UW-Whitewater music professor brings unique performance downtown
September 02, 2016
Written by Kristin Zaballos | Photo by Craig Schreiner
UW-Whitewater professor Benjamin Whitcomb plays cello during Mozart's "A Musical Joke." Six musicians — three students and three faculty members — performed Mozart in the atrium of Greenhill Center of the Arts over the lunch hour on January 27, 2016 in honor of the composer's 260th birthday.
Benjamin Whitcomb, professor of cello and music theory at UW-Whitewater, will be performing Bach's Suites Cycle in a public art experience in downtown Whitewater that will fill pavement with color as music fills the air.
On Tuesday, September 6, beginning at 5 p.m., Whitcomb will perform the six suites, which comprise 36 movements that range in length from 1 to 5 minutes, accompanied by Madison artists Bethany Dahl and Tom Taagen. The artists will sketch as Whitcomb plays, completing a sidewalk square for each of the movements.
The performance will take about 90 minutes, allowing for breaks, with Whitcomb seated and shifting his chair and electric cello between movements as needed to allow for the artists' progression. The piece will be performed along a city sidewalk on Whitewater Street, across from Whitewater's Cravath Lakefront Park, where the bustling Whitewater City Market will be taking place.
Whitcomb says he has been looking forward to an opportunity to perform again, especially with a different spin on it.
"I love performing," said Whitcomb. "And I love the Bach Suites. I've seen firsthand how often people are amazed by the beauty of a Bach cello suite. The artists will add a whole new dimension to it."
He added, "It provides a handy excuse to finally make myself perform on an electric cello. Many of my students have, so it's high time!"
Accompanying Whitcomb with chalk will be artists Bethany Dahl, a 23-year-old senior from Winona, Minnesota, studying art at UW-Madison, and Tom Taagen, a UW-Madison graduate.
Whitcomb hopes to inspire his current cello students and possibly recruit others to come study with him in UW-Whitewater's music department, where he has taught since 1999.
"Doing creative performances like these often opens doors," said Whitcomb.
Each of the six suites consists of six movements: a prelude that establishes the mood, a German dance, a French dance, a Spanish dance, a variable pair of dances and an English dance. Each of the suites has its own personality, according to the musician, who thinks of the first suite as friendly and the third suite as exuberant. And the piece has its share of technical challenges.
"The sixth suite was originally written for a five-stringed instrument. Playing on a cello, which only has four strings, is very difficult - it really is a virtuoso piece."
Bach suites have been famously performed with a visual accompaniment in the past, including Yo-Yo Ma's live performance of Cello Suite No. 2 (Courante) on the Late Show with Colbert with American Ballet Theatre ballet dancer Misty Copeland. Whitcomb hopes that the marriage of music and visual art at the September 6 event will be similarly inspiring.
"One thing I'm sure of," he said. "For the people in attendance, the art on the sidewalk will have a different meaning to them for having been drawn to a ‘soundtrack' of the Bach suites, and the Bach suites will sound different when heard while watching the visual art unfold on the concrete."