NEHMA Hosts Museum and Music Series at Caine Performance Hall
Wally Hedrick, Flower Flag, ca. 1954, oil on canvas, 20.5 x 16.5 inches. Collection of Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Marie Eccles Caine Foundation Gift.
The Utah State University Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art’s “Museum and Music Series” presents “Zappa and Zappa: Counterculture California in the later 20th century,” Thursday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Caine Performance Hall on the Logan campus. The concert will focus on cultural movements that began to flower in the sixties defining itself at odds against mainstream culture.
The “Museum and Music Series” is guest curated by Associate Professor of Musicology Christopher Scheer. The series bridges connections between the visual and the aural with each content featuring different themes and ideas to introduce the community to music and visual art in an accessible and uncommon platform.
“By the 1960s California was the place to go if one felt marginalized by postwar American culture and society,” said Scheer. “Artistically, this manifested in a blooming of avant-garde art and music reacting against the cultural mainstream.
April’s concert features music by one of Southern California’s most iconoclastic musicians, Frank Zappa. His music is known to be wildly creative, often offensive and boldly impatient with tradition. It will be paired with the music of Francesco Zappa, an 18th century Italian composer active in Amsterdam. While not an innovator, Francesco’s music is tuneful and attractive, according to Scheer who says it belongs in the concert as an example of another countercultural movement based in San Francisco at the time and focused on the historical performance of “early music.”
“These two evocations of Californian counterculture come together in Frank Zappa’s own electronic recording of Francesco’s music,” continued Scheer.
Placed in conversation with the musical selections for the evening will be artwork featured from the NEHMA collection by artists Jess Collins, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo and George Herms. These artists flourished in the 1960s by placing themselves at odds with mainstream artistic culture in California and more broadly.
The Caine Jazz Combo and Performance Practice Institute from USU’s Music Department will perform.
In addition to the “Museum and Music Series,”, NEHMA also hosts the Family Art Days, another ongoing series that is free and open to the public. These events cater to families with children, and all ages are welcome to attend. The next Family Art Day will be a chance to discover Bookmaking Saturday, April 15, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Merrill-Cazier Library.
For more information visit www.artmuseum.usu.edu.
Contact: Christopher Scheer, christopher.scheer@usu.edu
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