and Salgado said there is a natural connection between science and the arts.
“They are completely connected, because both are driven by curiosity,” Schmidt said. “Science helps us see the world and how we fit in it, and art helps us understand how we feel. We are made out of our logical mind and our hearts. Science and art go together because it combines our hearts and our minds.”
“All you have to do is look back to the Renaissance men, like DaVinci who was a scientist, artist, engineer,” Salgado said.
“There’s so much science in art-making,” he said. “If you’re constructing an instrument, you need to know acoustics – that’s physics. The key word is creativity. It’s needed not just to create art, it’s used to create science. That’s the way you make discoveries and find solutions, by being creative in the process. If you don’t push yourself to try new things and think outside the norm, you will not make discoveries. They overlap.”
In 2005, Salgado was working on science outreach and communication at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago when the organization was approached by the Chicago Sinfonietta.
“They asked us if we could come up with some kind of projection they could do while performing ‘The Planets’ by Gustav Holst for two concerts in 2006,” Salgado said. “I had already been working on graphic arts, graphic design, to communicate science, but I had not done motion graphics ... Instead of just creating a static slide show I decided to make a film that would very closely follow the character and tempo of the music because I thought otherwise just presenting pretty pictures would be a distraction and take away from the music.”
Not surprisingly, the program was a huge hit.
“After that I started getting invitations from other orchestras to produce new films as well,” he said.
The success of the programs led to his founding in 2010 of the nonprofit KV 265, whose mission is the communication of science through the arts. The company produces films and markets them to symphonies and orchestras. Salgado does science outreach and educational activities to support the concerts.
Before talking to the Sentinel this morning, he had a session with Keet Gooshi Heen students, who have Starlab classes this week. “Lots of questions, lots of hands up,” Salgado said of his visit.
Salgado described himself as a “music geek ... I’m a big music enthusiast.”
Salgado’s Science & Symphony films have been presented in 230 concerts and 180 lectures reaching a combined audience of more than 460,000 people in 19 countries, as far away as Singapore. Orchestras that have presented these works include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino.
Salgado’s first two films were named by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO as Special Projects for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 and, in 2016, his short film “Carol of the Lights” was commissioned by Keith Lockhart and Boston Pops and presented 33 times to almost 75,000 people.
“This is the first time we’ve presented Pictures at an Exhibition with one pianist,” Salgado said, and turned to Staknys to say, “You are part of KV 265 History. ... He’s going to be great.”
Staknys said he has played Clair de Lune before, but not Pictures.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to play but never had the opportunity, never gotten around to it, until now,” he said. “I was excited to get to learn it.”
Tickets are $20 general, $15 for youths and are available in advance at Old Harbor Books or online at fineartscamp.org.
