Bridge Music

About a year ago, a project was started at a bridge nearby my home. The goal was to sample the bridge and create a symphony of the clatters, bangs and rattles of the bridge. The composer, Joseph Bertolozzi, plans to make a symphony using different parts of the bridge representing different instruments. He says on his website:

As an analogy, the bridge represents an ensemble including xylophones, chimes & bells (vehicular guard-rails, handrails, panels, and spindles), metallic drums (trusses, towers), rasps (fencing, grates), anvils (cable, girders), bass guitars and marimbas (suspenders) and deep, sustained organ-like tones (traffic light supports blown from actual pipe organ wind chests).

A group of technicians use contact microphones to record the samples while also minimizing the surrounding noises. The samples will then be used by Bertolozzi, who is usually an organist, to write the score, and the resulting piece will be performed on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the river named after him.

At the time of this post, Bertolozzi has uploaded a sample of the music made on the bridge. The short song is entitled Bridge Funk (see below) and shows off the range of percussion sounds can be made on the bridge. In a New York Times article about the project, Bertolozzi says:

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

This will be a truly amazing piece of music when completed, and the performance of it will be nothing short of spectacular.