SASO painting melodies in all-Tchaikovsky concert

Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra this weekend is performing a concert that might just go down as one of the most unique and compelling classical music events of this season.

It might even earn a spot as one of the most unique in Tucson history.

The volunteer orchestra, under the baton of longtime Music Director Linus Lerner, is combining visual and performing arts in a way we haven’t before seen on a Tucson stage.

And while the idea of a painter painting a picture while an orchestra performs live is not a new idea — apparently it’s been catching on in the past decade — we’re pretty sure it’s not been done here. And it’s not been done the way Greeley, Colorado, artist Armando Silva does it.

“There are a lot of artists who will paint live, set up in a corner and make a painting. But because I have a dance background and a little bit of a theater background that I love, I’m OK with taking it to the stage and almost choreographing it,” said Silva, 33, who has been doing performance painting for a decade. “There’s dancing and there’s up and down and pretty much what the orchestra does.”

Silva will appear on stage with the orchestra in the second half of its “Tchaikovsky and Live Painter” concert, when the orchestra performs the composer’s four-movement Fifth Symphony. It’s a work with which Silva said he’s unfamiliar. He said he will listen to it before this weekend’s concert, but his purpose on stage will be to live in the moment, react to the emotions he feels as the orchestra plays and tell the story that unfolds in his head.

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“I like to be present and there might be the moment where I pick up the brush and it slips a bit and I get behind,” he explained. “It’s a little bit of improv and there are cues that advise me and guide me to finish the piece.”

During each movement, he will paint a picture. At the end of the concert, he’ll present four paintings to the orchestra, which will auction them off as a fundraiser.

Silva has been doing live performance art painting for about 10 years with orchestras, during halftime shows at sporting events and as the headliner of fundraisers and private events. A graduate of the University of Northern Colorado, he is a dominate player in Greeley, Colorado’s diverse arts scene including as co-director of the Colorado Dance Collective, a non-profit adult dance company.

In addition to his performance art, he paints murals and portraits.

“Tchaikovsky and Live Painter” commemorates the 180th anniversary of the 19th century Russian composer’s birth. Lerner paired the symphony with Tchaikovsky’s popular Piano Concerto No. 1, one of his most popular works and one of the best known piano concertos.

Pianist Melanie Chae, who has won a number of international piano competitions including first prizes at the 2004 Maria Canals International Music Competition and second place at the 2001 Beethoven Intercollegiate Piano Competition, is on the faculty at the Jeobuk National University in her native South Korea.