About Bridge Music

Now we are meeting for a walk across the Alexander Bridge in Ottawa, an interprovincial bridge taking us from Ontario to Quebec, from Ottawa to Hull. As we are walking across we are listening to a fascinating contemporary piece of music. My first experience of it occured after a visit to the Museum of Civilization in Hull, where I had attended a public rehearsal of Kokoro Dance with Robert Rosen's music.

I am standing outside of the museum watching an artificial waterfall rushing down along the building's periphery when I hear a faint, eerie wind sound behind the water sound. It is quite a windy day and I am assuming that it is the wind howling between the pillars of the museum wall. But the longer I listen the less I can find a connection between the patterns of the wind gusts and those of the sound. After a few minutes I walk on and suddenly, as I walk around the building I hear the same wind sound more loudly and clearly. It is not wind that is producing the sound. It is the traffic on the Alexander Bridge. It had echoed off the museum wall. Now I hear it in stereo, with the direct sound from the bridge in my left ear and the reflected sound from the museum in my right ear.