The Listening Year at Big Walnut Creek

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​Ensemble and Composer Bios

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New Morse Code

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New Morse Code (Hannah Collins, cello; Michael Compitello, percussion) is the confluence of two magnetic personalities who have taken up the admirable task of creating a hub for the performance, commissioning, and promotion of new music. NMC is theoretically the alluring and uncommon combination of cello and percussion, but in practice is best described as two musicians of extraordinary depth and skill untethered by their instrumental constraints. This unrestricted approach has allowed them to create a body of work in which Hannah can be found crushing plastic bottles and Michael plucking the strings of the cello––all with the intention of expanding and facilitating the imaginations of their composer-collaborators––while ultimately creating a meaningful and lasting repertoire. As tireless advocates for new music, they seek out diverse venues and strive to connect with disparate audiences by way of their accessible intellect and dynamic musicality.

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Over the past decade, the “remarkably inventive and resourceful duo” (Gramophone) has developed projects responding to our society’s most pressing issues, including The Emigrants, a documentary chamber work by George Lam, and dwb (driving while black), a chamber opera by Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander, called “The Most Relevant, Hauntingly Evocative New Chamber Opera in Years” (Lucid Culture - New York New Music Daily). Their long-term collaboration with Christopher Stark on The Language of Landscapes (commissioned in 2014 by Chamber Music America) incorporates found discarded objects, field-collected environmental recordings, and live electronic processing as a way of making commentary on the urgency of the climate crisis. As the recently named inaugural grand prize winners of the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize, they will develop and tour a program featuring Stark’s work alongside new pieces which address sustainability and scientific innovation.  

New Morse Code's 2017 debut album Simplicity Itself on New Focus Recordings was described by icareifyoulisten.com as “an ebullient passage through pieces that each showcase the duo’s clarity of artistic vision and their near-perfect synchronicity,” while Q2 Music called the album “a flag of genuineness raised.” In 2019 they collaborated with Eliza Bagg, Lee Dionne, and andPlay on and all the days were purple, Alex Weiser’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist work on Cantaloupe music. They have also recorded for innova, Albany, and Navona Records. For more: https://www.newmorsecode.com/

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Eliza Brown

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Eliza Brown loves sound. Their music is motivated by sound and its potential for meaning, interdisciplinary approaches to narrative and process, and attention to the nuances of interior and interpersonal experience. Eliza’s compositions have been performed by leading interpreters of new music, including Ensemble Dal Niente, Spektral Quartet, ensemble recherche, International Contemporary Ensemble, Network for New Music, Ensemble SurPlus, the Grossman Ensemble, and Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble; heard on stages throughout the USA and abroad; and released on the Navona and New Focus labels, among others.

 

Eliza’s music, described as “delicate, haunting, and introspective” by Symphony Magazine, is frequently intertextual, opening dialogues with pre-existing pieces of music, historical styles, field recordings, and non-musical artistic works. It is also often interdisciplinary: Eliza has collaborated with practitioners of theater, dance, architecture, poetry, visual art, film, and the sciences, frequently taking on artistic and organizational roles in addition to “composer.” Building intentional, project-specific collaborative processes is an essential part of their practice. Current and upcoming projects include Theorem, an interdisciplinary performance for violinist Clara Lyon and A/V media developed by a collective of artists from many fields, and Cosimo as Orpheus, a comic opera based on Agnolo Bronzino’s strange 1539 “Portrait of Duke Cosimo I di’ Medici,” for which they were awarded a 2025-28 DePauw Faculty Fellowship.  

 

Eliza is currently Associate Professor of Music at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. www.elizabrown.net

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Project Contributors

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This project is predicated on interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration, and it would not have been possible without incredible amounts of expertise, generosity, companionship, and many forms of support from many people. My understanding of the creek and its sounds, and the personal and financial capacity to complete this project, are completely indebted to the folks below. People listed here have contributed to this project in numerous ways. Some are experts who consulted on the geology, plant biology, ecology, microbiology, fossils, agriculture, conservation, history, and fish, birds, insects, and mammals of Big Walnut Creek, as well as field recording, theatrical movement, and other technical and artistic matters. Some served as guest recordists, recording and accountability buddies, senders of articles, and namers of my field recording device (Ricardo the Recorder). Still others have supported the project through funding, production assistance, loans of gear, and helping this work reach wider audiences. I am deeply grateful to all who have been part of The Listening Year at Big Walnut Creek.

 

Names are listed in chronological order of connection to the project.

 

Chris Wild

Faculty Development Committee

Sylvia Yang

DePauw Academic Affairs incl. Dave Berque, Bridget Gourley & Becky Wallace

Jeane Pope

Conner Nicoson

Dana Dudle​

Philips Akinwole

Jason Pope

​Tom Kelly 

Alex Christie

Laura Cumberworth

Deepa Prakash

Cheridan Ross

Elena Collins

Cam Wallar

Elissa Harbert

Teagan Faran

Leo Sussman

Levi Stewart 

Elise Martinez 

​Will Pearson

Hailey Short

Bruce Stinebrickner

Hillary Kelleher

Sara Campfield

Carl Huffman

Jim Benedix

Liz Bradfield

Antonia Contro

Carl Huffman

Paul Baker

Joe Heithaus

Doug Kerr

Joe Novak

Matt Johnson

Ming-Hui Kuo

Tim Good

Clara Lyon

Christine Eschman

Caroline Jetton

Amber Hecko

Gregg Schwipps

Marcus Hayes

Jen Adams

Sally Letsinger

Mark Howell

Teri Lents

Jessica Weir

Kathryn Madren

Alain Barker

Andy Nicholson

Christopher Burton

Suzanne Hassler

Ron Dye

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Program Notes on Each Movement

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1. Overture 

Each week at the recording site, I listened for the sonic "story" of the week and positioned the recording device to capture that story. I recorded a brief verbal introduction, then listened while recording for at least five minutes. Each recording ended with a brief sign=off: "until next time, thanks for listening with me." The overture begins with sounds from Week 1, as though we are all at the site for the first time, listening for the story of the week. But after a verbal intro, the overture moves swiftly through clips of all 52 weekly recordings, previewing the year in sound - and many ways the instruments might interact with field recordings - in a quickly-developing aural timelapse. 

                                                                               

2. Lay of the Land

"Lay of the Land" introduces the site, orienting listeners to its features, areas, and position within the cardinal points. The recorded sound of the site is mediated by the position and direction of the recordist's body, which in turn is influenced by the site's conditions: wind speed and direction, water level, sonically interesting flora and fauna. This movement maps the site and the relationship between site and recordist, embodied by the performers. 

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Interlude 1: Summer Morning​

We begin our journey through the year with the sounds of summer. The performers prepare for the journey ahead. 

 

3. Fall Subtraction​

Dana Dudle, a DePauw Biology faculty member, taught me about the graduated timeline on which different species of trees drop their leaves. She used the word "subtraction" to describe this process, and that resonated with me: throughout the fall, as leaves fell and bird and bug activity diminished, my recordings progressed from being busy with the sounds of late summer to almost silent. This movement documents sonic subtraction in seven repetitions of a musical cycle, set to excerpts of seven field recordings that span the fall. In each repetition, the instrumentalists subtract sounds from the texture, until almost none are left. 

 

4. Winter Quiet​

Winter at the site revealed an intimate sound world. The muted burbling of water beneath thin sheets of ice; tiny points of sleet making contact. I often nestled low to the ground, in creek-bank hollows that blocked the freezing wind and encouraged close micing of the small sounds nearby. I felt the necessity of understanding in detail all means of shelter the site could provide.  

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5. March Floods​

Water levels often rise dramatically in March: melt, rain, and the absence of foliage to soak up excess water all encourage the creek to rise. March floods reshaped the creek's banks and sandbars and inundated nearby fields, attracting flocks of red-wing blackbirds to feed and call as though (in my imagination) singing for a righteous cause. Downed trees and high water levels sometimes forced me to get creative to access the site. It was a time of risk, roar, possibility, transformation, and gratitude. 

 

Interlude 2: Silent Gathering​

As the floodwaters recede, the site (and the performers) settle into new formations. 

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6. Spring Opening​

As the landscape greened and bloomed and layers of sound returned to the site (wind in leaves! birds! bugs! machines!), so the project gained voices and became more social. Recording trips became communal walking and listening, often with several people, and serendipitous encounters with others at the site. The site felt like it was pulsing with interconnected rhythms and layers: birds communicating; water shaping and shaped by rock; the hum and rattle of human-operated machinery. The performers highlight and add to these layers.

 

7. Summer Return​

As the Listening Year came to a close and the site circled back toward the mid-summer conditions of the first recording, I felt sharply aware of both how ephemeral any moment in the site's existence is, and also the sense of inevitability of the annual seasonal cycle. I wondered how long climate change will allow my embodied knowledge of season to feel inevitable, but was grateful that, at least that June, it did. The project became even more communal, less "mine": colleague Will Pearson recorded the last two weeks of the year when I was out of town, also noting the simultaneous fragility and resilience of the site.

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This Listening Year, at Big Walnut Creek, was over - but a Listening Year is something many people can do, in many places. It's yours now. Where will you listen?

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