CENTRAL PARK: A PICTURE-IN-SOUNDS
A Tribute To The Musical & Actuarial Works Of Charles Ives
Mat Smith, 2021 – 2023

“My God! What has sound got to do with music?”

- Charles Ives, Essays Before A Sonata (1920)

‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’ is a site-specific performance piece, for one or more performers aged between ten and 95 years old. It is a tribute to the multi-disciplinary work of Charles Ives that will be published in 2024.

To execute the piece, each performer will refer to a map of Central Park divided into areas representing the life expectancies listed in an 1874 US insurance industry mortality table. Each performer will identify an area of the Park corresponding to their life expectancy in 1874 and make a field recording lasting precisely eight minutes and thirty seconds.

Second performance notes by Mat Smith

9 February 2024, 16:13

I was 47 years old when I performed ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’ for the second time. Although I was a year older, when I looked at the life expectancies table and cross-referenced that with my divided Central Park map, it indicated that I should once again perform the piece near Strawberry Fields.

The character of a place is in a continual state of mutability, and that was evident when I began the piece. It was a different season, the trees were barren and sleeping, snowdrops were springing up everywhere, and there were significantly more people in the park than the day I performed the piece in June the previous year. A carpet of dry leaves covered the area I set myself up in, crispy underfoot, waiting to crumble into dust.

The sonic signature of Strawberry Fields was also different on this day. For the first performance there was a sense of tranquility and stillness. For the second performance it felt noisy; cacophonous, in comparison. There was a ceaseless, muted chatter from the people walking or cycling in pairs along the path. The traffic on Seventh Avenue felt harsher, the birdsong more tentative.

Someone at the John Lennon memorial began singing. Somewhere near the path, a street musician with what sounded like an amplified violin began playing a rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’, even though Christmas was retreating rapidly into the past. In between, he would play a plaintive wistful little coda that seemed so at odds with the relatively gleeful ‘Jingle Bells’. Often, his playing is accompanied by the harsh ringing bells of bikes as they whizz along the bike paths.

Some people on a rock closer to the path are getting high. A woodpecker appears on a tree above them, lazily pecks at the bark and flies off. Inquisitive sparrows with their heads cocked to one side spring lightly toward where I am sat on the cold schist, their tiny feet making microscopic rhythms as they bounce through the leaves. A squirrel with a nut in his mouth runs toward the rock I’m sat on and comes to a comedic, cartoon-esque dead stop when he sees me. He has a scrawny tail that’s mostly missing. I become concerned that I’m sat in his favourite spot to crack open the nuts when I notice the residue of shells all around where I’m sat.

A gentle breeze blows over the rock and rustles the carpet of leaves around the schist. It subtly shifts the atmosphere and I became aware of what sounds like the stomping rhythm of a glam rock song coming closer. I assume it’s from one of the many gaudy pedicabs vying for expensive business, but it’s actually the hooves of a horse pulling a trap carrying a moneyed pair of tourists around the park.

Afterwards, when my performance was over, I walked down to the path and found the musician who was still playing ‘Jingle Bells’. He was using an erhu, a two-stringed Chinese instrument. I put a dollar bill in his bucket in exchange for a photograph. I walk back to the Imagine memorial and then catch the Subway downtown, the sound of ‘Jingle Bells’ still filling my ears.


Acknowledgments

The composer would like to thank the following people who contributed to the creation of this piece:

Michael Hallen, for the sourcing and mailing of paper Central Park maps in 2021.

Rob Andrew FFA, for supporting the actuarial interpretation of the 1874 mortality table.

Reed Hays, for creative encouragement and with whom I engaged in an earlier exercise in active environmental listening in Times Square on 23 October 2017 at 6:00am.

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