Conductor 'Sound Paints' Improvised Works

For the past sixteen years, orchestra conductor Walter Thompson has been developing "sound painting" as something of a new discipline—or maybe an anti-discipline.or multidiscipline.

Definitions are admittedly hard to come by here, first because sound painting, Mr. Thompson's trademarked sign language for directing improvisation, oversteps so many boundaries; and, second, because the conductor himself stretches language like taffy—in more ways than one. Even his definition of "orchestra" pushes the limit. The Walter Thompson Orchestra seems to have developed from a jazz/big band group into an extended family of singers, actors, dancers, even painters, who sometimes share the stage with his core of about twenty musicians.

Mr. Thompson directs and, when he wants to "sound paint," uses motions that evoke the signals of a football referee. His onstage talent includes experienced improvisers.

"They say that Duke Ellington played his orchestra as if it were an instrument," writes Chris Kelsey, a columnist for Jazz Now magazine. "Walter Thompson does the same thing, but in a much more literal fashion.. He improvises compositions with a big band as he would on a single instrument, with the same intelligence, sensitivity, and sense of order."

Mr. Thompson has developed sound painting as a language of at least 600 signals that cue the artists working before him. Gestures in his ever-expanding vocabulary can be interpreted to motivate musicians, actors, dancers, painters-individually or in groups. The signed messages convey his preferences for key, chord, pace, genre, mood, or motion. The signs are as diverse as "Improvise a polka in C," "Woodwinds: hold a long tonal G," "Laugh out loud" or "Actors: dance badly."

The effect has been likened to "channel flipping" through an unpredictable (and irreplicable) series of sound and events from the stage. Mr. Thompson has taken various sound-painted shows before audiences in New York, including Lincoln Center, as well as Texas, California, Michigan, and Iowa. He's taught some simple signs to his audiences, allowing them to play along,

"Participation has been 100 percent," the conductor says. "It's really a new way of composing on the spot. There's no planning ahead of time-unless we use something called Palettes."

Palettes are rehearsed portions of music and action, occurring in varying degrees during a performance. The orchestra has created musical palettes for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," for example. Mr. Thompson also stocked some palettes for an autumn gig at a New York club, a screening of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent film "Nosferatu."

"With palettes," Mr. Thompson says, "we can take any story, any play, and put it together with sound painting. It certainly wouldn't follow all the same lines as in its traditional form. It might be an impressionist or deconstructionist interpretation.. But the narrative would still be a part of it."

Last spring and summer, Mr. Thompson worked under a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation grant to introduce sound painting to 400 elementary school students in the Oneonta (New York) school district. The three-month residency, sponsored by the Woodstock Guild, ended in a sound-painted concert involving about thirty volunteer students alongside some orchestra regulars.

"Sound painting is especially good for children because it allows them to simply be who they are," Mr. Thompson says. "At the same time, it helps bring out individual creativity."

Teaching is very much a part of Mr. Thompson's repertoire. During the past twenty-five years, he's taught at MIT, NYU, the New School, and New York City public schools. He's been teaching sound painting to other educators through State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. Once of Cajun country and now a longtime East Coast musician and educator, Mr. Thompson says he is eager to "break down the walls" between disciplines.

"For me, there are no lines there," the conductor explains. "All art is related. We can look at a painting and imagine it musically or choreographically or imagine it in terms of motion."

Mr. Thompson's goals make him very much at home with today's new media blends-from visual installation and performance art to classical music's migration into jazz-like improvisations. He says his orchestra's rehearsals and performances are "in the moment," changing according to the dynamics of the audience and players.

"If you know the system [of signals] well, you can respond immediately to something [that the performers improvise on stage]. And the performers know how I compose.. So they might have a sense of the signal before it comes."

"You know you're improvising well," he adds, "when you don't know you're improvising well. It's like driving a car along the highway. You tune out, and then suddenly you realize that you've been driving for the last ten miles.."

The Walter Thompson Orchestra appears February 2 at the Eastman School of Music; and March 19 at Bard College in Red Hook, New York.