TSO brings 'Pictures' to life with animation

“Pictures,” under the baton of guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger, will be accompanied by animation created by the Grammy-winning team of Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger.

Patterson and Reckinger, the creative force behind music videos for A-Ha’s “Take On Me” and Suzanne Vega’s “Luka,” created the “Pictures” animation for the early 2011 gala opening of Miami’s high-tech Frank Gehry-designed New World Center. The pair worked with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, whose young artists training ensemble New World Symphony is the primary resident of the new concert hall, to create animated scenes to go along with Mussorgsky’s 30-minute work.

“We actually set up group Skype calls with our teams and Michael Tilson Thomas would play piano,” Patterson said during a phone interview with Reckinger from Los Angeles last week. “It was really thrilling.”

This was the first time the pair — known professionally as Patterson + Reckinger — had worked with classical music. For more than a decade in the 1980s-’90s, they animated and directed pop music videos including MC Skat Kat’s “Big Time,” Sting’s “Be Still My Beating Heart” and Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract,” which earned them a Grammy Award.

“The whole time we were doing music videos and we were doing popular music, we actually had symphony tickets because we loved classical music,” Reckinger said.

In 2010, Tilson Thomas, the critically acclaimed San Francisco Symphony conductor, turned to Patterson + Reckinger and his University of Southern California alma mater to create animation for “Pictures At An Exhibition.”

Reckinger said the conductor tutored the pair on the Russian composer’s suite of 10 “pictures” inspired by Mussorgsky’s artist friend Viktor Hartmann. The parts include “The Gnome,” who clumsily runs with crooked legs; “Catacombs,” a downright frightening exploration of Paris by lantern light; and “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks,” a playful woodwinds romp that creates a brilliant image of mischievous chicks breaking out of their shells.

Reckinger said they based their animation on the idea of the actual pictures, but not the pictures themselves.

“As we worked on it, we realized it was actually an idea that really communicates to a modern audience. It’s world-building, its psychological,” she said of the images they created that included sepia-toned scenes from the early 20th century of people strolling through a museum or art gallery in “Tuileries” to Tim Burton-esque skeletons on sticks in the “Hut on Fowl’s Legs.”

The 2011 production was designed for New World Center’s six panoramic screens that wrap around the audience. The production was adapted several years later for a single screen using new digital technology from Ion Concert Media founder Scott Winters. Patterson said the new technology allows each orchestra to manipulate the animation to sync with their tempo rather than follow a set flow.

“So basically you still get the scope of it,” he said. “It’s a very similar experience but it doesn’t wrap around.”