Steve Bowersox will be the Red Barn Studio Artist-in-Residence from September 15–19th.
Steve is a familiar face around here, having previously been the administrative assistant for the Red Barn. Steve is a musician with a wide scope of interests in different instruments and genres, but he is returning as Artist-in-Residence to take a deep dive into his research of Handel’s Messiah, an oratorio written in 1741. Steve has long been interested in this piece. He first encountered it after purchasing the piece as an LP at a library book sale and was immediately captivated by the first notes of the overture. “The orchestration throughout,” he says, “is what drew me.” Visitors might find the source material familiar, as the Messiah Festival of the Arts has been held in Lindsborg since 1882.
Though he has listened to it many times, this will be Steve’s first time listening to Messiah as a complete story. During his residency, Steve plans to immerse himself in Handel’s Messiah, taking a deeper look at both in the narrative of the piece—approaching it from a Jewish perspective, as “much of the oratorio comes from Hebrew scripture,” Steve says—as well as the creative choices Handel himself made while composing the oratorio.
Visitors can expect to find the studio always filled with music, ideally from multiple different iterations and performances of the piece. Steve invites visitors to spend some time chatting with him about Handel’s Messiah, Lester Raymer’s art, or about anything that comes to mind. In Steve’s words, “Everyone has a story to tell, and Lester Raymer’s studio brings out the best stories.”
