This track was among eight compositions originally commissioned in 2022 by the Frist Art Museum in Nashville for the exhibition Light, Space, Surface: Works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, organized by LACMA. The music took the place of a standard audio tour and served to complement visitors’ exploration of the artworks. Nashville Ambient Ensemble selected eight artworks from the exhibition at the Frist and created musical responses/reflections for those.

While familiarizing myself with the conceptual framework of these artists, I was struck by the ways in which many of them experimented heavily with form, questioning established norms of artistic practice and often highlighting how an object exists only in interdependence with its surroundings. Some of these motifs felt resonant with the work of Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Our music takes sound and instrumentation that may be associated with Nashville--like pedal steel, electric guitar and violin/”fiddle”--but presents them in a new context of synthesizer soundscapes, utilizing traditional American musical forms of semi-improvisation like jazz and bluegrass to create something fresh. 

The primary way that the artworks had a direct impact on the music was in the types of sounds I chose for the foundational layers. The focus on industrial materials, light, and electricity in many of the artworks led me to choose more digital kinds of synthesizer sounds like FM synthesis and wavetable synthesis. These sounds lent a glossy sheen to the foundational layers of the music and influenced the direction that the final compositions would take.

The music is meant to serve as an additional reflection and perspective within the space around the artworks and not necessarily to be an interpretation of the artworks.

--Michael Hix, Nashville Ambient Ensemble

The Nashville Ambient Ensemble will perform at LACMA in conjunction with Light, Space, Surface on August 2, 2023. Please go here for further information.