While that might be true, and there were two contrasting styles of music present in this piece, the overall effect of the music seemed to be so far removed from the effect of the painting that I had a difficult time relating the music to the painting in question. I would have thought that he would have been concerned about the overall “feel” of the painting, as much as making a singular point about one element. It was as if he became far too focused on making his one point that he forgot about the rest of the painting.

Obviously trying to find a way to interpret one art form with another can be enormously difficult, look at how hard it is to adapt a novel to a film, or a story to dance. In both cases if you don’t know the story in the first place there’s a good chance you won’t understand what’s going on at all. With Notes On Canvas, Arturo Stable’s attempt to offer musical interpretations of various pieces of visual art, the problem is thematic more then structural.

In the case of Frida’s “Self Portrait” he has gone after capturing some of the person’s spirit as seen in the painting, and that works beautifully. But in Monet’s “Impression Sunrise” he has tried to interpret a style and lost focus on the painting. It’s actually something I noticed happening on more then just this one painting. While his piece for Dali’s “Clock Explosion” was suitably chaotic and the connection was obvious, in others the connections just weren’t there.

The music on the CD are all exemplary pieces of Latin based Jazz, with wonderful playing and innovative arrangements, yet I failed to see the relationship between a good many of the compositions and the paintings they were based on.

I’m quite prepared to believe that a deficiency on my part played a hand in that, I don’t have the greatest ear for musical nuance, but I think the composer has to take responsibility for that failure as well. After all he chose how he would express the images - and what form that expression would take, and some of them just didn’t work at all.