The Primavera Project

THE PRIMAVERA PROJECT is a modern day collaboration of music and art inspired by one of the most widely admired and enigmatic paintings of the Renaissance, Botticelli’s Primavera, and contemporary artist Charline von Heyl, who has created her own original large-scale painting, Primavera 2020, enigmatic and prophetic in tone. The interdisciplinary collaboration is co-produced and co-directed by Jeffrianne Young and multi GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Matt Haimovitz. The two Primavera paintings are the genesis for a momentous series of 81 new contemporary musical commissions responding to the two works. 

In our new reality of the global pandemic and social and political upheaval, both Primavera paintings’ composition, characters, symbolism, nature and flora, darkness and light, mythology, identity, and spirituality are ripe for reflection and new interpretations. The commissions, solo cello works each around 5-7 minutes long, began with nine composers incorporating a variety of musical languages. Each composer recommends colleagues to be considered as the next participating composers; a total of 81 composers will be selected and commissioned for the project. New pieces are workshopped by the composer and Haimovitz to realize the composer’s vision. 

Each new work of the ongoing project is recorded for digital album release on the PENTATONE Oxingale series in von Heyl’s artist studio located in Marfa, Texas, utilizing state-of-the-art technology with the sound producer and composers participating in the recording sessions remotely. So far, four albums have been recorded: GRAMMY®-nominated PRIMAVERA I the wind, PRIMAVERA II the rabbits, and PRIMAVERA III the vessel, and PRIMAVERA IV the heart.

In April-Nov 2022, THE PRIMAVERA PROJECT joined the world premiere exhibition of von Heyl’s iconic Primavera 2020 painting in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Cecilia Alemani, displaying a special playlist PRIMAVERA A VENEZIA in collaboration with von Heyl’s painting, accessible by QR code and featuring curated musical compositions for this historic exhibition. 

Along with the recordings, Haimovitz performs live premieres of each piece. The collaborators look forward to partnerships embracing the organic relationships between the paintings and music through live concerts, virtual installations, pop-up concerts, residencies, and ultimately a multimedia theatrical production. 

A production of Primaveranzia.