New Gallery Concert Series blends art and music in its 26th season

The New Gallery Concert Series kicked off its 26th season at Pickman Hall in Cambridge. The series combines visual art and music for an immersive aesthetic experience. The first program is called “Divine Isolation”. It featured a program of several pieces by modern composers, including one American premiere and one world premiere, as well as the paintings of Neetu Singhal. GBH’s All Things Considered host, Arun Rath, sat down with Singhal and Sarah Bob, the New Gallery Artistic Director and pianist, to discuss the program and the upcoming season. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath:  Sarah, I’d like to start off with you first. The theme for this weekend’s show, “Divine Isolation”. Even if I didn’t know already just from the name, I could probably guess this was at least somewhat pandemic-inspired, right?

Sarah Bob: Partially. I mean, the truth is that I started with a piece by Lior Navok. It will be a world premiere for narrator and piano quartet. And the text is by a poet, Leah Goldberg, and it’s dealing with a woman who is so lonely in a new city. And I got this piece, it’s so beautiful. And I really wanted something — obviously, artwork to resonate with it, but I also didn’t want to do a whole bummer of a concert. I didn’t want a concert of just loneliness.

I was fortunate to be introduced to Neetu’s work and to meet with her, and I was able to talk to her about this; this is the launching pad, and your work resonates for me with this music. I’m not exactly sure why or how. And Neetu is the one who came up with that phrase, divine isolation, which just made my heart so full.

I was able to suddenly see a whole program that contributed to this idea of, you know, different sides of this one coin of the beauty of isolation and also the tragedy of isolation, the combination of both. Whether it’s holy introspection or like Leah Goldberg talks about, this loneliness in a new city.

Rath: Neetu, tell us about your sense of divine isolation. I think you’re a meditator, right? Does some of it come from that?

Neetu Singhal: Yes, exactly. And Sarah definitely explained very beautifully how we got the divine isolation. So for me, the isolation was suggested before, and I was just thinking, it’s not looking very positively impacted on so many people. So I decided, and my higher self decided, to add some divine in it.

So divine isolation means if you are in solace. So for me, divine isolation is equal to solace. You are in solitude. And everyone is in solitude, whether we are with the family and crowd and with the musician and artist, when we get into ourselves and inside us, we are all in solitude naturally. So this journey is definitely a kind of very real to me with my work.

I mean, when I met Sarah with this concept, it felt like this is for me and we just go together, and music and the sound, which is the part of my work. Color therapy and sound therapy is part of work. So I feel very, very grateful and very, very pleased with this opportunity to explore, and go further to serve this society very beautifully. So this is my explanation about it.

Rath: That’s brilliant. And your art — trying to explain it for people and describing it over the radio — you make use sort of like dots, points, pixels, maybe you would call them. How would you describe it?

Singhal: So for me, everything is connected in this world. So I like try to input two elements, dots and lines, in my artworks. So everything is made up of dots in this universe. We can call them atoms and elements, and different kinds of perspectives. When we see the nuclear physics about every atom and every dot, we will find it’s very scientific.

So for me, being an artist, and my past background belongs to biotechnology, I did my masters in biotechnology before. So science, art, and this theme of meditation is going together. So definitely this is the kind of very, what I say, the relieved sense of getting the kind of… the present for me. The two elements, dot and lines. So for me, the visual perspective of creating the 3D structure – this is not a 2D paintings, and this is a very, very 3D element on my artwork.

Neetu Singhal

So when you see and explore, you will get the depth. Your sensory perspective to see this line and dots on my paintings will go together. So it’s about how you feel and see the artwork with your own wholeness, you know? Your inner world and outer world should be matched.

So this is my effort on my artwork, how I can serve in the show and give more input to my artwork to represent what I really want to show and feel inside. So both should be the same. My projection of my work and within me. So this kind of thing, two elements, line and dots, are helping me. And what I say is it’s a very helpful combination for me to represent the way it is.

Rath: Sarah, this just sounds in a way what New Gallery, what New Gal, is all about. This is just kind of blowing away of boundaries and incredible collaboration.

Bob: Yes, thanks. And I mean, the idea really for me always with these programs is about connection and how we come together from different perspectives. I want people to feel that connection. I want people to feel that they’re in the room with others experiencing something true. And it’s so important to me, especially in these times where it just feels like so many things are out of control. There’s this sense of… camaraderie with the people around us in the audience and on the stage.

Rath: That’s well said. I mean, I think we all need that right now. Sarah, before we go, there is a lot on this program. Can you just sort of run through some of these amazing composers?

Bob: I would love to. So, besides Lior Navok’s world premiere, we’re going to be doing the American premiere of “Kuyo Shota”, which means missing something, by South African composer Monthati Masebe. It hits this perfectly, the two sides of the same coin, where how is it that in Afro-centric cultural, mental illness is often considered a gift that can actually bring you closer to the spiritual world? While in Western culture, it’s typically regarded as taboo or a burden.

Also on the program, we have a hymn for toy piano and cello by Aaron Trant. We have by Native American composer, Michael Begay, a string quartet called Daan, which means spring in Diné. It’s about coming out of the isolation of winter. We have a Valerie Capers piece, “Billy’s Song”, for piano, bass and drums. And a solo violin piece by Kenji Bunch called “Until Next Time”, about a bittersweet goodbye. And we’re actually having Tony Leva and Aaron Trant improvised to some of Neetu’s artwork, which should be really, really exceptional.