Dreams, imagination and resilience marked an evening of film and music pairings at Northrop on Thursday, part of a co-presentation with Liquid Music called “Sun Dogs.”

Liquid Music’s artistic director and creative producer Kate Nordstrum conceived the series with composer Daniel Wohl back in 2019, inspired by the natural phenomena of sun dogs— halos of light formed by atmospheric ice crystals. Their first three commissioned film and composer pairings premiered with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra back in 2022. At Northrop, the same films and adapted scores were performed live by the chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound, who also performed a new piece by Wohl, and one other work Wohl composed with Alarm Will Sound and Rafiq Bhatia.

The three films held an aesthetic of the pandemic years. With small casts and existential probing, both “On Blue” by filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with music by Bhatia, and “Naked Blue,” directed by Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie with music by Devonté Hynes, focused on internal worlds of its characters, like much of the output created during the lockdown era when so many experienced long periods of isolation. The third film/music project, “Rise, Again,” engaged in a discourse around housing instability and crisis, a much-discussed issue at the beginning of this decade and today.

The evening began with Alarm Will Sound’s organist John Orfe playing  “Prelude for an Old Friend,” a Northrop-commissioned work composed by Wohl with recorded vocals by Arooj Aftab woven into layered organ music.

John Orfe seemed to be greeting nature and sunlight in his playing, as Aftab’s vocals subtly floated into the music. Two counter melodies were played by the organ— a melancholic march and a bird-like chirping. As the organ’s tone shifted to horn-like qualities, Aftab’s lyrics emerged with loving reminiscence. It made for a transcendent beginning.

Conductor and artistic director Alan Pierson then led the Alarm Will Sound orchestra performing “Overture” by Wohl, Bhatia and the musicians.

The work emitted scratchy dissonance, and a sense of hovering. Different instruments emerged from controlled chaos soaring atop a pile of sound before being enveloped with it again. The pieces’ angsty disorder contrasted with the sublime “Prelude,” and the through-line of natural forms and environmental spaces carried through both works.

In both visual narrative and music score, “On Blue” contained signifiers of a horror film, with its pacing and build.

There were numerous backdrops in the film moved by a pulley system, juxtaposed with scenes of a woman dreaming. Both the eking pace of the score and the uncanny movement of the screens created a sense of dread. Bhatia’s composition grew increasingly discordant before the denouement of the woman reaching the end of her dream state, her face bathed in morning light.

In “Naked Blue” a young protagonist (Oumy Bruni Garrel), dressed in a skeleton print bodysuit, danced around a large building. The film illustrated a merging of inner thoughts and feelings with physical expression.

Patti Kilroy’s violin solos sparkled in the piece, trilling with effervescence amidst punctuated chords. Of the three film pairings, Hynes’ music composition was the most lyrical, buoying a fanciful dream-world of the talented dancer, with elements of jazz enlivening the soundscape.

The evening’s finale, “Rise, Again,” was co-written with a group of women from a nonprofit that supports families transitioning out of homelessness. Aftab’s recorded vocals complemented the emotional arc of the narrative. The storytelling carried through Decker’s innovative narrative structure and the music’s uplifting aura.

The “Sun Dogs” series heads to the Center for the Art of Performance in Los Angeles for a performance Nov. 23.

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