If the walls of Columbus’ historic Garden Theater could talk, what would they say?
“This theater has had many lives. Before us, it was a burlesque house, a movie theater, a church even. So, the wood has many stories,” said Jared Riley, director of development for the Garden Theater’s resident theater company, Short North Stage.
Wood reclaimed from those walls and from one of the theater’s doors will tell those stories as recycled percussion instruments when the Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble Beyond This Point performs a Columbus-specific edition of Reclaimed Timber, a reimagining of American composer Michael Gordon’s percussion work Timber.
The concert takes place Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 7 p.m. in the Moonlight Studio of the Garden Theater, on the New Music at Short North Stage series of the Johnstone Fund for New Music.
A light show of hundreds of illuminated paper lanterns in designs inspired by Franklin County ecology and endangered historic structures in Columbus and elsewhere will accompany the performance.
Gordon composed Timber for six unspecified percussion instruments that together create what he describes as a “stark palette” of sounds. In Reclaimed Timber, the musicians of Beyond This Point follow Gordon’s score for Timber precisely, but play on wood they reclaim at sites in the communities where they perform.
“Each time we go to a new community we get a new set of instruments,” said Adam Rosenblatt, a member of Beyond This Point. “And we try to source those instruments, source those pieces of wood, from some meaningful place and use them as a way to explore an issue that’s important to the community. So, the sound is a direct reflection of what’s on offer from the community, wherever we go.”
For the first performance of Reclaimed Timber, in 2019, Rosenblatt, who lives in Baltimore, sourced wood from some of the city’s abandoned row houses. He also enlisted Baltimore-based artist-collaborators Jenn Figg and Matthew McCormack to create 200 paper lanterns designed to look like the houses. The musicians’ performance brought to life strands of sound-responsive LEDs, which illuminated the paper lanterns into a light show.
In their Columbus performance of Reclaimed Timber, Beyond This Point will play on an old wooden door and some two-by-fours that were removed from the Garden Theater during renovations this summer.
“The door actually came from one of our basement areas, so we were able to update dressing rooms and green room spaces,” said Jared Riley. “And the two-by-fours are from an old sound booth that we have up on our landing. So, just old wood that we are now excited to see be reused by this group.”
Beyond This Point has performed Reclaimed Timber in 17 communities nationwide, including Baltimore Seattle, Phoenix, Flagstaff and Chicago, sourcing wood for their instruments in each location.
Figg and McCormack also designed paper lanterns for each community to reflect elements of local interest. For the Seattle performance, they created lanterns resembling the sustainable modular homes built as part of Seattle’s BLOCK Project. They added lanterns inspired by images of abandoned urban Chicago houses for a performance in Chicago, and lanterns in the shape of native flora for concerts in Phoenix and Flagstaff.
“As we take it to more places and as we ask Jenn and Matthew to add more paper lanterns, it becomes like a mosaic of every place it’s been,” Rosenblatt said.
For the Columbus concert, Figg is designing lanterns inspired by buildings demolished in Whitehall, endangered structures around downtown Columbus and plants native to Franklin County, including American Black Elderberry, Common Buttonbush and Dense Blazing Star.
For Figg, these natural and human-made elements help tell the ever-changing stories of our shared environment.
“I think about them,” Figg said, “as part of our collective memory that changes or disappears as cities reinvent themselves.”
