The Frances Young Tang
Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
at Skidmore College
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Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
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Past Exhibitions 2022

Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Precession

Against a black background with small white dots sits a line drawing of various shapes within a circle, including two small ovals and two overlapping ovals encasing a central circle.
Design by Christopher Swift, diagram of earth’s precession overlaid on composite image made from ESA/Hubble & Digitized Sky Survey 2, acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble), courtesy Neil Leonard
An elevator, doors open, with silver walls and a a graphic projected on the back wall.
Installation view, Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Procession, Tang Teaching Museum, 2023
Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Precession presents a quadraphonic sound installation that explores the orbital journeys of our solar system’s planets. The earth’s precession—it spins on an axis and spins around the sun—causes our vantage points of the night sky to subtly shift each moment as it “wobbles” back and forth on its axis every 26,000 years. In this installation, the approximately 60-minute audio, based on alto saxophone recordings and electronic sounds, advances in circular motion around the listener, sonically animating the elevator and encouraging reflection on the variant rates of planetary orbits around the sun and on our ever-changing place in the universe.
Neil Leonard is a composer, saxophonist and transdisciplinary artist. Leonard’s work includes concerts for ensembles with live electronics, audio/visual installation, and multimedia performance. He maintains active collaborations in Italy, Cuba, Israel, Canada, China, Burundi, and across the United States. Leonard’s sound installations have been featured by MASS MoCA, Williams College Museum of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Media Lab at MIT, Havana Biennial (Cuba), and the Bahia Biennale (Brazil). Large-scale installations and performances with María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Fujiko Nakaya, Phill Niblock, and Tony Oursler were featured by the Tate Modern, documenta, Venice Biennale, and Whitney Biennial. Leonard is the Artistic Director of the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute.

Sonance for the Precession was originally created by Neil Leonard while he was Arthur J. Levitt ‘52 Artist-in-Residence at Williams College in 2019, in collaboration with Lisa Dorin, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Williams College Museum of Art; excerpts were later released on streaming and vinyl in July 2021.

Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Precession is organized by the Tang Teaching Museum in collaboration with the artist.

Exhibition Name
Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Precession
Exhibition Type
Solo Exhibitions
Elevator Music Series
Place
Elevator
Dates
Dec 10, 2022 - Apr 30, 2023
Curators
Elevator Music 45: Neil Leonard—Sonance for the Precession is organized by the Tang Teaching Museum in collaboration with the artist.
Artists
Neil Leonard
Student Staff
Helen headshot2022
Helen Branch
Registrarial Intern, 2022-23 Carole Marchand Endowed Intern, Student Advisory Council, Tang Guide
A young, medium skin-toned woman smiles in front of a grassy mound and a light gray building.
Erica Chang
Curatorial Intern, Student Advisory Council, past: Tang Guide
Related
Helen Branch
Student Staff
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