tumbledry

Joseph Bertolozzi Plays the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge

Joseph Bertolozzi Plays the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge - I don’t mean he’s playing at the bridge, I mean he’s playing the bridge. In a project not unlike Bill Fontana’s sound sculpture “Oscillating Steel Grids along the Brooklyn Bridge,” Mr. Bertolozzi is in the process of sampling sound using contact microphones from the bridge itself. Certainly, this concept would be cool on its own: if you listen to the movement Bridge Funk, a small piece played on the bridge used to gain approval for the project, you’ll find that the music sounds very, very cool—much more musically intricate than you would imagine a bridge sounding. However, this project will not simply culminate in a digital collection of sounds assembled into music. The composer is writing out an entire 40-60 minute score to be performed live and piped into a nearby park in 2009.

“I’m actually using the bridge as an instrument,” he said. “It’s not aleatory. There’s no guesswork. I have an army of percussionists playing a percussion instrument.”

You can read more about the bridge music project at Joseph Bertolozzi’s website.

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