There”™s heavy metal and then there”™s the kind of heavy metal that Joseph Bertolozzi plays.
Call it heaviest metal.
His choice of instrument is big; bigger than any pipe organ he”™s ever sat at before.
It”™s built like a harp, but has the tones of percussives, not unlike the collection of gongs and cymbals in his Beacon home.
It, is the Mid-Hudson Bridge.
But before anyone dismisses him as quirky or worse, Bertolozzi may be onto something. After all, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called architecture “frozen music.”
Bertolozzi studied music at Vassar College, played pipe organs in cathedrals in Europe ”“ including St. Peter”™s Basilica in Vatican City ”“ composed music for numerous venues from theater to orchestra, and now has sampled and scored the sounds elicited from the bridge using his numerous hammers, sticks and custom-made, fleece-covered wood mallet.
After creating and scoring “Bridge Funk,” Bertolozzi has even grander designs; he wants to celebrate the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial in 2009 by performing multiple pieces on the bridge with the help of perhaps a dozen musicians.
It wouldn”™t be the first time he has performed in a public setting. In 2004, he wrote “Wings of Eagles” for the city of Poughkeepsie”™s 150th anniversary. To give the music an airy note in homage to the work”™s title, he placed trumpeters on the rooftops of buildings in the plaza bordered by the post office, Poughkeepsie Journal building and Police Department. The finale included the ringing of church bells throughout the downtown.
Right now, the composer has his work cut out for him as he tries to elicit corporate sponsorships for his grand endeavor. He already has some support not surprisingly from the New York State Bridge Authority and engineering firms, but also from doctors, lawyers and supporters of the arts such as the Dutchess County Arts Council, as well as Dutchess County Tourism and TEG Federal Credit Union.
He”™s literally a one-man band as he writes letters and proposals and tries to get the word out for his massive performance on the river. His intent is for the audience to gather in Waryas Park in Poughkeepsie on the banks of the Hudson where they can witness the performance via audio feeds to two speaker towers and a video transmission that will be displayed on a Jumbo Tron, a giant video screen similar to those in Times Square. Bertolozzi intends to have several performances of what will be an hour-long suite during the weekend of Sept. 5-7, 2009.
But living in the digital age, Bertolozzi doesn”™t intend to keep his work confined to the river banks. He would also like to make the performance available worldwide via Internet streaming and television and radio hookups.
Â
Â
Sound waves
Looking to bolster his resume after graduating from Vassar, Bertolozzi, who had already composed and performed several of his works in the region, set his sights on Europe. He performed his works and others on the pipe organ at cathedrals in Poland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
He returned to the United States and kept composing, something he wanted to do ever since he told his parents at the age of 10 that he wanted to compose and they took that to mean he wanted to take piano lessons. But his teacher said he would do well to learn the organ with all of its intricate pedal work and stops. And he has. He earns his keep by performing as an organist at Vassar Temple and the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Mount Kisco.
He expanded his musical prowess to gongs and cymbals after receiving a Christmas present from his wife, Sheila. The collection grew and he now has 65 gongs and cymbals in varied sizes arranged on a plastic framework from high-shrilly ear-piercing cymbals that resemble a metallic pyramid to a gong that can actually make a person”™s clothes move if they stand too close.
It was his wife who gave him the idea to play a bridge. He had just finished a performance playing his gongs and cymbals at The U.S. Open Tennis in Queens, when they passed a poster of the Eiffel Tower. His wife took a swing and went “bong.” “You know that could work,” he recalled saying.
So he got books on the Eiffel Tower and began his research. But his epiphany came quickly when he realized he didn”™t speak French. So he started thinking about a domestic monument on which he could play and sample the sounds onto a computer.
A suspension bridge came to mind and he started scouting suitable ones that had enough accessible cables, girders, spindles, grates and signs. Up and down the Hudson he went, too big, not right, almost, just right.
The Mid-Hudson Bridge had everything nearly accessible. And it was on a human scale, he said. “You could look from one shore to the other, unlike the George Washington or Verrazano Narrows bridges.”
He started studying bridge engineering. “I wanted to go to a smaller bridge to scale up.”
Unfortunately, he mentioned his plan to a steelworker friend of his who spoke to a Bridge Authority friend who thought it was a great idea. Bertolozzi”™s reaction was: “No! I”™m not ready yet.”
But, he decided his fate was cast and talked with the bridge official who was intrigued and said he would need to talk with the chief engineer who would ultimately sign off on the project. Bertolozzi said the chief engineer grilled him hard, but it paid off that he had learned the appropriate bridge terminology. The plan went upstairs to the board of directors who decided in favor of letting Bertolozzi go on the bridge and make his music.
A planned two days on the bridge turned into a third when logistics and time came into play.
Â
Â
Taking a whack
But before he even set foot on the bridge to begin the sampling, Bertolozzi was curious as to what kind of sounds he might expect. Having played gongs, he had a good idea what it would sound like, but didn”™t know until he actually gave it a whack.
He was playing the organ for Yom Kippur services at Vassar Temple when he took a break and drove down to the bridge. Figuring he would be talking to the police if he started pounding on the bridge with his baseball bats ”“ one aluminum, one wood ”“ he decided to do a walk-by sampling.
“I figured if I walked and went clang! bong! people would drive by and pay me no notice.”
The plan worked and gave him a more focused idea of what a spindle would sound like as opposed to the guardrails.
So on three hot summer days, he, accompanied by three bridge workers and a sound engineer, made sounds using several implements, catalogued their locations for future reference, and placed them into a computer. More than a thousand sounds later, he sat in a recording studio to sort them out.
He picked out the most representative, something right in the sweet spot. A light tower could be a high b-flat soprano b-flat with a tenor f-sharp subtone and two octave overtone, he said.
He then did what no one before him had done ”“ he scored a bridge. His sheet music indicates where and what should be struck. A bridge had been wired for sound before, but never incorporated into a composition. A few years back, Bill Fontana, described as a “sound artist,” placed vibration sensors on the Millennium Bridge in London and then relayed the sounds to the Tate Modern, a gallery in the city.
The Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Committee is promising a spectacular 2009, which will mark the 400th anniversary of explorers Hendryk Hudson and Samuel de Champlain”™s voyages. It will also mark the 200th anniversary of Robert Fulton”™s establishment of steam commerce on the Hudson.
Bertolozzi is hopeful he will hear from Clara Lou Gould, commission chairwoman, concerning his musical proposal. She was after all mayor of Beacon, where he now resides in the shadow of Mount Beacon.
The odds may be in Bertolozzi”™s favor. As a point of history, he said that Ralph Modjeski, the designer of the bridge, was himself a pianist and classmate of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish composer and pianist.
Â
Those wishing to support Bertollozi can do so by contacting him at bluewingspress@optonline.net. His Web site is josephbertolozzi.com.
Â
