Welcome to the Norman Perryman Site

norman perryman

Norman Perryman has earned an international reputation for his watercolours of musical subjects and of great musicians in action. But for thirty years he has also been pioneering a new art form as a performing artist painting live to music. In this “kinetic painting,” Perryman works on modified overhead projectors, interpreting the music in real time. As they listen, the audience members watch the evolution and dissolution of Perryman’s abstract images on giant screens. They are not illustrations, but rather images keyed to the ideas and feelings of the music, enriching the musical experience yet remaining in the memory as powerful works of art in their own right.

After memorizing the score, Perryman paints his kinetic image-sequences to a carefully rehearsed graphic choreography. The sensual, organic qualities of the moving colours take on an extraordinary luminous intensity, as his brushes cause them to flow, pulsate or explode, synchronized to the music. The musicians or dancers often stand or perform in these projections, thus becoming totally integrated in the visuals and reacting to them.

An economic alternative to video-projections, Perryman’s techniques provide a sensational experience in synaesthesia, (the sensory cross-over where, for example, you see colours on hearing music or hear music in visuals), which has intrigued musicians and artists for centuries. The spectator is a surprised witness of an ongoing live creative process which is in total harmony with the musical experience.

Since he first developed this unique performance art-form in 1973, Perryman has performed frequently for television and with modern-dance groups in Switzerland, France, England, the Netherlands and the USA. Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he performed his abstract impressions of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' for French television in 1979, referred to Perryman as "a musician, who makes music with his paintbrush".

Augusta Read Thomas: Murmurs in the Mists of Memory South Korean Great Mountains Music Festival, August 2007. Click on images to enlarge


No.1 Variation from the modern ballet 'Invention' Designed with Philip Taylor for the Netherlands Dance Theatre To the music of 'Eight Inventions for Percussion' by Kabelac	Dubai International Financial Centre (The Gate) with the Czech Symphony Orchestra

Perryman made the film “Esquisses” for Télévision Suisse Romande in 1976. An example of his kinetic painting with dance was the modern ballet “Invention” (co-created with Philip Taylor) for the Netherlands Dance Theatre, to open the 1989 Holland Dance Festival.This was greeted with headlines of "Surprise and Delight - Something New in Dance" (Dance and Dancers Magazine) and "Boundary-breaking Dance Theatre" (NRC Handelsblad).

In 1993, BBC Television made the documentary 'Concerto for Paintbrush and Orchestra', about Perryman's life and work with music. The latter part of this programme was devoted to a performance of 'Pictures at an Exhibition', with Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, in which Perryman could be seen painting his own semi-abstract pictures, inspired by Mussorgsky's music. The Times described the performance as "an ingenious audio-visual experiment, with brilliantly conceived imagery".

Perryman has also performed with José Carreras, Amanda Roocroft and the Hallé Orchestra, with percussionist Evelyn Glennie and with bass-clarinettist Harry Spaarnay. In The Netherlands he performs regularly with the Circle Percussion ensemble, featuring spectacular drumming in the Kodo tradition which takes on theatrical proportions as they stand in the projection of kinetic colours.

from Ravel’s Sheherazade

In 2004 Norman Perryman appeared with the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Takemitsu), with Holland Symfonia (Ravel), with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (Stravinsky: The Soldier’s Tale) and with the Arnhem Philharmonic (Pictures at an Exhibition).

Arnhem Philharmonic "Pictures at an Exhibition".

In February 2005 he appeared with the Flemish Radio Orchestra in a performance of John Adams’ El Dorado and toured Belgium with the Flemish Radio Choir in a programme entitled “The Occupied City”. In September 2005, with the Dutch ASKO Ensemble, he performed Confluences; Concerto No. 4 by the Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo at the Amsterdam Gaudeamus International Music Week. Future projects include a new audio-visual work, to be created together with Huang Ruo.

In May 2006 he performed in Amsterdam in a Dutch version of Gertrude Stein’s chamber opera “Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights”, with music by Guus Janssen and in December at the Abu Dhabi Royal Awards.

In June 2007 Perryman performed John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction (for two pianos) at the Greenwich CT Music festival. In August he performed in three concerts with the Sejong Soloists at the South Korean Yong Pyong Resort Great Mountains Music Festival (including Murmurs in the Mist of Memory by Augusta Read Thomas and Three Film Scores by Takemitsu).