Brown musicians, RISD artists capture music on paper at annual Sketching Sound concert

On Saturday afternoon, musicians and illustrators shared the stage at the Lindemann Performing Arts Center’s Riley Hall for the “Sketching Sound Chamber Music Concert,” an event combining live chamber music with real-time visual art. 

While students in Brown’s chamber music groups performed classical and contemporary pieces, artists from the Rhode Island School of Design and global drawing nonprofit Urban Sketchers drew the musicians in action. The musical pieces included works by Felix Mendelssohn, Dinuk Wijeratne and Ludwig van Beethoven. Musicians were depicted in a variety of mediums, ranging from ink to charcoal.

After musicians performed each piece, the artists displayed newly completed sketches to the audience and added their works to a growing collection on the wall. The audience was also invited to create sketches based on their own artistic interpretations of the event. 

“Watching the way musicians and artists inspired each other to open paths to new ways of creative expression was thrilling,” said Lois Finkel, the director of strings and chamber music at Brown.

Finkel, one of two main organizers of the event, originally drew inspiration from Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project’s 2005 residency at RISD, where RISD students drew alongside live music. 

“It sparked the idea to try to make this happen for music students at Brown,” Finkel told The Herald.

The event was created several years ago when Finkel met Leonard Long, a RISD illustration instructor. Both professors expressed interest in fostering a collaboration between the two schools, which led to the first Sketching Sounds event. 

Finkel said that the environment created an “intensity of focus” for the musicians, drawing from the “awareness that the artist and audience was actively listening and drawing inspiration from their music making.”

Among those in the audience was Ziqi Fang ’26, a violinist and singer who had performed in previous iterations of  “Sketching Sound.” Watching the illustrators bring sound to life on paper led Fang to reflect on the way music and art intertwined throughout the performance. 

“It’s so interesting to see people’s creative process. You can sit here and watch someone complete a drawing in 10 minutes while listening to these amazing musicians,” Fang said. “It’s a space where there is a constant burst of creativity, where you are constantly inspired.”

“This is one of my favorite events that the department does,” said Emily Dolan, chair of the music department at Brown. “It’s one of the most wonderful collaborations with RISD that Brown has.”

For Paul Olson, illustrations instructor at RISD, the event was “free and loose.” He said he believes the experience provides an escape from the steady stream of school assignments. 

Brown-RISD Dual Degree student Maximos Spatharakis ’29 said that he had never been to an event like this before. 

It was a “nice departure from the normal day-to-day, clean cut concerts,” Spatharakis said.

Spatharakis added that he had always wanted to draw at a concert but never had because of how socially “scary” it seemed to bring a sketchbook to an orchestra performance.

When the concert came to an end, the audience, artists and musicians all flooded the sides of the room, admiring the artworks that had been created throughout the night while reflecting on the experience of hearing music live. 

For Finkel, “the abundance of sensory stimuli in the room was palpable,” she said.

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