The Brown University Orchestra performed “Love Song to the Sun” to accompany the song’s composer and electric violin soloist Tracy Silverman in the first concert of the semester Saturday. After the previous night’s performance was canceled due to inclement weather, Saturday’s concert brought a packed house of eager students, faculty and community members.
“Love Song to the Sun” follows the life of a gnat over 24 hours as it experiences birth, mating and death. In bringing the “level of what we would normally consider an insignificant creature to operatic … dimensions,” the piece makes the point that “every living thing has the right to life,” Silverman said. This concept “was the sort of parable of this piece — and in order to make that point, the music had to be very emotional,” he added.
The theme’s ramifications could expand to the way humans view the “hierarchy of people in our lives,” said Todd Winkler, professor of music and director of the doctoral program in multimedia and electronic music experiments, who created a video that accompanied the music and was projected on a screen behind the orchestra. “The video had to be compelling in order to draw people into this story,” Silverman said.