In the April of 2023 I teamed up with Dr. Kelsey Malone, curator of Berea College’s Doris Ulmann Galleries, to facilitate a student-featured collaboration between music and art departments. Beginning with the idea of Shattered Ceilings, a recital program that I was performing around Kentucky at the time, I selected three American women composers to feature for the event to create a 60 minute program of beautiful music. The program included Ballade Op. 6 by Amy Beach (1867-1944), Sonata in E Minor by Florence Price (1887-1953), and Illuminations on Byzantine Chant by Victoria Bond (b. 1945). Knowing that it would be logistically difficult to transport a grand piano from the music building to the art gallery, Berea’s audio-visual team of talented students in the music department created a stunning video program of all the works performed in the concert hall and projected the video in the gallery. Additionally, one of our musicology-focused music majors researched and composed program notes for the music. Meanwhile Dr. Malone, a specialist in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American art, supervised her student team to curate and display an extensive collection of American women artists, so audience members enjoyed a multimedia experience viewing the artwork and listening to the music. The event was well attended by students and faculty across campus, and will hopefully be the first of many interdisciplinary projects between art and music at Berea College!
Madeline Rogers 