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What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Sol LeWitt's wall drawings changed my life. These pieces taught me that math can be beautiful, and that a work's scale was just as important as its materials. At the semi-permanent retrospective of LeWitt's work at Mass MoCA, I immediately thought of John Cage's ideas of how audiences perceive music--what's boring for twenty minutes starts to become much more interesting at forty minutes, etc. etc. Similarly, what's boring on an 8.5x11 piece of paper starts to become interesting when it stretches out before you on a wall. Sol LeWitt gave me a fresh perspective on minimalist works by Philip Glass and David Lang, and inspired me to start thinking about my own work in a different way. I started writing longer pieces, music that let itself go to extremes, and I let the structure and math behind the notes come to the surface. These wall drawings are simple, elegant, and brilliant, and, in a thousand tiny ways, they changed my life.
Victoire, Missy Mazzoli's chamber/post-rock ensemble, plays the Windup Space tomorrow night as part of the Contemporary Museum's Mobtown Modern Music Series. Victoire's exquisite new disc, Cathedral City, is out now on New Amsterdam Records and includes a guest appearance by The National's Bryce Dessner. Their MySpace page lists Beach House and Animal Collective as influences, so they should feel right at home in Baltimore.
