Boscage by Peter B. Kay
This recording is a sample from composer Peter B. Kay's 2019 art & sound installation titled "Boscage." Due to it's open-ended, aleatoric structure, the music was designed to run continuously for 6+ months. This recording is an example of what listeners might have experienced during one of their visits.
ABOUT the INSTALLATION:
Kay is a member of the artist collective Banded Wilderness, a group that was commissioned by the City of Raleigh, NC to create and install a site-specific artwork as a part of the SEEK Raleigh Festival at Dorothea Dix Park that began on June 1, 2019. "Boscage" remained at the park until January 11, 2020. The work consisted of 15 sculptural trees and an open-ended, 8-channel sound component that ran continuously for the duration of the installation. Part painting, part sculpture, and part new music experience, the piece was meant to provoke a sense of wonder in regular visitors to the park, inspiring the notion that even the most familiar of places still offer undiscovered magic.
Kay composed a series of fixed media tracks for this piece that were played through multiple devices throughout the site. Each device was set to loop all of the tracks in random order creating a continuously evolving sound field. Adding to the magical atmosphere, the music emanated from within the sculptural trees themselves - speakers were hidden, wires were buried, and no power source was visible in the secluded grove of trees.
Peter B. Kay is the Composer-in-Residence for the Spartanburg Philharmonic in South Carolina.
A proponent of new classical music, in 2014 Peter founded Treefalls, a non-profit organization dedicated to performing compositions by living, active composers – particularly premieres or music written by under-represented groups.