Ballard composer set to create new work while hiking Pacific Crest Trail

5517852Ballard composer Nat Evans is about the set off on an adventure of a lifetime on the Pacific Crest Trail. He is set to walk 2600 miles from Mexico to Canada as a mobile residency, composing a new long-form musical work along the way.

The unique composing journey is set to start next month and Evans will be collaborating with eight other West Coast composers along the way. Evans will be making field recordings as he journeys along the trail which he will mail to the collaborators as the hike progresses.

“Each composer will then take the field recordings and layer a brief musical response over top of it and post these short pieces online so that people can hear how the landscape (and people living nearby) change as I inch ever northward,” says Evans.

At the conclusion of his journey the entirety of the recordings will be collected, recorded, mixed and released as a double album in early 2015 on Quakebasket Records. The album is set to be titled The Tortoise and his Raincoat: Music for a Very Long Walk.

The eight collaborating composers have recently launched a fundraising campaign to assist with their work, the walk itself and other recording costs.

“Undertaking a residency pushes artists in new directions and ways of creating that are outside their normal boundaries. Being in the wilderness specifically for long periods of time can change how we simply listen and compose,” says Evans.

Evans is an experienced composer who writes concert music for various mixed chamber ensembles, distinctive electro-acoustic music, and site-specific music events. His music has been regularly presented across the United States and has also been performed in Europe, South America, Australia and China.

Click here to learn more about this unique and exciting project.

Photo courtesy of Nat Evans.

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