The Brooklyn Museum Hires a Composer-in-Residence

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: All Of It
Host: WNYC
Episode: The Brooklyn Museum Hires a Composer-in-Residence
Date: May 17, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode explores an exciting cultural first at the Brooklyn Museum: the appointment of a composer-in-residence, Niles Luther. Host Kusha Navadar (sitting in for Alison Stewart) interviews Luther and Joan Cummins, Curator of Asian Art, about how original music is now intertwined with a major art exhibit—Hiroshige's "A Hundred Famous Views of Edo," also featuring contemporary works by Takashi Murakami. The conversation uncovers how this innovative addition redefines the museum experience through sound, history, and personal creative exploration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of a Composer-in-Residence at the Brooklyn Museum

• Joan Cummins on the Museum’s Approach:
  "We've always been interested at coming at the art from a lot of different angles. We know that there are people who learn with their eyes and people who learn from reading and people who learn from touching and people who learn from listening. And so this is just another way to open a door or a window to the art and to really enhance people's experience." [04:18–04:48]
• The museum’s ongoing commitment to multisensory engagement led to the creation of this unique role.
• Origin of the Role: Niles Luther was supported by a Ford Foundation fellowship, allowing him to work with the museum’s curators and access the collection directly (05:09–05:40).

Why Launch with the Hiroshige Exhibit?

• Context: The Hiroshige prints offer layered historical and cross-cultural meanings, making them prime candidates for a sonic counterpart.
• Joan Cummins:
  “We have modern photographs of Tokyo that we put next to prints that show the same site, we have three dimensional objects from 1850s Japan that are similar to things you see in the prints. And so why not add a musical element as well?” [05:49–06:30]
• The exhibit’s arrangement, blending traditional, contemporary, and now musical perspectives, mirrors how the prints have long bridged Eastern and Western artistic traditions.

A Hidden Treasure: The Museum’s Hiroshige Collection

• The museum’s rare Hiroshige prints sat misclassified in the library for 40 years until identified as original, not reproductions (07:30–08:16).
• Joan Cummins:
  “They put it in the library rather than in the art collection. And it sat on a shelf in the library for 40 years until my predecessor pulled it off the shelf, opened it up and realized...These are really, really good original prints from the 1850s.” [07:45–08:16]

Niles Luther’s Creative Process

• Immersing in the Source: Luther traveled to Japan, visiting the actual temple depicted in one of the prints to absorb the setting firsthand (08:43–09:30).
• On Print 99 ("Kinryuzen Temple in Asakusa"):
  • Luther aimed to echo the print’s calm, snowy atmosphere.
  • He used a felted mallet ("yukiba") on a large Japanese drum ("naga do daiko") to evoke the pulse of a heartbeat, recreating the stillness and intimacy of the temple.
  • Niles Luther:
    “When you're immersed in this very peaceful place, when the snow is falling, it's so quiet that the only thing you can hear is your heartbeat.” [09:30–09:51]
• Escalation in the Composition: He wanted the music to mirror the experience of moving from the temple’s serene exterior to the imposing, vibrant interior, marked by the temple's dominant red and the presence of ceremonial braziers.
  Niles Luther:
  "It was so grand...there was this incredible experience where I felt the weight of history, the weight of the culture, and I was in contact with that in a way that I had never been before." [11:11–11:42]

Print 118: Embracing the Mystical ("New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji")

• Unlike other prints, 118 explores Shinto folklore, depicting supernatural fox spirits gathering on New Year’s Eve.
• Joan Cummins:
  “It’s a real outlier. The series runs through a year, and so this is New Year's Eve, and it depicts a supernatural occurrence...all the fox spirits come together and kind of have a conference and decide what they're going to do for their next coming year.” [11:58–13:07]
• Musical Interpretation:
  "I just really had this sense of like electricity that I wanted to capture...these foxes have this intensity and this wonder and this excitement, I wanted to try and recreate that in the music." — Niles Luther [13:38–13:54]

The Power of Music and Art Together

• Kusha Navadar:
  "How do you hope listening to compositions while looking at this art affects museum goers' relationship to a piece or to even to art in general?" [13:54–14:09]
• Niles Luther:
  “Music...gives you a window, a portal into a different era, possibly so that they could look at these prints and possibly have a new experience, one they might not never have had before.” [14:09–14:38]
• Joan Cummins on New Perspectives:
  Niles’s music changed how she personally relates to the prints, especially the foxfires, transforming her previous perception from “secretive” to vibrant, energetic, and alive.
  Joan Cummins:
  "...With Niles' composition, it's so vibrant and alive and there's, yeah, all this energy running through those flames and those foxes in the middle of the night right there on the edge of the city." [14:48–15:22]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Hidden Prints:
  "They put it on...a shelf in the library for 40 years until my predecessor pulled it off...and realized...these are really, really good original prints from the 1850s."
  — Joan Cummins [07:45–08:16]

• On the Heartbeat in the Temple:
  "When you're immersed in this very peaceful place, when the snow is falling, it's so quiet that the only thing you can hear is your heartbeat."
  — Niles Luther [09:51]

• On Experiencing the Art in New Ways:
  “Music...gives you a window, a portal into a different era, possibly so that they could look at these prints and possibly have a new experience, one they might not never have had before.”
  — Niles Luther [14:28]

• Joan Cummins on New Musical Interpretation:
  "...With Niles' composition, it's so vibrant and alive and there's, yeah, all this energy running through those flames and those foxes in the middle of the night right there on the edge of the city."
  — Joan Cummins [15:17]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:13]: Introduction to episode and guests; background on the composer-in-residence role
• [04:18]: Joan Cummins on why the museum created the role
• [05:09]: Niles Luther on his artistic vision and how the role began
• [07:30]: The story of how the museum’s prints were rediscovered
• [08:43]: Discussion of Print 99, inspiration, and composition details
• [09:51]: Niles Luther shares insights into capturing atmosphere musically
• [11:42]: Joan explains the mystical print 118 and the folklore behind it
• [13:38]: Niles on conveying wonder and electricity musically
• [14:09]: Hopes for audience transformation through music and art interplay
• [14:48]: Joan reflects on how music has changed her connection to the art

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Conclusion

This episode provides a nuanced exploration of multisensory approaches to museum experiences, highlighting how deeply music can enrich our relationship with visual art. Through the perspectives of artist and curator, listeners gain insight into both the creative process and the evolving philosophy of art institutions. Niles Luther’s residency marks a meaningful step in reimagining how we encounter history, spirituality, and creativity in public cultural spaces.

Listen to the compositions and learn more by visiting the Brooklyn Museum or the All Of It Instagram page.

Transcript

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[Kusha Navadar]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. For the first time ever, the Brooklyn Museum has hired a composer in residence. Niles Luther, a composer and cellist who has worked with artists like Kehende Wiley, is the first person the museum tasks with creating original music accompany art pieces from the museum's collection. Niles first project was to create new compositions for the museum's exhibit Hiroshige A Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The new exhibition displays the museum's rare collection of Otugawa Hiroshige's framed prints of the city we now know as Tokyo. Originally printed from 1856 to 1858, the art depicts everyday urban life alongside moments of celebration, inspiration, and tradition. The exhibit also displays Takashi Murakami's own modern interpretations of Hiroshige's fine prints. These prints, there are three of them. They're number 23, 99 and 118, come accompanied by new, original music from Niles that you can listen to while immersing yourself in the art. And it creates a whole new sonic and visual experience. The exhibit's running right now at the Brooklyn Museum through August 4th, and I'm joined by the exhibit's curator, Joan Cummins, and the Brooklyn Museum's first ever composer in residence, Niles Luther. Hi to you both.

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Hi.

[Niles Luther]

Hello. How are you?

[Kusha Navadar]

Wonderful. Great to have you in studio. Love it. And listeners. We've posted the prints that inspired Niles's compositions on our Instagram. We're at all of it wnyc, so if you want to look at them while you listen to the music, you can head to our Instagram page. Again, we're at all of it wnyc. So let's talk about the role for a second. Joan, I want to turn to you. This is the very first time the Brooklyn Museum has created a role like this, a composer in residence. What's the story behind making that role?

[Joan Cummins]

Well, at Brooklyn, we've always been interested at coming at the art from a lot of different angles. We know that there are people who learn with their eyes and people who learn from reading and people who learn from touching and people who learn from listening. And so this is just another way to open a door or a window to the art and to really enhance people's experience of wonderful works of art.

[Kusha Navadar]

How long ago did you decide we want to put in a composer in residence? What was that process like?

[Joan Cummins]

Well, I wasn't involved in that process, but I was delighted when I was told that it was happening. I think Niles can probably speak to that better than I can, what the process was.

[Kusha Navadar]

Yeah. So, Niles, tell me about the process and what attracted you to the role in the first place.

[Niles Luther]

Yeah, absolutely. So I had this vision of creating art for music. Music in the same way that there can be film scores for films. And I really wanted a place to do it that had the. The support from a curatorial perspective, as well as the access to incredible artwork to really bring that dream to life. So when the Ford foundation offered to underwrite my fellowship to be in residence at the Brooklyn Museum, that was really the first opportunity to take this to the level that it's been taken to.

[Kusha Navadar]

And Joan, what do you think adding music to this particular exhibit? Why do you think this one was the one that made sense as the way to launch the new position?

[Joan Cummins]

Well, the objects are really rich and they already come with many, many layers of historical context and a long history of being influential on Western art as well as Japanese art. And it just made sense with so many im to find a way to in the exhibition where we do a bunch of different sort of approaches to the prints, we have modern photographs of Tokyo that we put next to prints that show the same site, we have three dimensional objects from 1850s Japan that are similar to things you see in the prints. And so why not add a musical element as well? Because these prints were so influential on Western artists starting around the 1870s. There was something about the sort of mix of Western and Eastern that you hear in Niles compositions that's really very appropriate and exciting listeners.

[Kusha Navadar]

If you're just joining us, we're talking to Niles Luther, who is the first composer in residence at the Brooklyn Museum, and Joan Cummins, who is the curator of Asian art at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibit is Hiroshige's A Hundred Famous Views of Edo, featuring Takashi Murakami. You know, Joan, my producer Jordan told me that there's a really cool story about how the museum has so many of these Hiroshige prints. Is that right?

[Joan Cummins]

Yes, they were given to us in 1930, but they were bound into a book. And at that point there were a lot of books swimming around that were full of reproductions of Japanese prints. And so presumably when it was given to the museum, that's what they thought it was. So they put it on. They put it in the library rather than in the art collection. And it sat on a shelf in the library for 40 years until my predecessor pulled it off the shelf, opened it up and realized, wait, these aren't reproductions. These are really, really good original prints from the 1850s. And so she took them out of the library, we cut them out of the book, and they have been in the art collection ever since.

[Kusha Navadar]

40 years.

[Joan Cummins]

Yes.

[Kusha Navadar]

Dang.

[Niles Luther]

Yeah.

[Kusha Navadar]

So let's get into some of those prints. Print 99, Niles. Some of these prints are very colorful, but for print 99, titled and Apologies if I mispronounce this. Kinryuzen Temple in Asakusa. The main colors are just white, red and green. It's a calm winter scene at the entrance to a Buddhist temple. What did you want to achieve with your composition for this piece? And how did the Colors, in particular, inspire you?

[Niles Luther]

Yeah, that's a great question. So as soon as I saw these prints, I knew that I had to go to Japan because I really wanted to immerse myself in the culture and get as close to the source as possible. So that temple exists today in Tokyo. And I went and stood in front of the gates, the entrance to that temple, and I did my best to experience what Hiroshige might have experienced when he created that print. So even though it wasn't the dead of winter with snow falling, as we see in the print, I wanted to try and recreate that feeling. And there's a very specific technique that I use to recreate that in the compositions, where the percussionist takes this round felted mallet called the yukiba and taps it very softly and slowly on the head of this drum, this large drum called the naga do daiko. And that creates this very soft pulse, which feels like a heartbeat. And the idea is that when you're immersed in this very peaceful place, when the snow is falling, it's so quiet that the only thing you can hear is your heartbeat.

[Kusha Navadar]

Let's listen to a little bit of your composition for print 99. Here it is.

[Joan Cummins]

Sam.

[Kusha Navadar]

So, Niles, like you're saying, this one starts out nice and calm and sort of escalates in intensity about halfway through. Let's listen to one of the more intense bits. Niles, why did you want to have that moment of escalation there?

[Niles Luther]

Yeah, I was really trying to capture this feeling that I felt when I stepped inside the temple, and it was so grand. And that color, that red was not overwhelming in the sense that I was being subsumed by it, but I was in a relationship with that color red. And there was these burning. I think there are brassieres in the temple. And it was just this incredible experience where I felt the weight of history, the weight of the culture, and I was in contact with that in a way that I had never been before.

[Kusha Navadar]

Wow. Let's jump to print 118. It's about the composition. It's titled New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree. Oji. Joan, what does this print depict? It moves away from the realist portrayals of Japan into something more spiritual. Is that right?

[Joan Cummins]

That's right. It's a real outlier in the series and the last one in the series, because it was. The series runs through a year, and so this is New Year's Eve, and it depicts a supernatural occurrence that people believed happened on New Year's Eve when all of the fox spirits. And fox spirits are a major part of indigenous Japanese religion, Shinto, that all the fox spirits come together and kind of have a conference and decide what they're going to do for their next coming year. And each of them comes with a little lit flaming stick. They're all coming out of their mouths and you can see them way off in the distance, these little tiny spots of orange off in the gray fields. And that's all the foxes approaching. So it's this moment of wonder in an otherwise very familiar subject. A series that shows a lot of very familiar scenes around the city of Edo. But this is one that nobody's actually seen, they've just heard about.

[Kusha Navadar]

And with that, with that word wonder, I want to hold on to that. And Niles, I'm going to come to you in a second. But first, holding that term wonder, let's hear a bit of the composition that you wrote. So, Niles, how did you want to bring some of the spirit that Joan was talking about into the piece?

[Niles Luther]

Yeah, I just really had this sense of like electricity that I wanted to capture. I wanted it to feel that like we were on the edge of our seat and these foxes that have this intensity and this wonder and this excitement, I wanted to try and recreate that in the music.

[Kusha Navadar]

Yeah. You know, thinking about that idea of that experiential element of the music that you're making, how do you hope listening to compositions while looking at this art affects museum goers relationship to a piece or to even to art in general?

[Niles Luther]

Absolutely. I hope it offers a new perspective, one they might not necessarily have had if there was no score. So looking at these beautiful prints, they're bound in time. Right. There's no way to experience them in the dimension of time. But with music, music based in time gives you a window, a portal into a different era, possibly so that they could look at these prints and possibly have a new experience, one they might not never have had before.

[Kusha Navadar]

And Joan, when you hear that for you, has listening to this music changed your own way of relating to these pieces of art that maybe have been sitting on the shelf for 40 years?

[Joan Cummins]

Yes. I mean, certainly with the fox composition, he brings an energy to it that in the past I always thought of it as sort of secretive and that there wasn't much going on except the rustling of the foxes running through the fields. But with Niles NYZL's composition, it's so vibrant and alive and there's, yeah, all this energy running through those flames and those foxes in the middle of the night right there on the edge of the city.

[Kusha Navadar]

Well, listeners, if you want to go experience that one, you can go to our Instagram, but you can also go to the Brooklyn Museum. We've been here with Niles Luther, who is the first composer in residence at the Brooklyn Museum, and Joan Cummins, who is the curator of Asian art at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibit Hiroshige's 100 Famous Works of Edo, featuring Takashi Murakami. Thank you both so much for coming by.

[Joan Cummins]

Thank you so much.

[Niles Luther]

It was a pleasure.

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[Joan Cummins]

Let's go.

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