Improvised Double Bass & Leslie Laskey converse
Photo by Ellie Erhard
How Leslie and Paul got started
Artist/painter/educator Leslie Laskey has been a strong creative influence on Paul’s work interfacing music and visual arts. In 2016, Paul and his family began spending time with Leslie at his summer studio in Northern Michigan. In Leslie’s studio there is a steady flow of former art students from Washington University coming to be revitalized in their professional careers. Leslie is a master at encouraging looking at life and one’s surroundings in new ways, always challenging his students to keep their creative process growing. Being with Leslie and his students has given Paul a deeper understanding of visual arts and inspired Paul to expand his musical creativity in ways that led to Time Art – Space Art. In May, 2020, Paul and Leslie’s summer collaboration began with Paul recording over 70 improvisations seeking to capture in music elements of Leslie’s 2020 painting project he calls “The Poetry of Landscape.” This was followed by multiple sessions in Michigan as Paul and Leslie explored developing a language for their music/painting creations. Leslie refers to his painted gestures on paper as marks, which for him have musical sounds. Leslie and Paul’s work involves a dialogue of Leslie finding words to express what he “hears” with each mark, and Paul translating Leslie’s explanations into sound. The two discuss and play back and forth until Leslie is satisfied with Paul’s musical renditions. Their work together continued in January 2021 with a number of “Marks and Music” exploration meetings in a continuation of the fascination Leslie and Paul have for their artistic journey together.
One of Leslie Laskey’s “Poetry of Landscape” collage that Paul improvised to.
Leslie & Paul at work outside Leslie’s Northern Michigan studio, Leslie “marking” and Paul interpreting. Photo by Lulu Wild
In one of the early summer 2020 sessions, Leslie began with a blue X followed by additional marks in black. Paul used this painting as the subject matter for his piece “Acorns on the Roof” for solo double bass. Like the painting which has four sections, “Acorns on the Roof” is in four main sections. In a compact rondo form A B A’ C A” D A”’ E A (coda), the rondo theme A represents one arm of the blue X. The internal “marks” are translated loosely into the contrasting melodic ideas B, C, D, and E. With each return, the rondo theme is varied from the original. The work, focusing on the lower register of the double bass, incorporates a number of Leslie Laskey observations of polka dance feel, low, high, dark, percussive, lyrical, connected….. “Acorns on the Roof” was composed for a documentary film on Leslie Laskey that is being made by film maker David Wild. Acorns is dedicated to Leslie Laskey.
Leslie Laskey “Blue X”
Leslie and Paul and “Blue X” outside Leslie’e Northern Michigan studio
Filmed by David Wild in Karl’s Barn in Northern Michigan
In the video below from their January 7, 2021 meeting, Leslie and Paul explore translating Leslie’s “marks” into double bass sounds. Leslie “marks” and then explains what he hears with each mark. The improvisation process begins as Leslie and Paul work to create a musical rendition of Leslie’s thick black pastel drawing. This process was conducted over zoom with Leslie in St. Louis and Paul in Boulder during one of the duo’s sessions preparing for their January 19, 2021 7:30 pm livestreamed “Marks and Music” performance as part of Paul’s Faculty Tuesday recital at the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music.
Leslie Laskey and Paul Erhard create”Persian Carpet” on January 19, 2021 via zoom from St. Louis, MO, and Boulder, CO
LESLIE LASKEY
Leslie Laskey, born in 1921 in Northern Michigan, enlisted in the US army in World War II (England, France, Germany and Belgium), was discharged after 5 years, came to New York and then on to Chicago. Leslie Laskey studied at the Chicago Institute of Design (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) with founder and American Bauhaus pioneer László Moholy-Nagy. Leslie joined the faculty at North Carolina State U in 1952. In 1954 Leslie was awarded a prestigious Rockefeller Grant to work and study at Indiana University to pursue an extra master of Fine Arts degree. He joined the faculty of the Washington University School of Architecture in 1956 and was soon charged with developing the basic design program. In 1982 he received the Distinguished Faculty Award, and in 1986 he received the Distinguished Professor Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Named Professor Emeritus in 1987, Lasky trained generations of students in a career spanning five decades. Painter, printmaker, sculptor and photographer, Leslie Laskey is a man of many talents. He remains a prolific artist who continually pushes the artistic envelope, both in his daily life, as well as in all expressions of his multi-faceted art. His collaborations with double bassist Paul Erhard began in the summer of 2020 with improvised conjunctions of marks and sounds. Laskey has stayed faithful to his Bauhaus roots by his continual exploration of the process through abstraction and form, positive and negative shapes, color relationships and a wide variety of materials. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, North Carolina, and St. Louis.
Leslie painted the portrait “Music in plain aire” as Paul and his bass performed for students at Leslie’s summer artists camp outside his studio in Northern Michigan in 2017.