Kent Nagano

KENT NAGANO made his name as conductor of the Orchestre Symphponique de Montreal, building a powerful institution there from 2006 to 2020. He had served as assistant to BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa prior to his Montreal success. I caught him in Boston where he had just completed a triumphant return concert after a ten-year absence. His performance included Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps, which he conducted from memory. I asked him backstage how he managed to handle this demanding piece. “Nothing special,” he said. “We work on one measure at a time, over and over, then put them all together.” I tried to draw his flamboyant podium persona with all the excitement he was able to create. It was easy to choose pen-and-ink on heavy watercolor paper s my medium. Gradations through water and brush gave him three dimensions, and he leaps off the page.

Pen and Ink by Michael Johnson

Size: 11x14

About Michael Johnson
The piano has always attracted me as a high-wire act -- taking to the stage with two hours of solo music in a player’s head and risking the chance of audience approval or not. I began as a writer and foreign correspondent but have ended up probing this brave side of the pianist’s personality. I have written at some length about all the pen-and-ink portraits in this exhibit. Some of the drawings have been published in newspapers and magazines, others publicly exhibited. It is gratifying to see how communication just happens. My favorite medium is pen-and-ink on 300-gram mixed-media art paper. I try to avoid cross-hatching for gradations, but achieve the effect with a wash of water over the line on a sable brush.