Site-specific symphony: ‘Ancient Echoes’ at Penn Museum

The sound of chisels, sandpaper, and whispers will rise across the arc of Penn Museum’s Chinese Rotunda on April 26 in Ancient Echoes, a performance of music created specifically for the iconic setting.

Lembit Beecher and Scott Ordway were chosen from 30 composers to participate in a residency program sponsored by Penn Museum and the Philadelphia chapter of the American Composers Forum. Entrants submitted proposals after touring the archaeology and anthropology museum.

The Tang Dynasty and the moment of creation

Visiting for the first time, Beecher says, “The spaces in the Penn Museum felt to me like an essential part of the museum’s identity. I had a strong visceral reaction to the space.”

He was particularly impressed with the Tang Dynasty sculptures: “I was interested in the moment of creation,” Beecher explains, so he included traditional and non-traditional instruments in his piece, titled Limestone. “Four percussionists will create sounds of stone carving with hammers, chisels, rasps, sandpaper, and blocks of limestone,” while the cello “emerges out of this forest of percussive sounds.”

Beecher’s work has been performed at music festivals nationally, and by the New Jersey Symphony, Tapestry New Opera, Opera Vista, Del Sol String Quartet, and Opera Philadelphia, where he was composer–in-residence for three years.

Whispering encouraged

Ordway, a Penn graduate, had long wanted to compose for the museum: “Many of my works are quite sparse — a very resonant room gives each sound more of an opportunity to blossom into something meaningful.” With 90-foot brick walls, the Chinese Rotunda was perfect. “When I first set foot into this room, the first thing I wanted to do was whisper, and then I thought, ‘What if a whole bunch of people were whispering in this space, all at the same time?’”

Inspired by ancient texts on love, death, and religion, Ordway composed Tonight We Tell the Secrets of the World, which calls for strings, a saxophone, a soprano, and a willing audience. “The audience whispering in a carefully coordinated way is absolutely central,” Ordway says. “The first time I — or anyone — hears the full texture of the work will be during the performance itself. I think this can be quite exciting for the audience, too. It reminds us of how special live performance can be — as a social experience. This will also be an immersive, multi-dimensional, multi-sensory experience that is completely impossible to replicate in the digital world.”

Ordway, a Curtis Institute faculty member, has had compositions performed at festivals internationally, and by the Buffalo Philharmonic, Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and Curtis Symphony.

Both composers look forward to the performance. “I think we were both interested in the way sounds behave in the beautiful and peculiar acoustic of the Chinese rotunda,” Beecher says. “I’m looking forward to sitting quietly with a large audience and just listening to the space…I’m curious to see how much the presence of the audience changes the acoustic.”

Ancient Echoes is coming up on April 26 from 8-9:30pm at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia. For more information, call 215-898-4000 or visit online.

At right: the concert will take place in a 90-foot-high brick rotunda. Image courtesy of Penn Museum.