iForest

Welcome to the iForest, the creation of composer, Pete M. Wyer. It is a highly versatile and evocative sound installation that has been installed both indoors and outdoors, temporarily and permanently.

“This forest will sing to you”: New York premiere of Pete Wyer’s iForest

The iForest is an acclaimed site-specific immersive sound experience combining music with nature by leading British composer Pete M Wyer. It  has been visited by more than 100,000 people at the Wild Center in upstate New York, has been described as “an extraordinary sonic experience” (John Schaefer, WNYC) and as “unforgettable, and deeply spiritual”. The Smithsonian magazine said: “This forest will sing to you.”

Composer and musician Pete M Wyer has created scores for the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Juilliard and Royal Opera House as well as several operas, music theatre works and soundscapes projected onto iconic buildings such as the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

iForest at Drums Along the Hudson 

The iForest brought an immersive experience for a 72- voice choir (2018 Grammy winners, The Crossing, pre-recorded as three choirs of 24 voices each) to the ancient woodland of Inwood Hill Park via 24 separate speakers. Originally commissioned by the Wild Center, Tupper Lake, where it can still be experienced the choir sing in the indigenous Mohawk language in western choral tradition, thanking every element of nature inspired by traditional Thanksgiving ceremonies, in a piece entitled ‘I Walk Towards Myself’. 

Composer Pete M Wyer said: “In the Mohawk tradition, people see themselves as part of nature as opposed to having dominion over it. This resonates strongly with my own view. The piece is called ‘I Walk Towards Myself’, reflecting my aim that as we walk within the music we have a deeper sense of our connection to nature, which is a deeper sense of connection to ourselves.”

Trailer for ‘I Walk Towards Myself’ at Inwood Park: 

Pete M Wyer and the iForest

http://pmwmusic.com/

The first iForest by Pete M Wyer opened at the Wild Center in New York State in May 2017, creating music that wraps around the audience as they walk a specially created natural trail.

  A WNYC New Sounds Live commission, ‘Song of the Human’, a work for both birdsong and human voices, received its world premiere at Brookfield Place in New York in October 2016 – the full concert, recorded live, is at: https://www.newsounds.org/story/3916-new-sounds-live-pete-m-wyer-song-human/

John Schaefer, host of ‘New Sounds Live’, WNYC New York, described the experience: “We are amidst the dawn chorus, wind, a passing storm, and then there are humans, who have a different sort of music it would seem, but Pete has found a connection between birdsong and human speech.” 

Pete is the creator of a setting of a Dylan Thomas poem performed by a headphone choir distributed across Manhattan, synchronised via a specially created app on smartphones and tablets; part of Make Music New York in xxxx. In 2015 he was the composer and Musical Director for the 175th anniversary of Cunard in Liverpool

and in 2016 he scored a sci-fi projection mapping installation onto the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow http://www.colour-project.com/#!/russian-international-festival-of-light-2016/

Pete M has created scores for the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Juilliard and Royal Opera House as well as seven operas and music theatre works. He has performed with the Orchestra of the Swan, Asphalt Orchestra, Ralph Samuelson and pianist Matthew Shipp. 

Watch the creation of The iForest at The Wild Center here, featuring a 72 voice choir who sing in indigenous the Mohawk language. Each voice is individually recorded and distributed across the woodland:

See the trailer for iForest at Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan on June 3rd, 2018:

The iForest began in 2005 as part of a research project under the title ‘The iPod Forest’. Since then, Pete M Wyer’s research and development  in immersive sound has led to the creation not only a raft of new works but to new ways of scoring, creating and experiencing music.

The iForest is Pete’s large scale immersive sound installation. In 2017 a permanent iForest opened at The Wild Center, New York, it features 24 independent audio speakers distributed across woodland, featuring a 72 voice choir, The Crossing, singing primarily in the indigenous Mohawk language. Other iForests have been created for the Winter Garden, Manhattan (2016) and Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan (2018).

As well as conventional items such as pitch, rhythm, tone and dynamic, scores use spatiality as a component, mapping the trajectory of sounds that move through space. This makes for a unique way of writing and of experiencing the music.

You can email Pete at: pete@iforest.org

Chief engineer, Jim Unwin at jim@iforest.org

Pete M. Wyer is represented by Summit Entertainment. Please contact jeff@summitentertainmentgroup.com