Dan Flanagan has built a multifaceted career as a soloist and orchestral musician, performing concertos with orchestras in California and recitals throughout the United States and Europe. Flanagan currently serves as Concertmaster of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera, Concertmaster of West Edge Opera, and Instructor of Violin at University of California, Berkeley. Described as an “excellent violinist” (New York Concert Reviews), “stellar musician” (Nevada Reviews) and “superior violinist” (Piedmont Post), he has been praised for his “exquisite tones” and “forthright brio” (Sacramento Bee), and his “solos were excellent” (San Francisco Classical Voice).
For more information, see https://danflanaganviolin.com
The Bow and the Brush
The Bow and the Brush integrates the visual arts with new music. Dan commissions and composes new works of music inspired by paintings and sculptures. Images of the artworks that inspired the compositions are projected during the performance. The Bow and the Brush has been performed in New York City, Rome, Paris, London, San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Oakland, San Diego, Eugene, Denton, Houston, and Chicago. The 2023-24 season includes performances at The Center for New Music (San Francisco), Boston University, Carnegie Hall, l’Impromptu (Bordeaux), University of Rome, and The American Library in Paris.
The Bow and the Brush is my project of commissioning and composing new music inspired by paintings and sculptures. When the pandemic shutdown began, and we were all stuck at home, like so many musicians, I spent my time playing solo pieces on my violin. I felt happier than most because I did this while looking at the dozens of paintings on my walls, collected over many years. It seemed like my years of excessive collecting prepared me for that moment! I have been a collector since I my youth: baseball cards, stamps, bottles. In grad school, when eBay arrived, I maxed out a credit card buying historic, violinist memorabilia; it was a true addiction. Having amassed one of the more respectable collections of memorabilia around, I one day realized my walls were covered with black and white photos of dead people, and I needed color. I had always loved visual art as much as music but was unaware of the affordable art market for middle class people. I learned. I began scouring French auction houses for obscure or forgotten Impressionists, bidding over the phone in the middle of the night. Then I discovered ArtSpan’s open artists’ studios events in San Francisco at places like Hunters Point Shipyard Artists. Fast-forward to 2020: I was playing my violin all afternoon and composing through the night, all the while surrounded by dozens of beautiful paintings. Combining the two was an inevitability. I began composing pieces inspired by these paintings, then commissioning my favorite composers to do the same. The feelings I experience when viewing a painting or hearing music seem to be generated from the same place, and therefore feel connected. The colors of paint relate to the colors of tone, and the texture of brush strokes relate to the articulation of bow strokes. Although I hadn’t planned on doing anything like this before the Covid shutdown, it now seems like the obvious result of my life thus far. I am particularly happy to be spreading the work of living composers and artists, performing these pieces everywhere I can and recording them at Hertz Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dan Flanagan