Music, Public Art, A Stroll in Central Park: A Match Made in Heaven!

Check out Soundwalk, created by Ellen Reid, a Pultizer-Prize winning composer, this free app brings music and a spirit of celebration back to the outdoors, in this case to Central Park.

How it works: this GPS-enabled app incorporates music into the walking experience throughout Central Park’s amazing 840 acres.  Recorded by Philharmonic musicians, the music you hear as you walk through the park has been paired to harmonize with the landscape as well as some of its attractions. 

Ellen Reid

I love this app!

It is an experience that I can only equate with walking through an art museum: what you see, what you feel and hear is entirely your own, and you feel something within yourself change. For me, it surprised me how emotional it was when sounds of jazz played in my ears as I walked beneath bridges and down paths canopied by trees through the park.  Something about the music diverted all my attention to the rural trails and hills of wildflowers. I found myself in Shakespeare’s Garden on the west side, and following the music of strings and horns to the Pond at 59th street where I stood and just watched the ripples in the water. 

Composer and Sound Designer Ellen Reid said: "These are unprecedented times; we are all experiencing the anxieties of living in an uncertain world. We miss our communities, and we miss the very thing that makes our cities special: the people. I hope SOUNDWALK will inspire us and make us feel connected to something larger than ourselves. It is meant to serve as artistic nourishment - a place to recharge, reconnect, and re-energize."

What I miss most about art museums is this escape, where hours like feel like minutes as I am transported to places, thoughts, imaginings that my mind has never encountered before.  Exploring Central Park while listening to Ellen Reid’s Soundscape is similar: this park that I thought I knew so well transforms into something completely different and ever-changing.

If at all possible, get to Central Park with your headphones and this free app in tow--it will be worth your time.

The installation will remain accessible in Central Park for the remainder of 2020 and beyond.