Sounds Modern presents Blues Unions: Music to Celebrate the Art of Sean Scully

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Dedicated to abstract visual art, Sean Scully was also deeply involved with the tropes of American blues music: he owned and ran a blues club in London, and was in a blues band with his brother. Discussing his artwork, Scully described his use of “insets” and other disruptions of the traditional frame of a painting as “pictorial … but it also completely vandalizes the idea of the picture plane … so everything's getting cannibalized and remade into something else. It's in constant movement.” His words also capture the spirit of composers George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Elizabeth Brown, Aldo Clementi, and others who have vandalized the musical plane of the blues, creating inventions and perspectives that lead listeners into unexpected worlds of possibility.