TAUGHT A NEW CLANGUAGE
Dan Conway, facilities superintendent for the city of Denver, checks out the bells in the tower of the City and County Building on Thursday. When the city replaced the roof on the building last year, it used the 1 percent-for-art fee to commission a composition by Kevin Padworski to be played on the bells on special occasions. The bells are played electronically.
An unfamiliar melody rang from the bell tower in the City and County Building of Denver Thursday evening, a tune composed to herald special occasions in the city.
Titled “Ascent,” the tune will be used to announce moments such as Broncos victories, festivals in the adjacent Civic Center park or a night of fireworks to Denver dwellers.
Denver Arts and Venues hopes it will become the city’s sonic calling card, as synonymous with Denver as the airport’s tented terminal roof.
Thursday’s celebration was supposed to be the composition’s proper public debut in Denver.
But the melody upstaged its own premiere Monday, when Denver Public Art administrator Rudi Cerri triggered “Ascent” at 11:47 a.m., the moment the Great American Eclipse was nearest to totality in Denver.
“It was the perfect occasion to do it,” Cerri said. “The purpose of the piece is to announce special events and grasp people’s attention. We fired it up and people did notice. How cool is that?”
“Ascent” arose from a contract for a new roof for the City and County Building. Denver’s Public Art Ordinance requires 1 percent of the construction budget of any improvement project costing more than $1 million be set aside for the inclusion of art.
Denver Arts and Venues used some of the set-aside money to back a call for submissions, offering $5,000 to any Colorado resident who could craft a signature sound for Denver to ring from the 10-bell carillon.
A proposal from Colorado Chorale artistic director Kevin Padworski was selected from 52 submissions.
He composed the piece in part on the bells themselves, and was inspired by the throngs of Denver’s downtown dwellers.
“The goal of the composition was to capture the essence of the people the music aimed to represent: the people of Denver,” Padworski said in a news release.
Though visual art accounts for most of the projects funded by the 1 percent Public Art Ordinance, “Ascent” isn’t its first performance-based commission. Public dance production “White Mirror” was born from a renovation of Babi Yar Park in southeast Denver. In 2011, a project called “Playing Apart” saw the 90-piece Bear Creek Marching Band dismantle and spread across the city to play a protest march. “Virga: the Sound Performance” dedicated an installation on the Delgany Pedestrian Bridge with music led by two drummers and 12 bagpipers.
Padworski said the ascending musical lines of “Ascent” are intended to represent the city’s growth, people, topography and future while staying rooted in the “iconic and timeless sound” of the tower’s bells.
Bell-tower chimes may be timeless, but thanks to an accompanying upgrade to the carillon, the execution of “Ascent” is as much a modern marvel.
Though the melody sounds from massive bells gifted to the city in 1932, the system can be triggered by a simple smartphone app.
But don’t fear, old Denver: The new won’t completely usurp the old. The standard Westminister chime that sounds at the quarter, half and top of the hour, will still ring out tomorrow.