In 2013 and 2014 I saw Lumenocity up close. I caught the dress rehearsal the first year, before anyone knew what a big deal it was going to be. Last year I scored free tickets at the last minute. I wasn’t so lucky in 2015, so my wife and I invited friends and neighbors to a “watch party” at our OTR home, just a block east of Washington Park. From an open porch on our fifth-floor apartment, we have a clear view of Music Hall.
Our guests didn’t have to compete with crowds. Parking wasn’t an issue, since they could walk — a benefit of urban living. We positioned chairs for excellent views and provided binoculars to zero-in on the spectacular animation. Our dog hung out with us; she would have been excluded from the viewing area at the park. We had our own adult beverages from the fridge — no lines. (In the park, you had to purchase drinks from vendors.)
From our porch we can see the upper two-thirds of Music Hall’s façade, more than enough to get a full sense of Brave Berlin’s imaginative images projected on the building. We planned to listen to WGUC’s streaming broadcast of the concert — that worked fine for the Pops concert before dark, which began with a rocking arrangement of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” (commissioned for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra back in 1942), and included numbers performed at the Pops’ excellent “American Originals” concert in February (now available in album form), plus Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” The Pops wrapped up with a great rendition of “Shut Up and Dance,” this year’s viral hit by local band Walk the Moon. The broadcast also included interview features and live interviews with Pops conductor John Morris Russell and others involved in the show, an unexpected perk we wouldn’t have had if we’d been in the park.
When the projections on Music Hall began, we discovered that WGUC’s online music stream was lagging behind the Lumenocity imagery by a minute or two, enough that Orff’s “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana was still being lustily performed by the May Festival Chorus as surreal, psychedelic images from “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique commenced. As gigantic orchestra musicians flitted across Music Hall, I quickly cranked up 90.9 on our sound system. Without the online delay, the CSO’s accompaniment closely matched the animation. It wasn’t perfect (I had to fiddle with a radio antenna to clean up some blurry reception), but it was worth it. One of our guests knows a lot about Classical music, so he provided us with some insightful commentary.
The next piece to be performed was a movement from Saint-Saëns’ “Symphony No. 3.” The accompanying animation featured a frame around Music Hall’s central window that created the effect of a theater proscenium, and it was indeed a stage for a sweet puppet show. Much of that segment must have been played out on the lower levels that we couldn’t see, but images of storybook characters and balloons were very visible. Up next was “The Iron Foundry,” a more contemporary piece by Alexander Mosolov, with a mechanical, industrial theme and a silhouette of Maestro Louis Langrée that threw sparks as he conducted — it concluded with some real fireworks.
The CSO and its creative partners saved the best for last, with a rendition of the final movement of Brahms’ “Symphony No. 1” (written in 1876, just two years before Music Hall had its first musical performances). The elegant strains of the symphony supported a visual love letter to Cincinnati featuring a riot of local icons — from the Ohio River to Union Terminal, from the Suspension Bridge to the Tyler Davidson Fountain and Kings Island’s Eifel Tower. There were steamboats and trains and streetcars. And local heroes like the Big Red Machine, University of Cincinnati basketball great Oscar Robertson and boxer Ezzard Charles — even strongman Henry Holtgrewe, the subject of an ArtWorks mural just a block from Washington Park, and only a few yards from our viewing location.
As in 2013 and 2014, the finale featured the building taking another animated bow — more 3-D than in the past — to rousing cheers we could hear even without the radio. The 2015 Lumenocity’s theme, “Masters and Dreamers,” worked beautifully, reflecting increased mastery of the graphics and the technology, creating an event that blended music and imagery even more strikingly than previous years. It was a great evening — even from a distance.
CONTACT RICK PENDER: rpender@citybeat.com
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2015.
