Natasha Barrett

British composer Natasha Barrett takes her inspiration from nature and our living environments: she wants to know how the world sounds and behaves, what systems and processes lie behind it, and what phenomena result from them. Since the late 1990s, her artistic work has been shaped by the musical application of ambient sound in the context of contemporary music.

The Forest Grows Restless is a 3D Ambisonics performance. The concert transports listeners to an old Norwegian forest in which reality and fiction come together, and in which the dialogs between nature and an old piano that has stood outside for many years are influenced by the seasons, a memory of the past and the climate of the future.

The performance begins in the reality of the forest, then travels through the storms of autumn into a winter with arctic winds and a final eruption of energy when the light goes out. In the spring, fissures begin to appear, exploding, struggling; the light returns, the rain is heavy, then softer, calmer; during the warm summer sunsets, the sense of time is extended. The midday sun strikes the faded paint, is reflected by metal and ricochets off the strings of the weather-beaten piano.