By Katherine Bergman, Zeitgeist

Each year, the American Composers Forum and the McKnight Foundation invite composers from outside of Minnesota to design and produce their own residencies within a Minnesota community. This year’s McKnight Composer Fellow is Hugh Livingston, a California composer with a keen interest in the communication between birds, insects and animals in their natural habitat.

Inspired by this interaction, Livingston will present a special performance at Caponi Art Park in Eagan combining the sounds of nature with live musicians and electronic compositions. Zeitgeist is pleased to take part in the work, which is part of the Caponi Art Park’s Summer Performance Series. Zeitgeist will move throughout the park during their performance, mingling with the outdoor soundscape. Bamboo birdcages created by Livingston will be hanging from trees and emanating his recorded compositions derived from found sounds in the Twin Cities metro, including human voices and church bells, which are electronically manipulated and set to the rhythms of bird twitter.

Visitors are invited to stroll through the site to explore the interaction between music and nature, and kids can participate in playing percussion instruments.

The video above shows showing the sound design elements for this performance.