At the Park Plaza Theatre on Wednesday night, guests of the Schubert Club enjoyed aural and sensory experiences. The stunning piano duo ZOFO composed of Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi brought to life the paintings of artists from all over the world through their dance-like performances. They guide the audience through an auditory museum of modern art in an experience called "ZOFOMOMA".
The two constructed the name ZOFO from the concept of a 20-finger orchestra (ZO is 20 and FO stands for finger orchestra), but it's not just the fingers they use in concerts. They occasionally stand up from shared benches and interact with their deceitful Steinway in a way that transforms their performances into piano concerts and movements.
This concept is based on "Pictures in Exhibition" created by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874. Mussorgsky created 10 works, translated Victor Hartmann's drawings and watercolors, plus a different corridor for the transition between them. ZOFO selected 15 composers for their project, and each of them chose different works of art as their musical foundation. Like the original work, ZOFOMMA inserted transitional music between the pieces, arranged by Nakagoshi using Mussorgsky’s own music inspiration. In these fragments, Zimmermann and Nakagoshi take turns around the piano to transition from one piece of music to the next, with a sense of ritual.
The paintings themselves do not have any direct lines, they are projected behind them when they play the corresponding promenade of the piano players. They were crazy and happily not connected. Between the idyllic scenery of Monet's "Argenteuil" and the poetic and hazy mountains of "The Sacred Peak of Chichibu of Spring Dawn" by Yokoyama Daikan, there are interspersed dark, acrimonious and sometimes subversive paintings and sketches. There are cartoonish skeletons, ominous characters, and animal slaughter depictions that symbolize political authoritarianism.
Watching a match between Zimmermann and Nakagoshi is like watching two parts of the same creature. Even if they play different rhythms and textures on the piano, they are always connected by breathing and movement. You can see this, especially when their bodies are crossed, whether their arms are crossing each other, or at more extreme moments. In Jonathan Russell's "Untitled Skeleton" (2017), Zimmermann stands behind Nakagoshi, reaches around him to the keys, while he bends down under her. This movement feels ominous, much like Stormy Mills' painting "Untitled (skeleton)" (1969).
They also found a creative way to use the piano to make sounds. In "Will you come to my dream?" "(2017) Created by Lei Liang, the two threw what looked like petals on the piano strings. It creates an ethereal sound, as lovely as the details shown in Huang Binhong's "Landscape" (1952).
The last paragraph of the show is a festive ending. Keyla Orozco created Viajeros (2017) based on a 1972 painting of the same name by Douglas Pérez Castro. This piece has a circus feel, transitioning from Russian songs to Cuban traditional music, and then seamlessly transitioning to jazz vocabulary. The Russian composer stated on the show that she was responding to the Russian doll in this deeply saturated painting depicting the Cuban scene with a huge globe. They represented Russia's influence in communist countries. Perhaps out of political intent, Orozco's music provides a wealth of dramatic music. ZOFO played this piece enthusiastically, and fell to each other as they attacked the slip with full energy.
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