Experience Trees.Listen 4 ways!
1. Live multimedia performance (premiere Sept 6/24)
2. Listen to the album
3. Speakers visit a forest and fill the open air with music (premiere Sept 7/24)
4. Wander a wooded area and access the music with your smart phone (see below)
Trees.Listen Interactive Music Walk
This world premiere sound installation took place at The Arboretum in Guelph in Fall 2024. Using the map below to guide visitors to 9 QR codes located throughout the grounds, each QR code was placed at a specific type of tree featured in the Trees.Listen project. Visitors accessed the audio recording by scanning the yellow QR-coded sign with a smart phone and listened on location with earbuds.
What is Trees.Listen?
Trees.Listen is a collaboration, a sound exploration, 9 compositions, an album, a sound installation and a message co-created by composers Frank Horvat and Sharlene Wallace.
Through co-composed music for the Celtic lever harp and fixed electronics, Sharlene and Frank have brought together their unique relationships and experiences with music, sound, genre, creativity and the environment. Trees.Listen is a collection of nine compositions for (Celtic) Harp and Electronics, a sound quest envisioned to connect us to trees, a fundamental part of human existence and survival on this planet.
This music suite is inspired by the enlightening book, To Speak for the Trees, by acclaimed medical biochemist and botanist, Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger. Diana has a unique experience of western scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge from the ancient world. Orphaned in Ireland in her youth, she was educated by elders who instructed her in the Brehon knowledge of plants and nature.
The music that Sharlene and Frank composed is based on different letters from the ancient Celtic Ogham script, a medieval alphabet that named each letter for a type of tree (this is how important trees were to the ancient Celts). The nine letters chosen are the seven music notes A B C D E F G and H (B).
Using the birch tree, here is how it works!
The Celtic alphabet letter B is named for the Celtic word, “Beith”, which means “Birch”. The Birch composition includes a predominance of the musical note B throughout the composition. The connection of the musical pitch B and of the birch tree’s essence, information and stories that Diana has shared about each tree, give each composition its own unique musical character, just as each tree does.
| Letter/Musical Note | Celtic tree name | English tree name |
| A | Ailm | Pine |
| B | Beith | Birch |
| C | Coll | Hazel |
| D | Dair | Oak (x2) |
| E | Eabha | Aspen |
| F | Fearn | Alder |
| G | Gort | Ivy |
| H | Huath | Hawthorn |
| Nine compositions. Nine trees and companion plants to trees. There are two compositions dedicated to the mighty Oak. | ||
The Making of Trees.Listen
Phase 1: Samples/loops were recorded of Sharlene playing her harp with their collaborator/engineer, Jean Martin. This began during the Fall 2022 for BIRCH and HAZEL. In April 2023, the loops for OAK and PINE were recorded, this time with Sharlene’s beautiful new custom-made Mark Norris lever harp from Scotland. In the Fall 2023, recording of the loops (samples) was completed for the remaining 5 trees.
Phase 2: Frank used these samples as the foundation for composing electronic bed-tracks.
Phase 3: Sharlene composed a live harp part on top of those bed-tracks.
Phase 4: Sharlene and Frank convened to fine-tune the compositions and record a demo recording.
Phase 5: Sharlene recorded her live harp parts.
Phase 6: Editing, mixing and mastering of the album.
See pics from the making of Trees.Listen in this blog post.
GRATITUDE: Sharlene & Frank are over-the-moon grateful to have received a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to complete the process of co-composing, recording, and sharing our suite of pieces for solo lever harp and fixed electronics! The CCA’s funding complements the funding already received from the Ontario Arts Council and a group of Sharlene’s students who commissioned one of the nine pieces, Oak 1. We are so grateful to all of our funders as their support has been invaluable in creating and completing this very special project in its entirety.
Trees.Listen supports Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s vision that trees are a fundamental part of our existence and survival on this planet and that they are something to be worshipped and protected. Diana’s Bioplan is an ambitious plan encouraging people to develop a new relationship with nature and join together to replant the global forest. Everyone needs to plant one native tree per year for the next six years. If we can globally plant 48 Billion Trees over the next 6 years we can reverse the effects of climate change.
Sharlene and Frank have been fortunate to receive Diana’s enthusiastic support for their project. Diana is a passionate individual who envisions a better world, with more trees! Sharlene and Frank are deeply grateful for Diana’s beautiful support throughout the creation of Trees.Listen and beyond.
Canadian composers Frank Horvat and Sharlene Wallace read my book ‘To Speak for the Trees, my life’s journey from ancient Celtic wisdom to a healing vision of the forest.’ They listened with their hearts and turned my words into the music of the harp. This is a universal language that sees no barriers of comprehension. It is understood immediately by everyone. This music gathers our consciousness to heal all that has passed. It reveals a healthy future for our planet, our only home.
– Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger
Trees offer us the solution to nearly every problem facing humanity today, from defending against drug resistance to halting global temperature rise…They do so even when we can’t or won’t hear them. We once knew how to listen. It’s a skill we must remember.
– Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger
