SUNDAY AUGUST 10 2025 7:00pm FREE!SPECIAL LOCATION: Shorebird Park, 160 University Ave, Berkeley
SFSOUND musicians join the bird ensemble in a summer outdoor performance of AmbientBird-Shorebird Park, with BRENDA HUTCHINSON’S dailybell at sunset.
WENDY REID'S site-specific work Ambient Bird-Shorebird Park is a 44-minute interspecies sonic landscape which reflects an ecocentric philosophy of connecting with all living creatures and the environment. The ensemble includes experimental musicians working with the ambient sounds, specifically, the birds of Shorebird Park: Long-billed Curlews, Marbled Godwits, Black-necked Stilts, American Avocets, Sanderlings, American Rock Pigeons, Pacific Loons, American Crows, Yellow-billed Magpies and Common Ravens (among others)
The structure of this work can be described as a musical process which attempts to reflect nature’s manner of operations: a spatially notated score of sonic fragments transcribed from bird-human interactions is interpreted and performed by the musicians within the ambient environment. Contextual in nature, the work allows performers to act according to unpredictable conditions and variables which arise within the musical continuity. In performance, an attempt is made at a spontaneous unforced growing of sound and silence in which emphasis is placed on formation rather than pre-established form, as in the building and shaping of cell-like units in living processes.
This site-specific piece, as with the first incantation, Ambient Bird 433, pays homage to JOHN CAGE’S composition, 4’33” (1952). At sunset, following the performance, Brenda Hutchinson leads everyone in bell-ringing: dailybell, created by composer and sound artist Brenda Hutchinson in 2008, is an ongoing aspirational project based on the premise that something as inarguable as the movement of the Earth can be used as a point of unity and awareness among groups of people who might otherwise find it impossible to agree.
musicians Lulu, African grey parrot Wendy Reid, violin Krys Bobrowski, gilsglas Brenda Hutchinson, long tube Aurora Josephson, voice Ron Heglin, tuba David Samas, percussion Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto Ben Davis, cello Kyle Bruckmann, oboe Matt Ingalls, clarinet John Ingle, saxophone
about the location: There is no formal seating: the audience sits on the grass, stands, or wanders. Shorebird Park was originally the land of the Ohlone people, who consider their connection to the earth to be sacred. It remains a place of cultural significance that people protect and recognize its history. It is the hope of many that one day it will be returned to its indigenous inhabitants.
This performance is made possible with a grant from the City of Berkeley
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