Music Framed by Absinthe

The average museum-goer spends 40 seconds in front of a work of art.

So today's program at the VMFA, "Art Framed with Music," intended to extend that to give us four to five minutes with nine selected works.

Virginia Wesleyan's artist-in-residence, Lee Jordan-Anders, had chosen the pieces from the museum's collection and then selected music to accompany each in hopes of firing up our imaginations.

A grand piano sat onstage and she wasted no time in showing us Degas' "Little Dancer," saying it was the only one of his sculptures exhibited in his lifetime, and playing Debussy's "Danse," a perfect match to exemplify the marriage of art and music.

That Debussy had been only 28 when he wrote it explained the youthful vibrancy of the piece.

Next she showed Pomodoro's "Rotating Sphere," and my music-loving companion and I gasped.

It was the sculpture that used to sit in the circle in front of the VMFA's entrance before the renovation.

The one I passed every time I went to Jumpin' in July. The one that greeted you at the entrance to the sculpture garden. The one I passed on a first date 20 years ago.

I hadn't seen it in years, so its unexpected presence was a complete surprise and memory trigger at the same time.

Leaning in to me, he said, "Wow, does that ever take me back."

Jordan-Anders had brilliantly chosen Prokofiev's "Prelude in C, Opus 12, No. 7" to accompany it, a piece that began by shimmering like the brushed surface of the sphere before breaking into dissonance and staccato notes to suggest the jagged edges of the sphere's center.

My music buddy and I looked at each other like two cats who had swallowed the canary. This was so up our alley.

Watteau's "The Gazer" got us a Couperin piece and lots of symbolism.

"Les Folies Francaises" was a series of colors set to music and the colors in the music (white for virginity, pink for modesty, red for ardor, green for hope) were reflected in the painting.

Very cool.

For the painting everyone knows, "Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog," Jordan-Anders shared a photo of her dog at her piano.

But it was what she said that was interesting.

In 1805, Beethoven had played ten performances in England, an extraordinary amount for the time and especially compared to how much he played in his native Austria.

In gratitude for the welcome, he'd written all kinds of stirring variations on "God Save the King," the sheet music shown in the painting.

Gratitude music, so to speak.

Manet's "On the Beach, Boulogne sur Mer" depicted a serene beach scene, so she sorted through a lot of dramatic water music to find Cras' "Paysage Maritime."

Explaining that Cras "had a day job" (he was an admiral in the French Navy), this lesser known composer may have had limited time to work on music, but this piece showed how well he knew the sea, with layers of sound to match Manet's layers of paint.

As my companion noted, "By the end, I forgot where I was." And how.

For Monet's "Field of Poppies," she chose another Debussy, "Mouvement" from Images, Book I.

"I felt like the poppies needed life," she explained. The music was just moody enough for the cloudy day depicted.

We moved on to Americans with Robert Henri's "Spanish Girl of Madrid" and Gottschalk's "Souvenirs D'Andalousic," originally an improvised piece.

Henri's painting got music with bits of what sounded like Spanish folk songs, probably the kind that Spanish girl might have danced to in a tavern.

"Spring Song" by Paul Sample showed a man at an upright, cigar in mouth and beer on piano, with a bartender looking on, a testament to the artist's attraction to the common man.

Paired with Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," it was a suitable soundtrack for a very American looking scene.

Last up was one of Mark Rothko's many "Untitled" paintings, this one color fields of bluish-green, pure line, shape and color.

Jordan-Anders made the point that the advent of photography had freed artists from the constraints of depicting reality, leading to much of 20th century art.

Accordingly, she'd chosen Aaron Copland's "For Leo Smit, No. 1 from Piano Blues" because it was pure sound, with no set meter and unusual harmonies.

My only complaint with it was that it was too short, but then I'm a Copland fan.

It seemed like our visual and sonic journey through the imagination had just begun when it ended.

Unwilling to let the mood go, the musician next to me and I climbed the stairs to Amuse for a sip and a long discussion of what we'd just experienced.

It was surprisingly lively up there for after 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon and even included my Princess Di friend, who spends every Sunday afternoon there conducting his own little salon with a rotating cast.

He invited me to join, but I had music geek talk to attend to.

It was also happy hour and I do appreciate weekend happy hours, so I ordered an absinthe drip in part so my absinthe-ignorant companion could watch the process.

Okay, and because it's just the thing to savor after being bathed in music and art.

I was lucky to have attended the show with someone even more of a music geek than me because happy hour allowed us the time to go back through the program, discussing the pairings and the musical selections.

Both of us were amazed that Jordan-Anders had used no sheet music for any of the pieces she played.

We'd both been terribly impressed with the Jean Cras piece, marveling at a man who could sail the seas and capture them in music, too.

It was his first time hearing Debussy live and he couldn't wait to get home and start doing his musical research.

One thing that puzzled us both was that during the introduction, they'd said that the museum was testing out Sunday afternoon programs to gauge interest.

Are you guys kidding?

2:00 on a Sunday is a perfectly wonderful time to have a program.

It allows me a culture fix and time to make it upstairs for Princess Di's Sunday salon and a drip.

I think I'll wear red to show my ardor for the idea.