shades of virtuosity - william d. caballero

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View Kelly Hall-Tompkins’ Imagination on YouTube.
Kelly Hall-Tompkins
SHADES OF VIRTUOSITY
Visionary violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins unleashes her ‘Imagination’ with new music-video album
By Pat Moran
K
elly Hall-Tompkins sees music in color.
The young violin virtuoso has synesthesia, a neurological condition in
which stimuli to one sense impacts another.
In Hall-Tompkin’s case, musical pitches are
also perceived as color. “B is red and C sharp
is yel low ish sh ad i ng i nto ora nge,”
she explains.
Hall-Tompkins’ peculiar gift colors her
latest ground-breaking project, the visually
sumptuous music-video album Imagination.
A potent package, Imagination pairs HallTompkins’ angular performance of Eugene
Ysaÿe’s combustible, corkscrewing Violin
Sonata in E major, No. 6, with “Pure
Imagination,” her own playful jazz-inflected
arrangement of family-film classic Willie
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s main
theme. The project has topped 100,000
views on YouTube.
For Imagination, she had no doubt that
Ysaÿe would form the centerpiece of the CD:
Ysaÿe’s sonatas are “the perfect vehicle, not
just for technical mastery, but for including
imaginative colors and textures,” HallTompkins says, calling the Belgian composer “the thinking-woman’s Paganini.”
Hall-Tompkins’ longstanding desire to
reach new audiences found its natural
culmination in the music-video album
Imagination.
“People are attracted to my performance
visually. They say they get so much more
from seeing me,” she says. “So why not
bring the visual aspect to a formalized
recording?”
A lengthy search for a collaborator
stalled, until a fortuitous encounter at a
concer t brought Ha l l-Tompk ins and
c inematog rapher Wi l l ia m Caba l lero
together. A violinist and composer as well as
a filmmaker, Caballero proved to be an ideal
partner for the project. “I went into
Imagination with a lot of specific ideas, and
they were heightened by his contribution,”
she says.
Hall-Tompkins’ synesthesia also was put
to use for the visualization of Ysaÿe’s 6th
Sonata in E major. “E to me is white, a bright
white light,” Hall-Tompkins says.
In the video, Caballero’s use of a translucent fading effect signifies that light. “There
was a synthesis of ideas,” he says. “I wanted
something that represented the openness of
that E major feeling. So we had white light
and doors opening.”
In contrast, the images employed for
Hall-Tompkins’ arrangement of “Pure
Imagination” are whimsical. Lollipops magically appear.
Hall-Tompkins blows bubbles, and the
performance is contained within a chocolate
box she opens at the beginning of the video.
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70 August 2014 / Strings
AllThingsStrings.com