Inspired by the Skies: The Music of Jonathan Meiburg and the Paintings of Charles Burchfield
Jun 23, 2010

Musician Jonathan Meiburg seemed like a natural fit for an evening inspired by the artist Charles Burchfield, due to his study of, and songs about, birds and landscape. On June 25, Meiburg will perform as part of Backyard Birds: An evening of prose and music celebrating Charles Burchfield.  

Meiburg’s interest in birds and nature often comes up in interviews. While in graduate school Meiburg studied Striated Caracaras, birds of prey, in the South Atlantic Ocean’s Falkland Islands. Even the name of Meiburg’s band Shearwater is linked to birds: a shearwater is a seabird that holds its wings stiff, achieving a “shearing” flight. This ability allows it to fly across wave fronts with minimum movement. 

For the June 25 performance, Meiburg has invited musician Andy Stack from the band Wye Oak to join him. While both bands’ names have ties to nature (Wye Oak refers to Maryland’s honorary state tree), this collaboration stems from Meiburg’s and Stack’s bands touring together this past spring and their shared admiration for each other’s musical talents. It turned out that they both enjoyed Burchfield’s work, too; while touring, Meiburg took the Heat Wave In A Swamp catalogue with him in the van, and shared it with Stack.

In learning about Burchfield, Meiburg has been inspired to write some new music for this program. One painting he has mentioned specifically is Burchfield’s watercolor, The Sphinx and the Milky Way. In this nighttime scene, stars and constellation lines fill the sky. A sphinx moth and flowers dominate the painting’s foreground, capturing the type of short flights Sphinx moths are known to take at dusk or later in the evening. Through this painting’s composition Burchfield, to great effect, links the universe (the infinite) to this single remarkable moth (the finite).  On June 25 we’ll hear the links and connections Meiburg and Stack make to The Sphinx and the Milky Way and Burchfield’s other paintings and writings. 

By Julie Thomson, Coordinator of Public Programs