Live music program: Klänge at the Art Gallery

Experience a series of music performances celebrating the importance of music to the art of Vasily Kandinsky at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Settle in for some sensorially rich evenings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this summer with a free program of performances celebrating the importance of music to the art and thought of Vasily Kandinsky.

Featuring commissioned compositions alongside classics from the early 20th century, Klänge (meaning ‘sounds’ in German) is a series of live music sessions, co-curated with percussionist and composer Claire Edwardes OAM and performed by virtuosic members of Sydney’s Ensemble Offspring in collaboration with Grammy award–winning, Chicago-based group Eighth Blackbird.

Kandinsky explored the synergies between painting and music, and considered music’s abstract language a model for a new form of abstraction in painting. Using colour and form to elicit the sensations aroused through vibration, pitch and the duration of sound, he referred to kläng (‘sound’) throughout his writings and, on occasion, in the titles of his works. To Kandinsky, ‘sound’ was interchangeable with the notion of ‘inner resonance’ or ‘spiritual vibration’.

Klänge presents musical compositions that will riff and swirl in relation to the artist’s paintings presented in the Kandinsky exhibition at the Art Gallery.

Wednesdays 10–31 January, 7.30pm–8.30pm – free, no bookings required

Wednesday 7 and 14 February, 7.30pm–8.30pm – Included with Kandinsky exhibition entry