In the summers of 2016 and 2017, Peter served as Resident Artist at Yellow Barn Music Festival, an international center for chamber music based in Putney, Vermont.
2016
Peter spent four weeks visiting rehearsals and attending performances, sketching and recording his thoughts in a series of abstract works inspired as much by the musicians’ interactions with one another as by the music itself.
“I had the privilege of hearing pianist Daniel Anastasio, a participant in the 2016 Yellow Barn season, during a rehearsal prior to his performance of Oliver Knussen’s Prayer Bell Sketch. In speaking with Daniel afterward, he said this sort of piece is the kind he particularly likes to perform: intimate and introspective. I was struck by how deeply Prayer Bell Sketch resonates with Daniel, conveyed in his sensitive interpretation of the piece.
“With the sketch I made after sitting in on the rehearsal, I hope to have done justice to the spirit of the musical piece, and Daniel’s rendition of it.”
—Peter Bruun
“Morning rehearsal, three players, preparing to perform Charles Wuorinen’s 1983 piece, Spinoff. I do not know very much about the piece (other from what I heard at the rehearsal), but I did find what to me is an interesting quotation from Wuorinen:
‘Art demands a kind of active participation which entertainment does not. Art is for people who are reasonably well rested; entertainment is for people who are exhausted and need to be soothed in one form or stimulated in some effortless way.’”
—Peter Bruun
2017
Over a two-week residency, Peter created a series of representational sketches in pencil and watercolor, conveying musicians in fluid motion as they brought the music they played to life.
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