Music is naturally in the center of our wine composition project, but we are working also with another aspect; images, and more accurately, photography.

As with music, our intent is to express what ”the wine says” with different images. My medium to achieve this is photography and movie. In live performances, however, movies raise concerns regarding the projections limitations, and therefore I have rather stressed on photography. The images contribute especially to creating a context and an atmosphere.

An example of context: a dramatic hill landscape in Mosel, Germany.

As a singer, I have taken part in a fair hundred concerts and attended much more. I have always noticed how important is the visual context, even though it is somehow not part of the music. It is self evident that the place where you sing has an acoustic impact, but moreover it has an impact on your eyes. When you are listening, you watch something, somewhere. You watch the musicians, but soon, your eyes will wander elsewhere. Singing medieval or renaissance music in an abbey or a gothic church changes everything as opposed to a concert hall. And this context, these images impact on your appreciation. It is not by chance that modern opera halls are so dark that you cannot see anything but the scene.

In Jazz music, the concert venues are far more diverse than in Classical music. Very often, they can be places that are not designed primarily for that purpose. Even more often, sonorisation equipment creates an almost industrial surrounding – for example cables, speakers, mixing console… To create a visual atmosphere, in my opinion, is critical. As I said, not that it is the main thing, but it will bring a lot in terms of experience.

In our project, this can be seen from two sides. First, the image can depict the context of the wine: the place, the people, the cellar. This is a traditional, documentary approach of photography. and it is a very important aspect of our project because most people listening to our ”wine music” have never visited the place where the wine is made. The wines and the region we are working on are not industrial, therefore, this context is of great significance. Second, the images can function on the same basis as music: they can be visual transcriptions of the wine. This is easier said than done 😉 but it is not impossible and in my opinion, once it is achieved, the message is powerful and very poetic.

Domaine Saint-Préfert, Isabel Ferrando, Vieilles Vignes de Clairette 2012

The main difficulty of that side of the project is to disconnect photography from reality. That is, if I want to transcribe the wine into an image, this image shall not be identified as a situation or a precise object, but as an emotion, a sensation. This has proved to be a terribly difficult challenge for me. Here I will give you an other example of the result, a take on François Cotat, La Grande Côte 2012. A wine that is extremely colorful but still restless and impossible to catch.

François Cotat, La Grande Côte 2012