by Steve Litt
CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s no secret that generations of children first learned to love classical music while watching animated cartoons that use famous works by great composers as their soundtrack.
Prime examples include Walt Disney’s 1940 masterpiece, “Fantasia,’’ in which lava-spewing volcanoes erupt in sync with Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,’’ and bucket-wielding brooms terrorize Mickey Mouse in a rendition of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’' by Paul Dukas.
On the more hilarious end of the spectrum are the Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, including the unforgettable Bugs Bunny episode in which Elmer Fudd sings “Kill da Wabbit!’’ to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
Inspired by such examples, the mid-career Hiram-based artist Amber Kempthorn, a 2022 winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize who teaches at the College of Wooster and the Cleveland Institute of Art, set herself a huge challenge in 2019.
Even though she had never made an animation, she decided to create a 16-minute animated film using hand-drawn and computer-generated imagery to weave a visual narrative around the “Four Sea Interludes” from the 1945 Benjamin Britten opera, “Peter Grimes.’’
The premiere
The delightful result premiered Saturday, Oct. 15 at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron in a projection of the film accompanied by a live performance of the Britten composition by the Akron Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Christopher Wilkins.
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony anchored the evening, which also included a performance of “Rockwell Reflections’' by Florida-based composer Stella Sung, accompanied by projected images of works by Norman Rockwell.
Meanwhile, Bonfoey Gallery at 1710 Euclid Ave. in Cleveland is hosting an exhibition on view through Saturday, Nov. 5, that focuses on scores of drawings, or cels, that Kempthorn made to create her animation.
Stills from Amber Kempthorn's animation of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes,'' which she interprets as a Sunday in the Cuyahoga Valley. Courtesy Amber Kempthorn.
Following the Akron Symphony premiere, Bonfoey will display the complete 16-minute animation, Kempthorn said in an interview with Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
The entire video may also be seen by clicking on this link.
Troubled at sea
“Peter Grimes’' is loosely based on a poem by the 18th-century English poet George Crabbe about a cruel fisherman suspected of wrongdoing after three of his apprentices die in succession under mysterious circumstances.
In Britten’s version, Grimes is persecuted by seaside villagers and driven to madness and suicide over the death of one apprentice at sea, and of a second on land.
The “Interludes,” including “Dawn,’’ “Sunday Morning,’’ “Moonlight,’’ and “Storm,’’ are among the most beautiful compositions of the 20th century, evoking seascapes that range from the limpid calm of a sunrise to the terror of a raging gale.
Kempthorn said she’ll never forget the first time she heard a recording of “Moonlight,’’ in which the strings establish a somber, gently throbbing motif that oscillates between peaceful repose and ominous unease.
“I found that piece of music to be so fantastically moving,’’ she said. In her mind’s eye, she said she saw images that included “this moon swaying in the sky, going under water.’’ She immediately thought of making an animation, but said, “I didn’t have the skills,’’ so the idea “sat for 10 years.’’
Stills from Amber Kempthorn's animation of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes,'' which she interprets as a Sunday in the Cuyahoga Valley. Courtesy Amber Kempthorn.
Kempthorn ultimately felt spurred to realize her vision in 2019 in response to the Knight Arts Challenge Akron, in which artists compete for a matching grant to undertake a creative initiative about the arts that takes place in or benefits Akron.
Kempthorn dashed off a 150-word summary of her concept, which she eventually developed into an exhaustive, step-by-step plan that included an agreement with the Akron Symphony Orchestra to premiere the finished work.
Winning the $54,000 grant was just the first step. While creating her film and teaching full-time during the COVID pandemic, Kempthorn also had to raise an additional $54,000 from sources that eventually included other Northeast Ohio foundations, private donors, and family members.
Kempthorn used part of the money to engage the Red Point Digital production studio in Akron to help her figure out how to animate her drawings.
Reinterpreting a masterpiece
Instead of interpreting the Britten Interludes as a series of seascapes, Kempthorn entitled her project “Ordinary Magic: A Sunday in the Cuyahoga Valley.” In it, the music becomes a jumping-off point for evocations of Northeast Ohio landscapes viewed through a picture window that functions as a frame within the frame of the film itself.
In Kempthorn’s animation, the high notes in the strings that announce the sunrise in “Dawn,’’ are accompanied by a dangling lightbulb that gently pulses as the sky brightens. A fluttering motif played by flutes, evoking seabirds in the Britten composition, is envisioned by Kempthorn as a sonic portrayal of a swallowtail butterfly.
In Kempthorn’s version of “Sunday Morning,’’ buckets filled with water march like characters in Disney’s “Fantasia’' toward a gleaming blue motorcycle, which stands ready to be washed by brushes that magically dip themselves into the buckets before getting to work.
Individual cels, or images, from Amber Kempthorn's animation of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes'' are on view at Bonfoey Gallery in Cleveland through November 5, 2022. Steven Litt, cleveland.com
In Kempthorn’s “Moonlight,’’ a full moon swings gently back and forth across the screen in time to Britten’s music, before dipping into a river and rising again, even brighter than before. In “Storm,’’ a draftsman’s compass lurches across the stage-like space framed by the window like a seaman fighting to keep his balance on the deck of a heeling ship battered by waves.
At times, the viewpoint zooms slowly through the window frame, allowing the landscape in the film to expand and envelop the eye. At other times, the viewpoint pulls back to encompass the window, which turns the animation into something resembling an enchanted still life filled with objects that have a mind of their own.
Kempthorn’s imagery, which includes a hopping hammer, a tape measure that somersaults across the screen, the Goodyear blimp, a bouncing Cavaliers’ basketball, and a foaming bottle of Budweiser, are personal and autobiographical, but universal enough to engage the viewer in a kind of playful give-and-take over what they might mean.
It’s worth mentioning that a rainbow-hued mug in the animation represents a mug once owned by the late Cleveland artist Dan Tranberg, which he gave to Kempthorn as a gift. Tranberg was a highly admired painter and teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Art, a former art critic for The Plain Dealer, and a close friend of Kempthorn’s who died of heart failure after a long struggle with leukemia in 2017 at age 53.
Individual cels, or images, from Amber Kempthorn's animation of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes'' are on view at Bonfoey Gallery in Cleveland through November 5, 2022. Steven Litt, cleveland.com
The general thrust of “Ordinary Magic: A Sunday in the Cuyahoga Valley” is that by coordinating open-ended imagery and movement so closely to Britten’s “Interludes,’’ Kempthorn heightens the enjoyment of the music because she hears — and sees — something fresh in it.
The project is an imaginative reinterpretation in which Kempthorn convincingly expresses her affection for a powerful piece of modern music while taking us along for the ride.
At the end of the animation, Kempthorn evokes the slapstick tradition of Chuck Jones by quoting the famous final image from a 1902 film by Georges Méliès of France, one of the earliest films ever made. I won’t spoil that moment here. Viewers will have to see the complete project to appreciate the kicker at the conclusion.
Hint: it involves the moon and the Goodyear blimp. It’s a fitting reference that brings together Akron, Britten, and Kempthorn’s newfound enthusiasm for animation and film.