Color Music

Color Music, conceived and composed by Michael Poast, is an alternative form of musical notation comprised of visual colors and shapes.  The performers derive all dramatic and musical sound from the painted visual scores.  For example: lemon yellow represents high, bright sound; bright red indicates mid-range pitch and fast, pulsating rhythm; shape delineates musical line and different types of brushstrokes evoke rhythmic variations.  Color Music speaks to audiences and performers on multiple sensory levels simultaneously.  By reading the score projections along with the musicians, observing the color relationships, forms and textural differences and how it relates to what they are hearing, the interrelatedness of Color Music is revealed.

Color Music incorporates visual color patterns equated with musical sound notation and triggers sound production by the performers.  There are many different types of red, for instance, therefore, the colors and how they delineate sound can be complicated, yet simple, if thought of in ranges of colors equivalent to sound ranges.

“In performance, I insist on the projection of these color scores or other ways of conveying their visual aspect along with the sound realization.  Color Music expresses extra-musical characteristics that are part of its whole process and perception.  The color notation and sound it evokes creates sensations beyond the scope of one art form and takes us into an interrelated, enhanced and intensified work of art.”—Michael Poast, from Color Music: Visual Color Notation for Musical Expression, Leonardo Journal, 2000

Michael Poast

Biography

The composer/visual artist, Michael Poast, conducted the world premiere of his Color Music for Orchestra in April 2004 for which he was honored with an ASCAPlus Award for “substantial performance activity with unique prestige value.”  As part of this event at LaGuardia College (CUNY) Performing Arts Center (LPAC), a DVD recording was produced, which will be featured as part of a lecture series Poast  will give on his Color Music concept at the college and other venues.  In 2002, Mr. Poast  presented a Color Music lecture/workshop at the Juilliard School where he worked directly with student musicians and dancers.

While still a student at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, Poast was already questioning the connection between sound and color, attending art classes as well.  Receiving a Masters of Fine Arts from the City University of New York he also studied electronic-computer music composition in CCNY’s Sonic Arts Department.

Mr. Poast is director of the InterMedia Ensemble and has performed his visual operas and produced avant-garde arts festivals at such venues as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Knitting Factory and the American Museum of the Moving Image.  The New York New Music Ensemble premiered his Color Music Toccata and Fugue (1995) at the Sonic Boom Festival, and recently his Color Music for Chorus (2008) was featured in the Composers Readings Sessions by the Gregg Smith Singers in New York.

Poast has received many honors and awards for both his music and visual art including Lila Acheson Wallace Fund, The Gottlieb Foundation, NYSCA, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Queens Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, among others.  Mr. Poast   teaches in the Fine Arts Department at St. John’s University and at Pratt Institute.