A Look At “Inside the Bird Chorus”

07.06.17

Freshkills Park celebrated summer solstice on June 21 with Make Music New York for “Inside the Bird Chorus” where the woodlands and grasslands meet in South Park. Naturalist Seth Wollney led an auditory bird tour and trumpeter Volker Goetze accompanied their songs in a performance of original and improvisational compositions as the sun set on the longest day of the year.

Inside the Bird Chorus is a project conceived by philosopher and artist David Rothenberg as part of Make Music New York, a live, free musical celebration with over 1,200 concerts on streets, sidewalks, and parks across the five boroughs. Other Make Music New York locations participating in Inside the Bird Chorus are Central Park (Manhattan), Brooklyn Botanic Gardens (Brooklyn), Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (Queens), and Wave Hill (Bronx).

Volker Goetze is an international touring performer, composer and media artist. He has performed and presented his work at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Paris Jazz Festival, World Festival of Sacred Music (Los Angeles), Caixa Forum Madrid and the Opera Festival in Munich. His work fuels cross-cultural dialogue, incorporates multiple disciplines and utilizes cutting edge technology. He has been investigating the oral culture of West Africa and its influences on black culture in America. GRIOT, a feature documentary about the oral music tradition in West Africa, is Volker Goetze’s debut as a film director and has since developed into a multimedia performance documentary. Mr. Goetze was invited as a panelist by the Apollo Theater and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Currently he is preparing a 3D sound and 360 video composition about Hart Island, an audiovisual photography and release concert at the Alice Austen House and an installation bringing awareness to the plight of the homeless.

Tags: birds, music, performance