Fascinating art project: a music college graduate from Freising composes a suite that revolves around works of art

This is an extraordinary art project: a Freising music college graduate set paintings to music.

Freising

- It is without a doubt one of those art projects that are casting their shadows and will certainly leave an echo.

Because with “Semikola” the composer and musician Lukas Maier succeeded in doing something that in the end can hardly be put into words, except fascinating, beautiful and deeply touching the heart.

With his work he is breaking completely new ground and setting three paintings by three unique artists to music.

The anticipation was clearly in the air when Maier pressed “Play” for the first time while filming the “Semikola” documentary in Freising, and the three women involved, Sallie McIlheran, Laura Mayer and Tanja Riebel, set their works of art to music for the first time could hear.

Because that is the unusual thing about the project of the graduate of the Musikhochschule Munich in the subject Composition for Film and Media: It is not a film that he has chosen for his thesis to compose for.

For his graduation he wanted to slip into the role of the director himself and embark on a musical journey without having to stick to a script.

The silence of the paintings attracted the artist

The silence of the paintings was extremely appealing to him and the interpretation of the three points of view was a challenge, for which he was able to quickly win his professor, the well-known musician Gerd Baumann (three-quarter blood).

The result is the orchestral suite “Semikola” in three movements, and it has it all.

Maier precisely captures the different focuses of the painters in drama and dynamism and thus pays them the deepest and most touching respect.

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Masters of image and sound composition: (front) Sallie McIlheran (left) and Tanja Riebel, (rear) Laura Mayer and Lukas Maier.

© Lorenz

Around eleven minutes, the suite outlines the impressive works by Sallie McIlheran, Laura Mayer and Tanja Riebel, which revolve around a common theme, namely the climate crisis. While McIlheran's picture “Tree of Dreams” is fragile and looks back, Mayer's “Consumption” is a mythical creature between megalomania and the preamble of doom. "Swamped" by Riebel can possibly be understood as a warning and at the same time a vision for the future, so to speak the quiet phase after the great storm of changes.

Maier makes brilliant use of all musical possibilities in order to search for the heartbeats of the artists and to find them.

Because that is important to the composer: a respectful approach without putting one's own art form higher.

With his work, Maier primarily wants to invite and pick up people, animate them to think.

This is where semicolons, the semicolons, come into play: for the composer an appealing cipher for everything that does not end clearly, but is rather a continuation.

Like music per se, but also the cycle of pictures by McIlheran, Mayer and Riebel - and ultimately also the climate crisis.

Musical plea for women in art

It is also extremely important for Maier to use this project to show how underrepresented women are normally in the art world, which annoys him quite a bit.

There are structures in this industry that keep talent away because of the gender issue.

For him, the task of men is therefore also to create opportunities for a variety of perspectives, although he emphasizes that he did not choose the artists for this, but because he highly valued their work.

Maier is also very happy that he was able to win the conductor Sonja Lachenmayr and the Munich Symphony Orchestra, which recorded his suite, for his composition.

(By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

The documentary about the development of the project, including interviews with women artists and the world premiere of the “Semikola” suite, will be shown on YouTube at the end of November this year.

The Kickstart Culture Initiative of the Uferlos GmbH together with the Freisinger Bank promoted the film documentation.

A live performance of the composition is also planned.

So this project, that amalgamation of fine art and composition, is basically anything but a semicolon, but rather an exclamation point as a whole.

And a very clear one!

Richard Lorenz