FANTINI FUTURo and Echo Quarry — BEN NEILL WITH RYLAND ANGEL

ANNUAL PERFORMANCE

Saturday, September 19, 3-5pm

Composer and Mutantrumpet inventor Ben Neill returns to Manitoga with countertenor Ryland Angel for an afternoon of music that transforms the Quarry Pool into a living sonic environment. A wireless network of speakers distributes sound throughout the landscape, allowing it to move, overlap, and resonate across the site.

Fantini Futuro reimagines the music of early Baroque trumpeter and composer Girolamo Fantini, who brought the trumpet from the hunt and battlefield into the realm of indoor art music. Fantini’s open-air calls and intimate melodies are transformed in real time by the Mutantrumpet in dialogue with Angel’s voice, creating shifting layers of harmonic resonance and spatial counterpoint. Neill’s interest in this historical transition was shaped by his residencies at Manitoga, where he first explored the interaction of brass, electronics, and landscape.

Created for the Manitoga site and inspired by its landscape, Echo Quarry unfolds as a reflective, ambient work around the Quarry Pool. Drawing on antiphonal traditions and networked performance, the piece captures fragments of trumpet and voice and transforms them into slowly evolving textures. Sound emerges from multiple points around the water, surrounding the audience in a continuously changing field. Each performance remains open in form, allowing the work to adapt and expand as a living system of interaction.

BEN NEILL

Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is recognized as a musical innovator who blends acoustic instrument performance with digital technologies to create “art music for the people” (Wired Magazine). The Mutantrumpet was originally developed with synthesizer inventor Robert Moog and subsequently at the STEIM research center for new instruments in Amsterdam. Neill’s extensive discography includes releases on the Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks, and Six Degrees labels. His long international performance history includes major festivals, concert halls, clubs, and museums such as BAM Next Wave Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum, Getty Museum, Big Ears Festival, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Vienna Jazz Festival, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, Edinburgh Festival, and many others. Neill has been a close associate of La Monte Young since the early 1980’s, leading many international performances of Young’s music. He has worked closely with other innovative musicians and artists including David Berhman, John Cage, John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Nicolas Collins, DJ Spooky, Mimi Goese, King Britt, Pauline Oliveros, and David Wojnarowicz.

In 2014 Neill created MANITOGA, a site-specific piece for the Mutantrumpet, electronics, and brass instrument sculptures by artist Carol Szymanski. The piece was commissioned through a New York State Council on the Arts grant and was subsequently performed at the World Financial Center Winter Garden in 2017 as part of the WNYC New Sounds Live concert series. The wireless surround sound system developed for Trove expands on the ideas developed in MANITOGA and Neill’s other current project, Fantini Futuro. In all of these pieces Neill is exploring the spatialization of acoustic and electronic sound across large distances using brass instruments and wireless technologies. Neill is a Professor of Music at Ramapo College of New Jersey and the Director of the MFA in Creative Music Technology.

RYLAND ANGEL

Born on St Cecilia’s day, the Grammy-nominated British vocalist Ryland Angel has built an international reputation on both the opera and concert stage, in repertoire ranging from the Baroque to new operatic commissions at major opera houses, concert halls and festivals throughout Europe and the USA.

He has performed in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Gavin Bryars’s Doctor Ox’s Experiment (English National Opera), Fairy Queen (Barcelona), Gluck’s Orfeo (Koblenz), Amadigi (Karlsruhe), Venus and Adonis (Flanders Opera), Dido and Aeneas (Opera Comique), The Play of Daniel (Spoleto), and Ballet Comique de La Royne (Geneva). Angel has sung on over 80 recordings including music of Buxtehude, Charpentier, Scarlatti, Stradella, Spears, O’Regan, Handel, Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, and on the film soundtracks of Jack Reacher, Zoolander 2, Freedom, Le Petit Prince, La Peau, Henry 4th, Machete, The Mystery of Dante, Gemini Man and the PBS TV special Heavenly Voices. Engagements include Doux Mensonges (Opera National de Paris), Agrippina (NYCO), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Florentine and Kansas Opera), Julius Caesar (Utah and Colorado Opera), Sant Alessio with William Christie (Paris, London, New York), Carmina Burana (Lincoln Center/Prague Proms), St. John Passion (Saint Thomas Church and Mechanics Hall), Classics and Rock (Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra) and Messiah (Boston Symphony Hall & Carnegie Hall). Recent and upcoming recordings include The Flaming Fire (MSR), Heart and Soul (Centaur) and Now Fatal Change (NMC), La Sposa (Solo Luminus), Le Nozze in Baviera (Naxos), Archivo de Guatemala (Naxos), Chant Electronique (Chesky), Justinian Intonations (Neuma), Bleed for the throne (SXSW) and a recital at the National Gallery with Parthenia Viol consort. Recent creations include Tesla, Fantini Futuro, The Call, Including Words and The Chant Project.

PLEASE NOTE – The House & Studio will not be open for viewing before, during or after the performance.

Important Information

• The performance will be held rain or shine.

• This experience includes a MODERATE HIKE including uneven ground, several bridge crossings with no handrails and a series of 40 stone steps.

• Please wear flat, outdoor-terrain walking shoes for uneven ground and dress appropriately for outdoor weather. Insect/tick repellent, sunscreen and drinking water are highly recommended.

• Seating areas will be designated in the Landscape. A limited number of blankets, cushions, benches and chairs will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

• The following personal items are permitted and encouraged: blankets, cushions, pillows. NO CHAIRS OR TENTS will be allowed.

• Participants are invited to bring a light picnic to enjoy during the performance (cooking and grilling are not permitted onsite). You must carry out what you carry in.

• Pets, tripods, extension poles and selfie-sticks are not permitted.

• Children (including infants) must be at least 10 years of age to attend.

• Tickets are valid for the reserved time and date only, non-refundable, non-transferable, no exceptions.

• Guests may arrive between 2:45pm and 3pm only. “Doors” open at 3pm sharp

This performance is made possible, in part, through support from the Sara Little Turnbull Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts and Manitoga’s 2026 Art & Design Host Committee.