The Borromeo Quartet has been presenting video residencies for a number of years now. There are three kinds of presentations: One is where the score is displayed during performance or as an aid to explanation. The second is when background material on a composer is displayed in a documentary fashion. The third is the type represented here where free use of the imagination is displayed in creating a video to play synchronized with the music. The purpose of these kind of residencies is to create and environment where children or adults are encouraged to see classical music as an arena which is meant to stimulate our imaginations.

The two videos shown here were filmed at a residency presentation at a public school in Toyama, Japan in connection with the Toyama Chamber Music Festival. The video shown here is the conclusion of a story about a wigmaker in Vienna around 1800. The wigmaker loves music and is very proud that she has made the wig for Haydn and Mozart. When she attends concerts of Beethoven she she sees he doesn't even wear a wig. She wants to make him a wig to help him. She watches him at work, but when she sees his habits, including one of Beethoven's real habits of throwing a basin of water over his head, she concludes she cannot help him. Defeated in her efforts she sleeps and the animation is her dream. The captions spell out her realization that Beethoven's wig is his music and that his music will create beauty for all time.

All of these video materials have been created by Nicholas Kitchen with the help of Kazumi Minoguchi, Miho Ihara, Jae-Hyun Ahn, the Borromeo Quartet, Christopher Kitchen and X-Plane Flight Simulator Laminar Research