Distinctly Montana Magazine

Cutting-Edge Classical Yellowstone Falls ©James Westwater J ames Westwater has just gotten back from an early morning bike ride near his home in central Utah. Later that morning he'll Skype with a colleague in Los Angeles, and after that he'll nail down the details of an upcoming performance with the Great Falls Symphony. Today's classical music directors and conductors—in Montana and around the world—are working hard to find ways to connect with mod- ern audiences and get people in the seats. And they may have found their saving grace in a man who is neither a musician nor a conductor. He is James Westwater, photochoreogra- pher. "When I needed to come up with a term for what I do," Westwater ex- plains, "I combined 'photo,' mean- ing light, and 'choreography,' which refers to the art of the dance." Westwater coined the term "pho- tochoreography" back in 1973, when There's More to Modern Orchestra than Meets the Ear BY JESSICA SOLBERG James Westwater (left) and Nicholas Bardonnay "FOR ME, THE CONCERT IS NOT JUST ABOUT MUSIC, OR WORDS, OR PHOTOGRAPHY. IT'S ABOUT THE WHOLE COMBINED EXPERIENCE AND THE EFFECT THAT IT HAS ON THE AUDIENCE." he performed his first piece with his hometown Columbus Symphony in Ohio, shortly after receiving his PhD in edu- cational development, with a focus on multi-media arts. During a live dance, orchestral, or spoken-word perfor- mance, Westwater projects a series of hundreds of pho- tographs onto a three-panel, 440-square-foot panoramic screen suspended above the stage. He's performed his photochoreography with more than 150 orchestras around the nation, as well as with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Warm and ener- getic, Westwater is hard at work planning the upcoming season. With more than two dozen performances scheduled, it's expected to be his busiest yet. He's eager to talk—about how he started, and where he's headed. JAMES WESTWATER, PHOTOCHOREOGRAPHER "I am not the first person to put music and images together," Westwater says. "Hollywood has been doing that for a long time." But Westwater believes he originated the art form of taking a piece of classical music and com- bining photography for the purposes of live performance with symphony orchestras. "When you start something new in the arts," he says, "it's tough to get launched. Particularly in the classical music field, where there is a tradition of being traditional." Westwater could have gone to Hollywood, could have been a cameraman and filmmaker. "It just wasn't consistent with my internal makeup," he admits. "I said, 'No, thank you.'" Instead, he came to Montana, where he served as the National Endowment for the Arts resident artist in Boze- man. His daughter attended Montana State University, 34 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • AUTUMN 2011

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