Developed by Pascal Le Boeuf, Danny Clay, and the Friction Quartet, “Counter Paint: The Art of Fugue” is an interdisciplinary collaborative work that incorporates elements of classical music, collaborative painting, graphic notation, and improvisation to document a community of like minded musicians through the lens of a party game.

By combining concepts from Danny Clay’s “27 Overtures” with Pascal Le Boeuf’s collaborative approach to painting with groups of musicians, Clay and Le Boeuf engaged 34 composers and musicians to co-author a piece by approaching 27 canvases; each canvas includes four colors (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue); and each color represents an instrument in a string quartet (Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello). As in a fugue, painters were asked to either visually develop a musical subject based on Beethoven’s Große Fugue as a basis for their contribution, or to expand upon the subject of another painter. As might be expected, additional games and experiments were introduced as the project developed. The resulting paintings were then interpreted graphically by Friction Quartet with directions from Clay and Le Boeuf.

Composed by: Pascal Le Boeuf, Danny Clay, Friction Quartet, (Doug Machiz, Otis Harriel, Kevin Rogers, Taija Warbelow) Steven Mackey, Florent Ghys, Anna Pidgorna, Daniel Silliman, Emma O’Halloran, Gemma Peacocke, Matt McBane, So Percussion (Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Cha- Beach), Ninfea P. Cruttwell-Reade, Bora Yoon, Connor Elias Way, Tom Morrison, Natalie Dietterich, Juri Seo, Tamika Gorski, Molly Herron, Jenny Beck, Alyssa Weinberg, Anna Meadors, Chris Douthitt, Elliot Cole, Katelyn Halpern, Mike Mulshine, Kevin Eikenberg, and Annika Socolofsky.