FAR

All Ears: Meditations on the Gallery Walk

FAR Center for Contemporary Arts is proud to announce the premier of a new musical piece by Travis Puntarelli, All Ears: Meditations on the Gallery Walk. The work was inspired by Bloomington’s Gallery Walk, and includes field recordings from the streets and venues during a brisk October Gallery Walk and woven together with songs inspired by sights, sounds, and feelings of the town. Live performances begin at 6:30pm at FAR. Lyric booklets with custom illustrations by Travis will be available at FAR on a first come first serve basis. The full EP can also be downloaded for free below.

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Join us on Friday, March 1st

Gallery Walk: 5:00pm - 8:00pm

Live Performances @ FAR: 6:30pm - 8:00pm

Artist Statement

In October of 2016, I was commissioned to compose a piece of music based around the open studio Gallery Walk in Bloomington, Indiana. With no idea what form the piece would take, I went out to walk the galleries. I took three things: A hand-held recording device, a sign that read “All Ears”, and a vow of silence. I walked from gallery to gallery, and listened. I have always been amazed by the sounds of my city. It sings an unbroken tapestry of chaos and harmony, woven together by metal and rubber and voices and bodies. The sonic space is rich and full and constant. I hear joy, sorrow, wonder, lamentations, heartbreak, friendship, frustration, all of it at once, on one corner of one street. I hear the town going up around me, changing, dissolving, improving, gentrifying. I hear friends meeting, culture colliding, people trading, taking, creating, offering. I hear deep love and passionate appreciation, and beside it a heart-wrenching madness of humanity.

Any piece I would make about the Gallery Walk would be a piece about the city itself. Held in this container of limestone and institutions, the people are the heart and blood and mind of the city. If there is a story to tell, they have it. The parameters of the piece were loose. I debated what should be the medium: a string arrangement? an improv dance? a marching band number? In the end I have settled on a short album of folk music*, with phonographic evidence of my adventures at the Gallery Walk, and a book of impressionistic pennings to compliment it. Let it be a multi-media photo-phono-graph of my town, taken on a Friday afternoon in the fall.

Travis Puntarelli

October 2018

About the Artist

Balladir is a new project from Bloomington-based bard, Travis Puntarelli. The project seeks to honor the dusty arts of heraldry, epic poetry, and the singing telegram. Inspired by such modern folk heroes as Robert Burns (1759-1796), Gary Gygax (1938-2008), and Calliope of Nestus, the group champions anachronisms that should've never been forgotten. The music is playful, eclectic, and folksy, with rustic harmonies and colorful lyrics. Examples and more info can be found at www.balladir.com