On June 15th, composers Neil Welch and John Teske will present a free site-specific concert deep in the woods of Ravenna Park in Seattle. As darkness approaches, the concert will end with excerpts from Hungry Ghosts - a piece by composer Nat Evans - being performed by candlelight.

Inspired by the Chinese and Japanese Ghost Festival traditions featuring offerings to ancestors and floating lanterns as beacons for long lost spirits, Hungry Ghosts was commissioned by and performed last year at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and featured musicians performing in boats on the 100 Acres Lake at the museum. At that event, the audience was invited to listen and view from the shore, and release lanterns into the water as darkness approached. In the woods of Ravenna Park, the audience will listen as the sounds of the park change over time - a counterpoint to the slowly changing music - and audience members will be given candles to hold to help engender a sense of place and community for themselves and the musicians, as well as reflect on their ancestors while listening and exiting the park together after the event.

The concert will take place on June 15th at 8pm in a clearing just north of the main trail in the eastern half of Ravenna Park - the red X in the map below denotes the location. In case of rain the performance will be held under the 15th avenue bridge in the park.

    After a year of planning with the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Butler University Composer's Orchestra, artist Erin Elyse Burns and others, my big site-specific music event Hungry Ghosts took place on September 20th. For the event, I had 20 musicians playing on shore around the lake at the IMA's sculpture park lake, and 10 musicians plus myself in canoes playing on the water. As the music and twilight came to a close, over 100 lanterns were released onto the water. To see some great pictures that the museum posted of the lantern-making workshop, the musical performance, and the release of the lanterns, have a look at the museum's Flickr page for the event. Click here if you'd like to have a look at the score, and you can also see some videos of the event below.

    Overall I feel like the response couldn't have been better. There were  news stories like this one in the Indy Star leading up to the event, and an interview on the local NPR station. Coupled with the perfect (and dry) weather, the turnout was absolutely immense - far larger than anyone expected. I had a radio with me in the canoe to communicate with museum staff, and halfway through the music I had to turn it off because there was so much chatter amongst the staff about people trying to park in strange places and traffic from people trying to get into the event spilling out onto the streets and snarling traffic. People of all walks of life came out for the event, which was reassuring, and I feel proves that if given the opportunity and are actually told about an event (in this case through extensive media coverage), they will choose things of substance and meaning.
    The musicians played extraordinarily well - I couldn't have been more pleased. The directors of the ensemble - Michael Schelle and Frank Felice did a fantastic job rehearsing them for an entire month before the event (what a luxury!), so they were all really well prepared. One hilarious thing was that after the event lots of people talked about the 'disruption' of other sounds - the jets flying overhead, crickets, fish jumping - and complained that the music needed to be louder. But to me, people noticing these sounds and events happening was perhaps the most notable sign of success: people were listening and living actively in the moment. How could I organize an outdoor concert on a lake surrounded by woods and not expect to have other sounds intermingling? In its sonic totality, the evening sounded exactly how I wanted it to.