Andrew Hadro’s ArchMusic contains melodies distilled from 3 years of recordings made late at night within an arched tunnel in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The sounds of the park and the city can be heard alongside the melodies. Crickets, casual listeners strolling through, car alarms, planes - it’s all in there. You can often hear the footsteps of Hadro as he traverses the tunnel searching for that evening’s resonances. Different sections of the tunnel reverberate in accord with different pitches, and each night the temperature, air pressure, and humidity change – altering which tones resonate longest, making each performance an exploration in resonant frequencies.
The 2020 pandemic forced live music out of concert halls and clubs and into homes and outdoor spaces. The beautiful restoration of the historic Endale Arch at the northern section of Prospect Park’s Long Meadow urged Hadro to expanded his knowledge in the history of Brooklyn, and Prospect Park. This interest combined with the urge to begin performing outside the home again and led to almost nightly trips to perform inside the tunnels found within the park.
The tunnel where ArchMusic was recorded was completed in the post-Civil war era, and several of the instruments proudly used are a century old (bass, baritone and alto saxophones). Manufactured by the C.G. Conn company of Elkhart, Indiana. Once the largest instrument manufacturer in America with acclaimed acoustic research facilities and forward-thinking strategies that are responsible for modern music education. Today that company is just a name owned by a corporation, but many thousands of instruments still produce music as a testament to the craft and ingenuity of America’s vanished wind instrument industry. Also utilized are instruments from Mid-20th Century France (Bass Clarinet), and modern crafted instruments from Asia (a newer bass clarinet) and India (shruti box).
