Art & Music: Percussionists Drum Up Interest in Contemporary Art

Art inspired music will be on "display" this weekend at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.

Percussionists Matthew Coley and Ronni Kot Wenzell will perform a concert at 2 p.m. Saturday that inspired by the work of artist David Noonan, who is best known for work that features images of costumed performers.

Coley, a lecturer in percussion at Iowa State University, said these art forms work well together. He plans to improvise agains three of his works of art to inspire a three-part piece during the concert. 

"I do a lot of work with glass percussion instruments, and when I looked at his artwork, something really struck me about the combination of his artwork and the sound of glass," Coley said. "So I’ll be doing this piece on glass percussion."

Coley and Wenzell use a multi-percussion setup, with a traditional drum set flanked by two tall conga drums, plus cymbals, wooden blocks, a cowbell, a ribbon crasher (a series of metal strips mounted on top of each other to produce a loud, distinctive sound), two five-octave marimbas and a vibraphone. The glass percussion reflects Coley’s interest in non-traditional instruments.

"The glass instruments I use are an (assortment) of instruments I’ve collected—found instruments, bottles that I’ve tuned. I play on a glass xylophone, glass gongs that I’ve had made," he said.

Coley has also gotten by with a little help from his friends in the ISU Gaffers Guild, which is a glass blowing organization at Iowa State. They've made abstract-shaped instruments for him.

Playing glass instruments can be a bit like living in a glass house—extreme care must be exercised to make sure listeners hear more than the sound a stone makes when thrown through a window.

"I use different types of mallets, different sticks," he said. "Of course, always experimenting so I don’t have the opportunity to break anything in a performance."

"We have this feeling that glass is very fragile, and it is, but I’ve found that striking in certain places on these instruments—and in certain ways—will ensure that you don’t break them. And just becoming more familiar with them through rehearsal and time, I feel pretty (confident). I haven’t broken anything in a performance yet."

Coley has released one CD, Circularity, and hopes to have his second CD, Souvenirs, out by the end of the year. Some of the songs he and Wenzell perform will be recorded Nov. 13 for a promotional CD. During their concerts, Coley and Wenzell play together, and also have solos. It has proven to be a great collaboration.

"We just really quickly felt that we had a connection as performers, and it’s been going smoothly," he said. "On a tour like this, one person is always jet-lagged and the other one is extremely tired from planning the tour. ... But we’re able to feel each other’s energy and make it happen, really make it work."

The concert is free and open to the public. The Contemporary Art Museum is at 3750 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 63108.

To get there, take Highway 40 eastbound to Grand Blvd., Grand north to Washington, Washington east to Spring. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (open until 8 p.m. Thursday), 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday and closed Monday.