[Dixielandjazz] A most musical bridge.

[Steve Barbone]

Thelonious Monk used to say that the bridge was where a jazz musician got to
the inside of the composition. Now, here's a different "bridge" approach.

What do you think Bill Gunter? A worthy successor to John Cage?

Below snipped from a long article.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Maestro Gives New Meaning to Traffic Jam

NY TIMES - By DANIEL J. WAKIN and JOHN SCHWART - July 1, 2007

Percussion on a very big instrument: The composer Joseph Bertolozzi uses
mallets and dowels to try out sounds on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson
Bridge. He¹s writing a suite titled ³Bridge Music.² ³Not only is the bridge
magnificent, the venue is exalted,² said the composer Joseph Bertolozzi.

A SKINNY laborer with a flaming skull tattooed on his upper arm shimmied up
an I-beam 135 feet over the Hudson River. He taped two tiny microphones to a
cable holding up the bridge deck and took a rubber mallet out of his
knapsack. 

With his arm outlined by the blue sky, he whacked away at the cable as a
sound engineer recorded the dull thuds. ³You¹ll want to give your full might
when you hit it,² yelled Joseph Bertolozzi, a composer leading this
expedition one day late last month. The cable swayed slightly with each
stroke.

The purpose of the test was to check not the bridge¹s soundness but its
sound. The rather bizarre scene on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Mid-Hudson
Bridge near Poughkeepsie was part of Mr. Bertolozzi¹s audacious plan to
transform the span into an orchestra, compose a piece for it, then actually
perform the work live with a small army of percussionists. It is a musical
undertaking on a vast scale and one that has brought oddly harmonious
marriages among the worlds of art and government, music and engineering . .
. remainder snipped