Top (L to R): Daniel Wohl, Arooj Aftab, Josephine Decker, Devonté Hynes; Bottom (L to R): Mati Diop, Manon Lutanie, Rafiq Bhatia, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine

In the Northern Hemisphere, we sense the departure of autumn through familiar cues: daylight wanes, the ground hardens, the temperature drops as bodies curl inward, creating a protective shell around our heartspace. Breath shallows. But the coming winter months hold within them a promise of possibility, chance moments when the gaze may lift with the draw of a spectacle. The chest, in turn, expands — allowing breath to enter new spaces, create new openings.

Your world breaks free from its norm for a moment, is how Liquid Music Artistic Director Kate Nordstrum describes the human effect of beholding the natural phenomenon known as a sun dog.

And it’s that kind of breaking free — that breaking open, that inbreaking — that you’re likely to experience in the final performance of Liquid Music’s fall season.

Yet Sun Dogs is far more about a way of making — one that hopes to inspire within the shared realms of image and sound, and across a landscape where so much can feel broken. This singular project pairs artists across the distinct languages of filmmaking and music composition as storytellers on equal-footing, from inception to performance:

Rafiq Bhatia (composer) + Apichatpong Weerasethakul (filmmaker)
Devonté Hynes (composer) + Mati Diop & Manon Lutanie (co-filmmakers)
Arooj Aftab & Daniel Wohl (co-composers) + Josephine Decker (filmmaker)

This November, Sun Dogs will tour across continental America with live accompaniment by the “unusually versatile, reliably exhilarating new-music ensemble" (The New York Times) Alarm Will Sound. You can trace their path through Saint Charles, MO, (The Emerson Black Box Theater), Brooklyn (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Minneapolis (Northrop), and Los Angeles (Center for the Art of Performance UCLA).

I spoke with Kate Nordstrum and composer Daniel Wohl ahead of the tour, drawn in by a shared enchantment, sent onward with a radiant question: What lasting gifts might this natural spectacle imprint on our ways of creating and being, through something as equally ethereal and atmospheric as music — as spectacular as light captured on film?

This interview took place on October 28, 2024, and has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Amy Chatelaine: I’d love to hear more about the title Sun Dogs. What’s evocative about that image as it relates to the concept for this project?

Kate Nordstrum: In the natural world, there are these special moments when elements combine in unique ways, and they offer a momentary spectacle. I spot a sun dog once or twice a winter, here in the North. And it's always a reminder to me that known quantities — how I see the sun and its light — can shift and offer me another perspective. The collaborations within the program are similarly meant to offer small spectacles and new ways of seeing and sensing.

“For me, a sun dog feels like a portal ... It reminds me that it is possible for the world to break free from its norm for a moment.”

— Kate Nordstrum

For me, a sun dog feels like a portal: I always see the sun in this one particular way, but a couple times a year, I'll see it differently. It reminds me that it is possible for the world to break free from its norm for a moment. It triggers a reminder that I think is special.

We're seeking to break open the norm here with this project, too. By effective element combinations and new ways of working.

Chatelaine: That's gorgeous.

How did the two of you come together around this project?

Daniel Wohl: Kate and I had done some multimedia work together back in 2017, and we continued in conversation over the years.

Nordstrum: Daniel regularly expressed a desire for new systems or approaches for composers and filmmakers to work together. I heard that from other artists, too. That activated my producer-mind. I thought, How could we build a platform that could assist here, and see what results?

We feel very fortunate that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra took this on as a big investment, because it’s not just the commissions; it's the production budget necessary to make a short film. The CSO partnered with FotoFocus, a lens-based organization, to make it happen.

Chatelaine: Daniel, I'd be interested to hear from you what this project and its shift in approach has offered you. What has it made more possible?

Wohl: My experience has mostly been in blending music with visuals in multimedia projects, where either filmmakers or video artists are responding to my work, or I'm composing for a film, TV show, or documentary and responding to what’s already created. I've also worked on music for dance and choreography, where the process is much more collaborative, building a project from the ground up. I was curious to see if something similar could happen with film, and that’s really where the project began — a curiosity and a sense that something was missing in the usual filmmaker-composer dynamic. It turned out others were also interested in exploring that more collaborative approach.

Chatelaine: How do you begin that creative conversation, when one is coming from the language of sound and the other from the language of visuals? What’s Day 1 like?

Wohl: I can't speak for how it was for Dev or Rafiq, but for Arooj and me, it was a bit awkward at first because there’s no real blueprint for this kind of thing. Film scores often don’t make sense on their own since they're designed to respond to visuals. Arooj and I had to create something musically coherent, while Josephine had to bring that coherence visually and narratively. So, there were a lot of phone calls between Arooj, Josephine, and me as we brainstormed how those two elements would come together. The first musical ideas were Arooj’s vocals and some violin playing that we sent over just to spark ideas, which in turn evoked certain images for Josephine. It was a very intuitive process but also one that required a lot of early conversations, with us working separately for a while and then coming back together with more developed ideas.

“The project began [with] a curiosity and a sense that something was missing in the usual filmmaker-composer dynamic. It turned out others were also interested in exploring that more collaborative approach.”

— Daniel Wohl

Nordstrum: And what I like is that none of the pairs started with a story in mind. They came together because they wanted to work together; that was the impetus. And from that intention, they had to think about what they wanted to say, and decide how to start working together without the story given. They all ended up with pieces that they wouldn't have made without the other. And that's pretty special.

Chatelaine: This year, the films will feature live accompaniment from the New York-based ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Could you share a little bit about the group — their approach, and what appealed to you about partnering with them?

Nordstrum: We've both worked with them before separately. They're great — always open to ideas. We premiered Sun Dogs with the Cincinnati Symphony — an 80 piece orchestra — and we knew that in order for this piece to have legs, we needed to scale down. Alarm was eager to collaborate, and to continue a series along these lines together.

Alarm Will Sound | Photo: Thomas Fichter

Wohl: Yeah, I think they're one of the best chamber orchestras out there. It’s a 16-player group with really versatile instrumentation. They’re also very open to non-traditional projects and sounds, with a lot of experience working with composers who aren’t strictly from the contemporary classical world. So far, everything has been really seamless.

Nordstrum: They want to partner beyond just playing the piece; they’ve connected with the composers on their newly arranged works, and they’re finding residency support to develop this further together. Daniel and Rafiq are working with them as co-creators for some sort of program overture. They’re also involved in a new work that Daniel is premiering in Minneapolis with Northrop’s in-house organ, a special feature of the space.

Chatelaine: Is there anything you’d like the audience to know about that piece before the performance, Daniel?

Wohl: Yeah. This piece was created specifically for this iteration of Sun Dogs, and it includes Arooj’s vocals and some harmonies from the piece we did together. I’m taking elements from that piece and reimagining them for pipe organ, electronics, and vocals. In a way, it serves as an overture for the whole night. I thought it was cool how, in silent film, the live organ was the central soundtrack before music became integrated directly with the visuals. So, using the organ as an overture here felt like a nod to a new way of composing for film and orchestra — not exactly an homage, but definitely inspired by that idea of setting the scene for a kind of spectacle.

The organ really was the original 'fake orchestra': with all its pipes —flutes, strings, and other timbres— it could do everything. When an orchestra wasn’t an option, you had the organ, and it brings with it that whole history of church music. The piece has this kind of ethereal feel, and to me, the organ naturally brings out that spiritual quality — maybe even a sense of the ‘sun dog’ realm, in a way.

Chatelaine: Are there particular moments from the process, for either of you, that give testament to what becomes possible in this approach? Did any creative challenges arise that you found particularly worthwhile to navigate?

Nordstrum: Well, it's such a personal process. There were some key moments of healthy friction between first-time collaborations.

When you've committed to working together as equals, no one automatically has the final word — that had to be negotiated. This project called for co-directorship.

Wohl: One thing that struck me, along with a lot of the composers and filmmakers, is how thematically related the three films were, unintentionally. The commonalities across the three were both interesting and completely unconscious.

Nordstrum: Yeah, no one knew what the others were working on. Each pair was doing their own thing, on the same time horizon. The CSO premiere was the first time the group experienced the pieces back-to-back. There were overlapping threads and reflections, kind of echoes of the films across the three. It’s fascinating.

Wohl: It was also amazing what we were able to do in Cincinnati — running it six times or so, which is almost unheard of in an orchestra setting. That process really allowed us to refine things. Even though this iteration is different, it’s evolved from that initial groundwork. It was really lucky to have Kate and Nate Bachhuber (who was the CSO director then) put that process together.

After hearing it, Arooj was like, I really want to work with orchestras more, and it sparked her interest in adapting her work for that medium. I think it also opened some eyes for composers who usually come from a band background, showing them what’s possible in an orchestral setting.

Chatelaine: All the artists involved are exceptional in their fields — and I’m also appreciating the amount of risk and vulnerability asked of them to take on this new way of working.

I'm thinking, too, of our audience members, who may resonate with some of the creative challenges you’re touching on, at both an individual and societal scale. The creative challenges — again, that image of sun dogs — in navigating these big shifts in our ways of working together that change our orientation, our perception of one another.

Are there any fruits from this process you could see reaching beyond the performance hall?

Nordstrum: I think the coming together with mutual respect, without an outcome in mind, but knowing that you are signed on to get there together. That you make a commitment to one another to create something beautiful and true and meaningful. That beginning together without a final story in mind, willing to come to the table with yourself and with your skills and with mutual admiration, is good practice.

“Beginning together without a final story in mind, willing to come to the table with yourself and with your skills and with mutual admiration, is good practice.”

— Kate Nordstrum

Wohl: And I think I was also hoping to open up new pathways for communication, to avoid getting stuck in just one way of working. Going back to your original question, it was about discovering a fresh approach to creating across disciplines.

Nordstrum: Another good practice is to ask institutions to consider formula change from time to time. Orchestras don't typically consider commissions outside of music. It's not what they're seeking. But this project provided a new way for composers to work and imagine, which of course benefits orchestral music. It’s always worth asking for gaps to be addressed. I'm willing to do that.