CENTRAL PARK

Americas Society
R. Murray Schafer Celebration

Music for the Eyes and Oars

One Lake, 48 Rowboats, 144 Chorale Singers—What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

City Opera's general manager and artistic director, George Steel, at Central Park Lake, where he'll conduct a chorale performance on the water.

On Friday afternoon, the helicopters, birds, car horns and other ambient sounds swirling around the Central Park Lake will have some competition: 144 choral singers, many of them in rowboats.

As part of Make Music New York, the annual series that stages concerts in outdoor public spaces around the city, the singers will perform "Credo," a 46-minute choral work by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, on and around the man-made 20-acre lake at 5 p.m. While mounting a large-scale work is never easy, this one has brought the producers at the Americas Society a unique set of logistical challenges, including: discovering whether singers can row and sing; dealing with the acoustic and visual aspects of a large outdoor space; and figuring out how long the singers can really be stuck in boats without a bathroom break.

I'm going to play the videos and let you sort this out for your self.

The first video was "just another park video" on the way to the concert.

Here we go!