The Green Hill
Abduction into a mystical world...
About the composer Bert Appermont
* December 27th, 1973 in Bilzen, Belgium.
He studied Music at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven and completed his studies in 1998 with a double "Master of Music" certificate.
Furthermore, he achieved Masters Degree in "Music Design for Film & Television" at the Bournemouth Media School in England for Muscal Education and Conducting.
He is currently lecturing at the Katholieke Hogeschool Limburg. His many hundred pieces are used in most Belgian music schools, for development of creativity.
About The Green Hill (taken from bertappermont.be)
This piece was commissioned by Swiss euphonium virtuoso Eich Schmidli. Bert Appermont dug deep into Celtic music for inspiration and created a fantasy that shows off the incredible, but often overlooked, versatility of the euphonium.
The Task
For the purpose of 2013's Advent- as well as Christmas-Wish-Concert of the Musikverein St.Veit-Andritz-Stattegg our Kapellmeister Siegrfried Rumpf approached me with the question whether I'd be interested in painting pictures for this musical work, approximately 15 to 20. How could someone like me; regardless of the number; possibly refuse to paint places I'd wanted to visit for years?
So I launched myself into the partly nerve-(and neck-)racking task. During the process I often fell into some sort of meditative state(especially when painting grass blades), which not seldomly lead to my own(mostly surprisingly positive)shock when viewing the overal image... But I grew artistically/technically as well as personally with this task and that alone was already worth it.
Each piece deals with one aspect of the song, whereby I tried to achieve that picture and music complement and are responsive to each other.
And last but not least, something about our soloist...(loosely translated from the concert booklet)
Peter Auer received his musical training on the tenor horn/euphonium from Prof. Mag. Rudolph Zangl at the Johannes-Brahms Musikschule in Mürzzuschlag. He completed this education with the Golden Achievement Badge (Leistungsabzeichen in Gold) of the Styrian Brass Music Association (Steirischer Blasmusikverband). Afterwards he continued his training, on trombone, at the Johann-Joseph-Fux Konservatorium with Prof. Anton Narnhofer.
He did his military service in the Militärmusik Steiermark. Since 2008 Peter Auer is a member of the Musikverein St.Veit-Andritz-Stattegg. Furthermore he is member of the band "Die Steirisch Böhmische".
The Pictures
At the concerts I played transverse flute in this song as well as and handled the remote control for the presentation, so the 20 pictures would be shown at the appropriate moment.
Here the video with one of our recordings, a take from the second concert and the picture gallery.
Full view and HD reccomended. (even though Youtube choked the quality.)
Although I'd like to mention that I referred to real places, but alienated and furnished them with a (hopefully) mystical mood.
All pictures have been created and finished from from scratch(sketch on empty background). Unfortunately I so to say set up a nearly dangerous trap(in case of data loss) for myself: by the above
mentioned meditative state(like so many times when making jewellery in the work shop), I largely forgot to document/save interim stages. With some I still managed though, on that which knocked
even me over, I could only pick out details(I spent 3h in a row only on painting grass - little hills and balls and strokes - and just saved over it all the time).
But the heck wth it, maybe it harms the world a little less if I don't leave those many data imprints. It has enough of such already. Anyhow, here are some steps for those who can't comprehend
the process behind such a painting. I hope they can give little insight in my approach(which of course isn't exactly the same in each of my pictures ;) )
