Nye Parry and Madi Boyd
Playing the Bridge was an artistic commission and performance devised by bridge architect Jonathan McDowell and composer Nye Parry who are both Gamelan players – and coordinated here by Hull Gamelan’s Laurence Rugg.
Playing the Bridge was a collaboration which transformed Hull’s Scale Lane Bridge into an interactive musical instrument as part of Hull 2017 City of Culture. It was the idea of bridge architect Jonathan McDowell who recognised that like the Gamelan, the bridge can be played by striking the metal work to make tuned sounds.
For the first part of the concert the Gamelan was set up in the sunshine on top of the bridge and York Gamelan group and Hull Gamelan players performed a selection of traditional, new and improvised pieces including Alec Roth’s specially commissioned tunes for Hull – Kingston Bells and Bubaran Hull.
The second part of the concert took place inside the bridge, where the players performed a soundscape work, directed by composer Nye Parry, using Gamelan mallets on the bridge’s metal panels and girders as the main instrument, accompanied by the strings, woodwind and electronic sounds of York ensemble, The Assembled.
Big gong sounds using huge metal panels from inside & outside the chamber created a metallic rhythmic pulse which merged into the drones of cellos, viola, harmonium, wind instruments and bridge parts that built into huge ominous crescendos and diminished to delicate hums. The musicians moved around the space and continued to play as they left the chamber where the piece closed with the deep resonant sound of the largest Gamelan gong, the gong ageng.
The project culminated in Madi Boyd’s installation inside Scale Lane Bridge which used the sounds created from recordings of the workshops and included a collection of interview fragments from Qualter Hall’s construction workers as well as hundreds of manipulated images taken during the construction process.
The Gamelan part of the project is documented in the first half of the film and galleries below.
For more information about the artists visit: https://www.nyeparry.com/ and https://www.madiboyd.com/
Gamelan Kyai Sri Jaladri Nage – Rise of the Sea Dragon
Jonathan McDowell, Nye Parry and Laurence Rugg, Scale Lane Bridge
This article was originally published in 2017 on our sister website loudhailer.net
Rich and Lou Duffy-Howard
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