Page 21 - Mosaic Digest Magazine

NEIL LEONARD
Blends Music, Technology, and Culture to NCreate Captivating Interdisciplinary Art
By Hazel Ivy
eil Leonard stands as a truly visionary
figure whose expansive oeuvre bridges
the realms of sound, sight, and technol-
ogy. As a composer, saxophonist, and
transdisciplinary artist, his innovative his process for creating immersive installations,
Neil Leonard discusses his global collaborations, You’ve worked with notable artists like Tony your installations at prestigious venues like
blending visual art, sound, and technology, alongside Oursler and Fujiko Nakaya, and showcased MoMA and Tate Modern. Can you share
works transcend traditional boundaries, creating fostering interdisciplinary education, and exploring what goes into creating large-scale interdis- immersive experiences that invite audiences into ciplinary collaborations?
new dimensions of artistic exploration. From performances at iconic venues like Carnegie Hall to groundbreaking installations at the Venice Biennale and Tate Modern, Leonard’s artistry exemplifies both technical mastery and emotional resonance. His ability to harmonize live electronics, multi- channel audio, and traditional music forms with visual and spatial elements speaks to his boundless creativity and enduring impact on contemporary art. Furthermore, Leonard’s commitment to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration as the founding Artistic Director of Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute underscores his dedication to shaping the next generation of boundary-defying artists.
the transformative power of listening across cultures.
Large-scale interdisciplinary collaborations begin with active listening—listening to collabora-tors
to understand their vision, to the unique acoustic elements of the space, and to develop a shared aest- hetic. This practice has shaped my creative process across international projects. One notable example is my collaboration with Fujiko Nakaya. After atten- ding my concert Sound-ing the Cloud at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, she invited me to compose for her installation Fog x Ruins in Franklin Park. The installation—a 30 x 12-meter structure with 900 mist nozzles—was set in a historic stone ruin where Duke Ellington once held free concerts. My composition blended with Fujiko’s fog, inviting the audience into a space where they could no-tice the subtle shifts in wind, light, and mist. Fujiko later told me, “It was with your music that I discovered sound gave form to fog or a/form to no/form.”
As the founding Artistic Director of the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute, how do you fos-ter an environment that encourages students to explore cross-dis- ciplinary art forms?
My goal is to teach students the practice of collaborating with artists from diverse disciplines. I encourage them to explore their own art while con- necting with different cultures. I invite prac-ticing artists and curators working in interdisciplinary spaces to share their work and critique students’ pro- jects. We also collaborate with schools like Harvard, MIT, and the Shanghai Thea-ter Academy.
Your compositions and installations have been featured in iconic spaces like Car- negie Hall and the Venice Biennale. How do you tailor your work for such diverse venues and audiences?
The site of a piece shapes its unique listening con- text. At the Venice Biennale, I drew on the spatial experiments of composers like Giovanni Gabrieli
at San Marco, positioning 18 loud-speakers in the National Museum of Archaeology for an antiphonal experience, where street vendor voices, electronic sounds, and conversations surrounded visitors, blending with the bells of the Campanile.
In contrast, when composing Totems for Don By- ron at Carnegie Hall, I left space for the audi-ence to appreciate the hall’s acoustics. Each work is crafted for its venue, and its context doesn’t transfer easily to other spaces.
In this issue of Mosaci Digest, we delve into the mind of Neil Leonard, exploring his global colla- borations, cutting-edge technological approaches, and his lifelong dialogue with the worlds of music
is Frequências Futurais, developed during a 2023 residency at the Sacatar Institute in Brazil. While on the Island of Itaparica, I immersed myself in the environment—recording local sounds, gathering residents’ spoken histories, and creating daily elect- ronic compositions. The result was a sound, video, and sculptural installa-tion, exhibited at Galleria Solar Ferrão in Salvador de Bahia, and later presen- ted at IRCAM in Paris and Experimental Loop in NYC in 2024.
Having collaborated with artists across the globe, including in places like Cuba, Israel, and Ja-pan, how have these international ex- periences influenced your creative process?
Collaborating with artists across the globe has shown me how essential it is to pay attention to the voices of my collaborators and their communities to enrich our work together. My experi-ence with Cuban artists, in particular, has highlighted how listening can build trust across cul-tural differences.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of collaborative listening. I’ve applied this ap-proach in Matanzas Sound Map, which will be exhibited at Tate Modern in 2025. This installa-tion invites the audience to embark on a listening journey that began in Cuba, where I collabo-rated with musicians, biologists, street criers, and others to explore how people uniquely hear their surroundings. From folk- loric music to the sounds of dawn in the Ciénaga de Zapata bio-sphere, the project captures the rich sonic landscape of the Matanzas province. The piece was created in collaboration with artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Many of your performances incorporate live electronics and multichannel audio. What dri- ves your interest in integrating technology with traditional music forms?
I am always curious about exploring new artistic possibilities. Each era has its own technologi-cal innovations. Centuries ago the concept of the mu- sical scale was a new technology. The sax-ophone itself has only been popular for the past one hundred years. The synthesizer became widely used in my lifetime. In the 1980s I began creating software that responded to my per-formance. My album Timeaus (2001) features original compositions for saxophone and soft-ware in which I used musical prompts for machine generated response in realtime. This work predates the widespread use of AI by thirty years.
Neil Leonard’s groundbreaking artistry redefines boundaries, seamlessly weaving music, technology, and culture into dynamic, thought-provoking interdisciplinary masterpieces.
and visual art. Through an exclusive inter- view, Leonard shares insights into his creative process, recounts transformative experiences from his international projects, and reflects on the profound power of listening as both an artistic
and communal act. His story is one of unyielding curiosity, innovation, and an unshakable belief in the symbiosis of diverse art forms and cultures.
Your career spans a wide range of discip- lines, from music composition to multime- dia perfor-mance. How do you approach blending these different forms of art in your work?
I’m fascinated by the interplay between visual art, sound, and music. From a young age, I ex-plored painting, drawing, printmaking, and animation. After formal music training in jazz saxo-phone at the New England Conservatory, I worked at the Massachu- setts College of Art, where I began collaborating with visual artists in film, video, performance, and installation. One early interdisciplinary project was creating sound and music for Tony Oursler’s work, featured in the Whitney Biennial.
A recent example of my interdisciplinary approach
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