NPR Music Debuts 'Archway', Using Manhattan Bridge As An Instrument

NPR Music achieves another ambitious venture in music matchmaking, captured in a new "Field Recordings" video available today. As a part of Make Music New York's annual festival held each year on June 21, NPR Music brought together for the first time composer and artist Eli Keszler with the inventive quartet So Percussion. Together, they created and performed Archway, an original work that incorporates an art installation by Keszler utilizing the Manhattan Bridge. A video of this singular event is available now at NPR.org/music and through NPR Music mobile apps.

Keszler turned the Manhattan Bridge underpass into a playable instrument by stretching about 2000 feet of tuned piano wires across the DUMBO Archway. He and the four members of So Percussion - Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting - took to the pedestrian area under the bridge to perform their collaborative composition, which layered Keszler's system of motorized beaters that sounded the piano wires with snare drums and bowed and struck small cymbals called crotales. In his review for The New York Times, critic Steve Smith hailed the Archway premiere as a "haunting" and "fascinating" experience.

The NPR Music "Field Recording" documents and celebrates the creation of Archway, whose installation was constructed, played and dissembled in just one day, with construction beginning at dawn. Archway was realized in collaboration with the New York City Department of Transportation, the DUMBO Improvement District, the PAN ACT Festival, online Member station Q2 Music, and Make Music New York, which this year presented more than 1,000 unique music projects throughout the city's boroughs, all free to the public.

NPR Music previously commissioned a similar musical pairing for Make Music New York 2012, calling on composer Philip Glass to adapt a choral piece for a "flash choir" in New York's Times Square.

Make Music New York is a festival of free concerts in public spaces throughout the five boroughs of New York City - all on the first day of summer. MMNY takes place simultaneously in more than 514 cities around the world for a global performance. From 10 in the morning to 10 at night, musicians of all ages, creeds, and musical persuasions - from hip hop to opera, Latin jazz to punk rock - perform on streets, sidewalks, stoops, plazas, cemeteries, parks and gardens.

NPR Music collaborates with NPR's newsmagazines, public radio Member stations and the passionate NPR community to celebrate great music in every genre. Visit atwww.npr.org/music and via NPR Music mobile apps.

Photo Credit: www.dumbonyc.com