By Janelle Gelfand
Enquirer staff writer
While you may have spent the past months lounging by the pool, we caught up with a group of Cincinnati artists who had some hot fun in the summertime. Here are some "postcards" from their travels.
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It was bear season in the Canadian Rockies, but that didn't stop composer Mara Helmuth (above) from hiking up to 7,000 feet through glacial landscapes this summer with her trusty dog, Sasha. It's that closeness to nature that inspires her multimedia musical creations - merging computer, video and photography with acoustic musical instruments.
"I think we find a lot of peace in natural settings," says Helmuth, 46, who is director of the Center for Computer Music at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. "You became very aware of wildlife and their struggle to survive. I really enjoy animals, being in the mountains and the sense of physically exerting yourself to attain a different view."
Last summer, a sabbatical in China resulted in "Mountain Wind," a piece for pipa (a Chinese lute), five wind players, computer and video that Helmuth shot while hiking in China's mountains.
"You're up above the clouds, and you're nestled in them; there are such steep drop-offs," she says. "There are those amazing, finger-like projections of stone, and mists that look unreal." The piece was performed in March in the performance space at the Contemporary Arts Center.
On this trip, the ice-cold streams rushing down glacial mountains, and the tall, imposing pines around Banff, Alberta amazed her.
"They were called the lodgepole pine. So straight!" she says, already thinking of how that might translate into music.
She opens her laptop for a slide show of photos that will help her relive the experience later: massive boulders, lofty peaks, the wild flowers surrounding her campsite, a fallen tree and a lone marmot basking in the sun.
"You see so much detail and variety in the North American continent," she says. "I haven't figured out exactly what to do with all these ideas."
