Music for Wilderness Lake: Dusk

Twelve trombonists positioned around the lagoon play meditative music across the water to one another at dusk and dawn while the music is cued via flags from a canoe in the lagoon. Music for Wilderness Lake, a 1979 work of environmental music written by Canadian composer and sound theorist R. Murray Schafer, explores the variable natural soundscape present at these transformative times of day.

The trombonists will also perform a companion work, the selected chant of Hildegard von Bingen, a twelfth-century German mystic, Benedictine abbess, and polymath. Abstracting the ritual of Gregorian chant of the early church that was observed after sunset and before sunrise, the musicians will perform these works following Schafer’s Music for Wilderness Lake: Dawn and prior to the performance of Dusk.

Directed by Steve Parker.

Performances take place Friday, June 27 (Dusk), and Saturday, June 28 (Dawn), and last approximately 30 minutes. As a bonus, we’ll have on-site vendors: ice cream from Tèo Gelato on Friday night and coffee for Saturday’s early risers!

Part of The Contemporary Austin’s Sound Series.