ACCAD Design students bring 'Thurber's Dogs' to life

Courtesy of ACCAD Dog and Butterfly, produced by the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design in collaboration with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra and Thurber House, is based on drawings by James Thurber. In 1994, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra began a collaboration with Thurber House to commemorate the 100th birthday of celebrated Columbus author James Thurber. They sought to create a musical arrangement that would honor his life and pay homage to his work.

This weekend, the Columbus community witnessed what has grown out of that partnership.

As a celebration of ProMusica's 30th and Thurber House's 25th anniversaries, the groups hosted "Happy Birthday ProMusica!" Saturday and Sunday at the Southern Theatre. Three major pieces were performed at the event, including a highly anticipated showing of composer Peter Schickele's "Thurber's Dogs-Suite for Orchestra."

"I have long been a fan of Thurber's prose and drawings, so I eagerly accepted a commission to write a piece having some connection with his work," Schickele said in a note on the ProMusica Web site. "When the idea of basing the composition on the essays he wrote about dogs was suggested, I liked it immediately."

In it's initial production, Thurber's Dogs images were projected as ProMusica played their symphony.

However, this year, imagery for the show was revamped and illustrated with the help of OSU students.

Students from Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design created 3-D animations of Thurber's famous dog drawings for a performance of "Thurber's Dogs-Suite for Orchestra." The animated segments were sequenced with Schickele's music.

In addition to the Thurber concert were performances of Mozart's "Symphony No. 31." Chinese pianist Yuja Wang made her Columbus debut on Beethoven's "Piano Conerto No. 3."

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Lisa Scott can be reached at scott.917@osu.edu.

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