Bang on a Can All-Stars" "Rimpa Reimagined" During a performance of Somei Satoh's "Shu" ("Spells") for six players at Japan Society on Saturday evening, images of elaborate dragons roiled across an overhead screen as the music became increasingly turbulent. An elusive cello melody unfurled to delicately meshed pictures of swans and other white birds. The motionographer, as he was called, Nobuyuki Hanabusa, created a brilliant montage to accompany this performance by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, using images from the Rimpa school of Japanese painting, which features boldly colored, poetic and stylized depictions of people and nature. In the multimedia era video montages set to music are common, but the results are often simplistic. That certainly wasn't the case with Mr. Hanabusa's graphics, a compilation of exquisite Rimpa images. Some are featured in "Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hoitsu (1761-1828)," a breathtaking exhibition on display at the society that listeners took in before the concert on Saturday. Music and visuals seemed perfectly attuned here in Mr. Satoh's enigmatic score, with its eerie piano ostinatos and melancholy string and clarinet melodies. The word shu is derived from Buddhism; it initially signified incantation but can now mean either a curse or a prayer for happiness: contrasting elements that were reflected in the four movements. During one elegiac section floral images were woven in three-dimensional layers, resulting in a forest of translucent scrims. In another striking graphic, images of seated figures morphed into rotating flower petals. At the end of the work black geometric shapes coiled over a dark sun and ominous sea. Visual art has inspired some famous musical works, notably Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." The program also featured two works commissioned by Japan Society, which asked the composer and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and the Japanese post-Minimalist composer Mamoru Fujieda to write new pieces stimulated by Hoitsu's paintings and the Rimpa tradition. Mr. Fujieda took inspiration from Hoitsu's "Blossoming Cherry Trees" and "Flowering Plants of Summer and Autumn" when composing his "Gamelan Cherry," which uses pentatonic scales to create gamelanlike sounds. The score, played with commitment by the All Stars (Felix Fan, cellist; Robert Black, bassist; Vicky Chow, pianist; David Cossin, percussionist; Vasko Dukovski, clarinetist; and Mark Stewart, electric guitarist), featured low piano notes that rang out like bells and clarinet and guitar motifs that echoed over the insistent patterns of the lower strings. The three movements of Mr. Iyer's "Rimpa Ephemera" were inspired by Hoitsu's "Waves" and "Winter Beauty" and Suzuki Kiitsu's "Morning Glories," opening with delicate textures, misty scales and a somber clarinet melody. It was hard to fault the composers for not fully conveying the inspirational beauty of the Rimpa tradition. It was an almost impossible task.