People Talking: Gryphon Rue & Michael Mandeville on the Music of Cirque Calder

People Talking: Calder’s Noise, a Cirque Calder Listening Session with Gryphon Rue and Michael Mandeville
Tuesday, June 16
6 – 7:30pm
$28; members $20

“In all there are about twenty acts with an intermission, peanuts, and exotic gramophone music played by my wife, who is an excellent conductor, and with the sounds of a tambourine, cymbals and a cardboard pipe for making the lion roar . . .” —Alexander Calder on Cirque Calder

As part of our Pictures in Motion series on Cirque Calder, artist and composer Gryphon Rue and archivist and musician Michael Mandeville present a unique listening session featuring the music of Alexander Calder’s legendary miniature wire circus. Using a gramophone similar to the one Calder used in the 1920s and 1930s, they play selections from the artist’s record collection, ranging from classic marches and waltzes to exotica and popular jazz.

Rue and Mandeville also discuss the often-overlooked yet critical role that sound and music played in the Calder’s circus performances. Influenced by his relationship with the international avant-garde and attuned to the specificity of place and milieu, the artist approached acoustics in Cirque Calder in ways that reveal previously unseen dimensions of his artistic sensibility.

Gryphon Rue is an artist, composer, and musician based in New York. His approach fuses collage, improvisation, and the recombination of materials and recordings to build works in both sound and image. He is also a featured performer in the Artists as Gardens series, and his audio work Sound Passages is installed in Calder Gardens’ Curve Gallery.

Michael Mandeville is an archivist and researcher at the Calder Foundation in New York. He is also a musician and composer.

People Talking presents conversations exploring themes central to Calder Gardens and contemporary culture, emphasizing storytelling and interdisciplinary exchange. Led by artists, cultural producers, and scientists, each program reflects Calder’s experimental ethos, nuanced understandings of movement and transformation, and innovative approaches to engaging with the environment today. 

Programming at Calder Gardens is generously supported by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, Donna Green, and Michael Sternberg.