Wendy Reid's Ambient Bird - Ohlone Park 2026 with sfSOUND and the Bird Ensemble

AMBIENT BIRD - OHLONE PARK 2026  sfSOUND musicians join the bird ensemble  in an outdoor performance of Wendy Reid’s Ambient Bird-Ohlone Park 2026, with Brenda Hutchinson’s Dailybell at sunset Saturday, May 16 - 7:30pm Ohlone Park: 1601 Hearst Ave, Berkeley 94703  Near North Berkeley Bart, with no formal seating musicians: Lulu, African Grey parrot Wendy Reid, violin Krys Bobrowski, gilsglas Brenda Hutchinson, long tube Aurora Josephson, voice Ron Heglin, tuba Kanoko Nishi, koto Ben Davis, cello David Samas, percussion Diane Grubbe, flute Tom Djll, trumpetJohn Ingle, saxophone David Michalak, skatchbirds Jacob Felix Heule, percussion Dailybell, everyone  AMBIENT BIRD - OHLONE PARK 2026 Wendy Reid’s site-specific work, Ambient Bird-Ohlone Park 2026 is a 52-minute interspecies sonic landscape which reflects an eco-centric philosophy of connecting with all living creatures and the environment. The ensemble includes an African Grey parrot and experimental musicians working with the ambient sounds, specifically, the birds of Ohlone Park: Cedar Waxwings, Lesser Goldfinches, Bewick's Wrens, Oak Titmice, Western Bluebirds, Anna's Hummingbirds, California Scrub-Jays, Dark-eyed Juncos, Stone Pigeons, and American Crows -all part of an event that is intended to bring everyone and everything together, and honor the park's indigenous inhabitants, the Ohlone People. The structure of this work can be described as a musical process which attempts to reflect nature’s manner of operations: a spatially notated score of sonic fragments transcribed from bird-human interactions and a Native American chant is interpreted and performed by the musicians within the ambient environment of Ohlone Park. Contextual in nature, the work allows performers to act according to unpredictable conditions and variables which arise within the musical continuity. In performance, an attempt is made at a spontaneous unforced growing of sound and silence in which emphasis is placed on formation rather than pre-established form, as in the building and shaping of cell-like units in living processes.  This site-specific piece, as with the first incantation,‘Ambient Bird 433’, pays homage to John Cage’s composition 4’33”(1952). At sunset, following the performance, Brenda Hutchinson leads everyone in bell-ringing: created by composer and sound artist Brenda Hutchinson in 2008, Dailybell is an ongoing aspirational project based on the premise that something as inarguable as the movement of the Earth can be used as a point of unity and awareness among groups of people who might otherwise find it impossible to agree. About the site: Ohlone Park was originally the land of the Ohlone people, who consider their connection to the land to be sacred. It remains a place of cultural significance that people protect and recognize its history. It is the hope of many that one day it will be returned to its indigenous inhabitants. Special Thanks: City of Berkeley-Shallon Allen, Thomas Horn-videographer,  Phil Perkins-location audio engineer, Edward Morse-tech, Andrew Aldrich-photography,  Matt Ingalls-sfSOUND, and the musicians of Ambient Bird-Ohlone Park 2026  info at treepieces.net This performance is included in ‘Ambient Bird-Berkeley’ (2025-26), a project supported in part by a Civic Arts Grant from the City of Berkeley