By Laura Schiller | From the March/April 2026 issue of Strings

In Monet and Venice, the Brooklyn Museum presented the largest Claude Monet exhibition New York has seen in more than 25 years, highlighting a lesser-known chapter of the Impressionist’s career: the paintings he made in Venice. The exhibit ran from October 11, 2025, to February 1, 2026. In the final gallery, Monet’s shimmering canals and palazzos were accompanied by sound—a new, site-specific symphony, Souvenir: Venise d’après Monet, that transformed the room into a multisensory experience.

The composer behind this “invisible sound sculpture” was Niles Luther, a classically trained cellist who graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 2019. The symphony mirrored the structure of the paintings, with movements named for Venetian landmarks like the Palazzo Ducale, San Giorgio Maggiore, and the Grand Canal. I spoke with Luther about his work translating brushstrokes into sound, composing for a museum gallery rather than a concert hall, and creating music that visitors experience while standing face-to-face with Monet’s work.

What is it like being a composer-in-residence at an art museum?

For me, it’s the realization of a longtime vision. I come from a very traditional classical background—Beethoven, Brahms, the usual. But moving to New York and spending more time in museums and with contemporary artists, I felt a disconnect. I loved that music deeply, but it didn’t always feel like it was responding to the world we live in now.

I was inspired by how contemporary visual artists take forms steeped in history and completely recontextualize them. We accept that films have scores, even though that wasn’t always the case. So I thought: If moving images can have music, why can’t paintings?

This connects to the ancient concept of ekphrasis—responding to a visual artwork in another language. For me, that language is music. I wanted to translate the emotional and narrative content of visual art into sound using the classical techniques I’m trained in. I started by scoring art films, then moved toward writing music specifically for paintings. Oneproject (on the artist Kehinde Wiley)caught the attention of the Ford Foundation, which helped establish this residency at the Brooklyn Museum. It’s exactly what I’ve wanted to be doing.

What was your initial reaction when you were asked to create music for Monet?

Honestly, I was apprehensive. Monet wasn’t a painter I immediately connected with. I’ve gravitated toward Romantic composers and, by extension, Romantic-era visual art. Impressionism wasn’t a language I felt fluent in.

That changed through conversations with Lisa Small, the museum’s senior curator of European art. She explained that Monet was interested in what he called the “envelope”—not just the motif itself, but the space and distance between the artist and subject, and how that distance appears on the canvas. That became my entry point.

From there, I started asking musical questions: What were composers doing at the same time Monet was painting? What harmonic language were they using, and how were they working with the space between the written page and the sound? I spent a lot of time with Debussy and Ravel, thinking about extended harmonies that function more as color than traditional structure—like how Monet uses color for expressive beauty rather than literal depiction.

How do you translate visual elements like brushstrokes, light, and color into sound?

There are literal approaches—you could count brushstrokes or map colors to notes—but for me, it’s about the essence of the work. I ask: What is this painting really saying? What is its quintessence? Once I understand that, I can tell a story musically that captures the spirit of the work, with technique coming second.

With Monet, I also considered cultural translation. Venice is an Italian city, Monet is a French painter, and I’m an American composer. So there’s a palimpsest of histories and identities layered together. I drew from what Venice sounds like to me—from echoes of Vivaldi and Venetian dances to cinematic American tones like Barber. All these influences coalesced. Souvenir: Venise d’après Monet is about Monet, Venice, and the intersection with my own musical language.

You traveled to Venice as part of this process. What did you experience there that you couldn’t access through the paintings alone?

I would use the word awe. It was my first time in Venice and Italy, and standing where Monet painted felt incredibly powerful. Seeing the canals and palazzos at different times of day gave me a more embodied understanding than the paintings alone.

One moment stayed with me: Monet painted San Giorgio Maggiore several times. When Lisa and I visited the church—a luminous white stone space—I suddenly heard a melody in my head, almost gossamer, floating down from the ceiling. That melody became the second movement of the symphony. I recorded a voice memo right there. 

We were in Venice for six days, retracing Monet’s footsteps to understand his personal journey. Venice hasn’t changed much, so it was like stepping into his world.

Was this project collaborative with the curator?

Yeah, collaborative in terms of context. Lisa didn’t tell me what to write, but she was crucial for understanding the art-historical background, which allowed me to make informed choices as a composer. For example, I initially didn’t sense sadness or melancholy in the paintings—they’re so luminous. I asked: Can I even write in a minor key? 

Lisa explained that these works are often misunderstood without context. Monet had been in Giverny, painting waterways repeatedly, and Alice, his wife, urged him to take a break. They traveled to Venice together, and Monet was overwhelmed by the city’s beauty. He shipped his supplies from Giverny and began sketching. Later, after Alice passed away, he completed the paintings, calling them souvenirs—memories of their time together. That longing and tenderness informed the third movement, which functions almost as an elegy—a meditation on memory and love.

When composing for a museum, it is for people moving through the space, unlike a concert hall. How did that influence your choices?

It influenced everything. This isn’t concert music—it’s site-specific, meant to live with the paintings. The music exists to deepen the visual experience. We built a multi-channel, Dolby Atmos environment, typically used in cinema. Seventeen live players were recorded and mixed by a Grammy Award–winning engineer, creating an immersive experience. As visitors move closer to the paintings, they move through the music as well.

I think of it as a spectrum between the visual and auditory. Your experience shifts as you move along it. Ideally, visitors leave altered, having encountered the work through multiple senses. It can also be a gateway, helping music lovers engage with Monet or art lovers discover the music I cherish.

Have you seen how visitors engage with the work?

It’s remarkable. I go and observe like a fly on the wall. Some people cry. I ask them what they’re experiencing, and the stories are incredible: “My father loved classical music, and this room reminds me of him.” I also get emails from people saying, “I’ve never seen or heard anything like this before.” It genuinely moves people emotionally, partly because it’s unexpected.

What happens with the symphony after the exhibit closes?

Personally, I’m content it exists. Ideally, the next time these paintings are exhibited, the music will accompany them. Until then, it lives in the exhibition catalog, which includes a link to a website where the symphony can be streamed.