This GPS-enabled work of public art uses an app to create a unique sonic experience on your next stroll.
By Heidi Waleson
Sept. 29, 2020 3:38 pm ET
New York
After six months without live performance, plus the geographical claustrophobia imposed by barriers to travel, “Ellen Reid Soundwalk” offers both solace and liberation. Ms. Reid, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and sound designer, has mapped the 843 acres of Central Park with music, creating a GPS-enabled work of public art. It’s easy to use: You install the app, designed by Echoes.xzy, on your phone; download the walk; connect your headphones; and wander—the app then uses your location to trigger sound.
The beauty of the piece is its nonprescriptiveness. There’s no right way to do it, no set path. Each experience is unique, depending on where you enter the park, the route you travel, whether you stop and rest or just keep going. You can spend 10 minutes or 10 hours exploring; the possibilities seem infinite.
One Saturday afternoon, I spent 90 minutes in the northern end of the park. During a slow saunter over the Great Hill in the park’s northwest corner, a soothing drone soon acquired an overlay of quick string figures; in the Conservatory Garden, bells, marimba, a flute ostinato and a choral vocalise seemed just right for the late afternoon autumnal light glinting through green and yellow leaves above the Burnett Fountain. There was even a poem, followed by a harp and flute interlude, as I left through the garden’s south gate; horns in a descending glissando emerged as I skirted the baseball fields.
A few days later, I wandered around the south end of the park. This time, I occasionally stopped and waited to hear some complete sections—a few minutes of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony (along with Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” the only music not by Ms. Reid) playing just opposite his statue near the netting-shrouded Bandshell at the end of the Mall; a nine-minute choral sequence slowly unfolding in Strawberry Fields.
Remarkably, there’s just over an hour of music. It is programmed into 25 macro cells that blanket the park. Each macro cell has several overlapping micro cells within it, creating a layering effect; connective material between cells creates seamless transitions between locations. Ms. Reid explained in a phone interview last week that she used the same themes for certain kinds of locations, such as water or open fields, but in different keys and instrumentations, so that areas are related, but not sonic copies of each other. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the lead commissioner of the project, recorded individual tracks in their homes, as did members of the Soundwalk Ensemble (the harmonized choral vocalises were created with the voice of one singer, Eliza Bagg); the quartet Poole and the Gang recorded the jazz tracks that are scattered through the park.
Ms. Reid had been thinking about “Soundwalk” as a future project, but the abrupt halt of live performance in March gave her idea new meaning and urgency. With the commission from the New York Philharmonic and four other arts centers, she embarked on a five-month process of writing the music, mapping it and walking endlessly to test it, first in her Brooklyn neighborhood and then in the park.
“Soundwalk” can be a treasure hunt. I went looking for “When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist,” which Ms. Reid wrote for Project 19, the Philharmonic’s women-only commissioning initiative; it had its premiere on Feb. 20. I found a snippet of the archival recording on the terrace overlooking Bethesda Fountain and the Lake, where its tense, anxious harmonies and spiraling, descending woodwinds played in ominous counterpoint to the formal, manicured landscape. (It is one of three archive performances embedded in “Soundwalk,” along with the “Pastoral” symphony and Ms. Reid’s “So Much on My Soul,” performed by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.) “So Much on My Soul,” discovered in a crowded playground, also felt like a commentary: The lyrics, written by chorus members, gave an unsettled, personal dimension to the children’s seemingly untroubled games.
“Soundwalk” also encourages serendipity. Venturing into the wooded Ramble, I found a joyous explosion of birdsong expressed in voices, woodwinds, harp and string ostinatos. A walk through the narrow ravine beside a stream toward the North Woods was accompanied by a pounding drum solo that suddenly opened up, along with the landscape, into a smooth jazz tune. And on a cloudy afternoon, overlooking the Reservoir, the water theme felt impossibly rich and grand, its open chords and brass choir slowly rising above the placid water, with the New York skyline seeming to mirror its ascent. “Soundwalk” gives beloved, familiar places a new dimension and a welcome chance to travel freely within them.
Residents of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., can experience their own version of “Soundwalk” at the Saratoga Spa State Park, in the Vale of Springs/Karista Path area, until Nov. 1. Next spring, it will arrive at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va., and the Britt Music and Arts Festival in Jacksonville, Ore. Why stop there?
—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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Appeared in the September 30, 2020, print edition as ‘Scoring Central Park.’
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