Songs About Buildings and Moods

Architecture is often referred to as frozen music.

And the link between them has long been recognized.

What do the buildings we make say about us?

How does our perception of them change when filtered through music?

I'm Seth Boustead, and this is Songs About Buildings and Moods.

Once a community savings and loan bank, this striking building has been reimagined by artist and social innovator Theaster Gates as a hybrid gallery, media archive, library, community center, and home for Rebuild foundations' archives and collections.

The radically restored building serves as an invaluable space for local residents to access, reimagine, and share their heritage.

And it's also a destination for artists, scholars, curators, and collectors to research and engage with Southside history.

The bank was built in 1923 by William Gibbons Elfindale.

At that time, it was a savings and trust bank for the neighborhood, which of course was mostly Irish and Jewish.

And the building, of course, which was beautifully designed, was one of many buildings that were alongside this entire avenue that were built with this scale and with the natural aesthetic that they were going for at the time, which was the classical revival style.

We see it a lot in the arches and the ceiling that we beautifully restored and tried to preserve as much as possible.

And what was once, of course, the thriving community started to shift in the following decades as black folk from the South started to migrate for what were, of course, better lifestyles and conditions.

During the time, there were so many things that shifted the political climate that really impacted that transition.

So we saw buildings starting to close.

We saw white flight.

We saw things like red lining happening, of course.

We saw the green line, which, if you live in Chicago, we know the green, red, and blue are the primary transit lines within the CTA transit system that black folk like live on that was cut off from this entire neighborhood.

A lot of those things occurred around the bank and even the bank itself being a part of that devastation.

It closed in 1979 and kind of just sat here abandoned and was actually going to be demolished in 2011 until The Aster asked if he can purchase it.

The city of Chicago allowed him to purchase it for a dollar with the stipulation of bringing it up to code in two weeks, which...

It costs a lot more than a dollar.

Talk about who is the Aster Gates and what is the Rebuild Foundation.

Yeah, great.

So the Aster Gates is a black contemporary artist.

You probably know him for his incredible kind of mixed media works and his deeply kind of historic... he's a historian, I think.

He's an artist as a historian in so many ways.

In Chicago and nationally and now internationally as well, he's known as also being kind of a social innovator, taking back this idea of art and life being blended and making works that are more involved in community spaces like the Arts Bank where we are, rethinking what black spaces are, and really kind of creating opportunities and occasions for gathering and conversation and dialogue.

And that's kind of part and parcel of this broader practice of his.

The Rebuild Foundation is a foundation that the Aster started and that many of us now work within.

And our mission is prioritizing that black spaces matter, black communities matter, black people matter.

And the role of the foundation is to create a more organic, accessible, free programming and arts incubation to the greater grand crossing neighborhood, which is where we're sitting now.

Like me, composer Liza Sobel Crane was struck by the monumentality of this building, both in terms of its physical size and also the importance of the work being done within it.

I first saw the Stoney Island Arts Bank years ago before I ever had the chance to come in person and was always drawn to the space from the photographs I had seen, especially the library.

And my piece really tries to depict that soaring feeling.

You have the soaring feeling when you see it from the street.

It's kind of completely contrasts with everything else around it, a normal city street, and then boom, this huge building, huge old-style bank.

You walk in, you're completely overwhelmed by this massive lobby, and then similarly, the library with all the books just row after row going up from all the way to the ceiling.

So my piece, the beginning, tries to depict that soaring feeling.

The musicians are really going non-stop playing and that overwhelming feeling, that excitement.

In the second half, the piece slows down, the propulsive nature kind of calms down, but it's still this real excitement and it reflects the space's transformation.

It hadn't been used in a number of years, and then amazingly, the Rebuild Foundation transformed this space.

It went from this classical old-school bank to now a space for the whole community to come and celebrate arts and culture and music as we're in this room, and so the second half of my piece reflects that excitement and the building's transformation.

That's great.

How did you choose the string trio?

I mean, of course, you can write for 20 instruments, but those particular instruments, why did that speak to you?

With the string trio, you have all the same, the cello, the viola, and violins, you have this huge range.

I wanted the option of them blending together, but then again this enormous range, and so that was the combination of fewer players, plus having such a variety still within it and simultaneously the blend of all the strings was what really appealed to me.

Unlike most composers, because we're doing an interview later, you've actually seen the edit.

So, talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, it was really cool seeing it, especially I loved how you guys filmed from above, filming the musicians, so they looked kind of like little people in this huge lobby, and that again really reflected well with what my piece was conveying, this overwhelming, soaring feeling, and again the Project Rebuild and how they transformed the space.

Out of the five days of the week, it happens to me three or four days, where somebody rolls up and they're like, "Oh, that's where I started my first savings account", or "that's where I got my first mortgage from my house", like, "what's happening in there?

", you know, "I thought it was closed down, I thought it was this or that".

And you're like, oh, it's an art spank, and people kind of peer in, and they have this... they're like, whoa, right?

And it completely shifts... it shifts this kind of understandable pessimism in the neighborhood within this community just this resignation, that our spaces are never going to be invested in, that the city is so corrupt that they won't try to preserve these buildings that mean so much to us.

And then when you start to have that conversation about, like, oh, well, who did that?

And you talk about, you know, they asked us practice, or you talk about Rebuild, and they're like, well, what's going on?

Can I come by?

And then they come by on a Sunday to hear house music downstairs in the bar, and it completely...

I think those kinds of everyday experiences that are, like, not so spectacular or grand, but that are really just about people literally walking by the space, and the kind of organic means of conversation that you have is, like, the spirit of Rebuild's mission, that are, like, not a neighborhood that's been historically disenfranchised, politically and economically disenfranchised, but that's nonetheless kind of thrived throughout all of those moments of crisis.

And so a space like the Arts Bank, where we're at now, you know, it's kind of like reclaiming this notion of what a bank is, where wealth is.

Like, wealth isn't just financial or monetary.

Wealth is also cultural and aesthetic.

And so it's... in this space that we're in right now, it serves as an exhibition space, a programming space, an educational space, where communities come in and out to run workshops and have classes.

And it's also an archival space, and that is, you know, one of the things that's nearest and dearest to me as a historian, of course, I'm biased.

But we house in here four main collections and our kind of mission with this year.

But it's been the mission since the bank kind of opened, which is to kind of create opportunities and occasions for these archives to have more active presences in the neighborhood this year.

We're really mindful about making sure that folks that come into this space are aware of how sacred it is, how significant it is, the weight of it, but also the joy of it, you know, the incredible lightness of it in so many ways.

But I think, you know, again, I'm a historian, so I just...

I can't leave here with you without saying black culture is American culture.

There is no such thing as American culture without black culture.

Again, I'm a historian, so I just...

I can't leave here with you without saying, like, black culture is American culture.

There is no such thing as American culture without black culture.

Founded as an experimental artist's comedy by George and Ellen Scripps Booth, Cranbrook is one of the world's leading centers of education, science, and art, attracting thousands of visitors and students each year.

The Booth's dream for Cranbrook was realized by renowned architect Elial Saranen, who lived on site and completed the historic campus and stages between 1927 and 1942.

As you can see, the result is a total work of art with every minute detail meticulously designed.

The director of the Cranbrook Art Museum, Andrew Satake Blauvelt, tells us more.

It has a long history.

It starts around 1904 when George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth, who were living in Detroit, wanted to have a country home.

And they chose this area, now known as Bloomfield Hills, as their residence, and they built a manor house first.

And that started them on this kind of architectural journey that we call Cranbrook today.

Were they envisioning this at that time?

Well, there were plans that were being drafted.

They started first with what we used to call the Boy School.

It's a co-ed facility now, but the Cranbrook campus was really the first architectural series of buildings.

And they came into contact with Eliel Saarinen, who had emigrated to the United States.

It sounds like this incredible opportunity for Saarinen.

He's got all these ideas.

Booth has ideas too, but he has a lot of money.

And he's willing to put it at the service of these ideas.

It was a really amazing partnership.

And there's a very good story about Kingswood School, which was traditionally the girl's school.

That was the early 1930s.

And so Saarinen was really, that was very much, you know, his design.

He wasn't trying to appease a particular client.

And he had quite an open checkbook for that project.

And so you see different influences there.

It's a long, slung, horizontal, almost like prairie school.

So that caught the attention of someone like Frank Lloyd Wright.

But Wright was always kind of jealous because his clients were not the deep-pocketed clients that the Booths were.

And so if you visit Kingswood School, everything within it is bespoke.

And it was all really designed and created by the Saarinen family.

Let's talk about some of the art that's out and about in the statues, the things that we'll see.

How did all of that come to be, and who did it?

On the Cranbrook campus, you'll find a large collection of works by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles.

Milles was recruited here, basically, by Booth to become really the first artist in residence and the head of the sculpture department.

And Saarinen really liked working with all the art forms.

And sculpture was a really important element of a total kind of work of architecture.

So you'll find Milles' sculptures dotted all around the campus, and they're mostly in these bronzes, which he was quite known for doing.

That friendship developed over a long period of time, and his residency here kind of created the kind of model for what we now call the artist in residence.

So the graduate art school has singular teachers in each of the areas.

And so you kind of get that tradition with Milles and with Saarinen himself, who was, of course, the head of Architecture, as well as the president of the Art Academy.

And Saarinen was in residence?

Yes.

He lived here, right?

Yes, and he built his lovely home here too, the Saarinen House, which is a masterpiece of art deco design.

That is actually part of the museum's collection.

It's probably the largest object in our collection.

I would think so, yeah.

It's beautiful.

And these sculptures are just so stunning.

Really integrated into the sense of place.

Some of the works actually pre-exist the architecture, which is kind of interesting, so Saarinen designed around that, and then vice versa.

And you also find contemporary forms of sculpture here too, as well as works created by alumni of the Art Academy, which bakes a big part of our permanent collection, and works devoted to very famous artists and painters and sculptors and architects and designers who've graduated from the Art Academy over the years.

Composer Jeremy Escuer took a highly original and personal approach to interpreting Cranbrook musically.

The first initial thing that kind of struck me was basically this view behind here.

That was the first kind of imagery that was set in my mind, and it kind of reminded me of essentially a citadel.

It just struck like mysticism, like very mystic feel to me, and that's kind of like the first imagery that was set in my mind when I was planning this piece.

As I did more research on the building, I did other layers of inspiration, for example, I essentially constructed all my harmonic language based off selected dates that led up to the erection of this building here.

And obviously, most of these dates took place in the 1900s, so 9 was the key pushing factor for the whole piece.

9 to me is essentially A, pitch A, so I based off the majority of the piece around the world of A.

And they also have this model going on, which is like, if I remember correctly, it's without a life of beauty, life is only half-lived.

There's something along the lines of that, right?

Without art, life is only half-lived.

Yeah, basically.

I created a narrative around that model.

And essentially, you have that structure in that piece where it's just back and forth between this character, if you will, being placed here, for me, was a citadel, and placing her in a sense of trying to discover where beauty is.

And I created the narrative of the whole piece.

And another thing that I forgot to mention is, particularly this material here in this building, it's a Macata limestone.

I do these things where I'm able to create sonifications of molecular structures within certain materials.

So that was another level, additional level, of a harmonic language that I implemented into the piece.

In this case, we were so excited to be able to partner with New Music Detroit.

And, of course, they have their core ensemble now, of soprano, cello, percussion, and piano.

Which we've never done piano, really, with Songs About Buildings and Moods.

So that was pretty exciting.

So this ensemble was dictated to you.

How did you translate your mystic vision and all of the things you just talked about to that specific ensemble?

It doesn't really matter what instruments I have.

It's just putting time into it.

I make it work, regardless.

But with voice, you've got text.

Oh, sure.

How did you approach that?

Well, in this case, for this piece, I kind of sang it myself, or tried to put myself like in a character role, where I try to sing and kind of implementing that model that I spoke about earlier, and sing that to myself based on the harmonic progressions that I already had going with me.

It goes pretty high.

Oh, it does go high.

Did you sing all that?

Oh, I mean, well, no.

I would have squeaked so much.

She's at the top of a range there.

Oh, no.

She's amazing, I mean.

And I mean, obviously, I did that purposely because in this piece, with the whole model of without beauty, life is only half-lived, I did that, these screeching moments, because I wanted to exemplify that detachment of beauty and going back into her regular singing voice, where, for me, you know, it was just full and beautiful.

So there were moments in that to exaggerate that sense of where has beauty gone.