Manresa Birdsong
(8:10; 2025)
Manresa Birdsong is a site-specific cello and recorded composition installed at the previously abandoned Manresa power plant in Norwalk, Connecticut. The composition directs listeners to reflect on the liminal stage of the power plant during its reconstruction into a recreational park.
Program Note
Now decommissioned, the sonic soul of Manresa is one of eerie silence, which conjures the “noise” of its industrial past and the polluted ecosystems and wildlife that remain in its toxic wake.
Manresa Birdsong brings cello to a sonic exploration of the turbine hall to share stories and observations of geese, herons, gulls, and ospreys attempting to survive among the heavy metals and metallic mountain that dominate life at Manresa.
The composition imagines the birds calling throughout the power plant and the surrounding environments, conveying their despair and symbolizing the shared fate of all life at Manresa.
Thank you to Austin and Allison McChord for support and access to the Manresa Wilds, and professor Courtney Fullilove and visiting professor Ari Benjamin Meyers at Wesleyan University (Fall 2025)