New composition from Noah Crist

Baltimore-based composer Noah Crist makes music that allows listeners to slow down, creating work that forms in the ovrlap between composition, atmosphere and environment. A Roanoke College graduate in music, Noah works across classical and modern minimalist styles, taking cues from composers including Yann Tiersen and Philip Glass while developing an increasingly unique musical language of his own.

Noah is a newer composer but his work already moves across a wide array of forms; his catalogue encompasses solo, chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic compositions, with experimental and ambient pieces forming an important part of his creative output. There’s a clear sense of curiosity in the way he views composition, particularly in his knack for exploring how music can change the way a listener experiences a place or moment.

His relationship with sound stretches back to his involvement in choral music, where his musical background grew out of the choral tradition through the Maryland State Boychoir, before continuing through groups including the Roanoke College Choir and Baltimore Choral Arts Society. Over the last three years, Noah has been developing and sharing his musical vision through a series of collections but most recently, however, he’s taken that vision outside the usual sphere of composition. Off the back of completing his first symphony, he headed to Baltimore’s Loch Raven Reservoir, placed a recorder on a tripod and simply walked away.

What happened next became “Welcome to Loch Raven,” a nine-minute instrumental composition that blends Noah’s original piano music with the sounds of the environment itself. Wind moves through the trees, birds sing in the distance and the piano provides a gentle musical thread connecting the different elements. It’s a simple idea that gives “Welcome to Loch Raven” an unusually immersive quality, with the field recordings were captured entirely on site at Loch Raven Reservoir, allowing the piece to preserve the atmosphere of the location. With headphones, the effect becomes particularly absorbing and the distinction between listening to a composition and being somewhere else truly begins to blur.

The reservoir itself is a man-made lake outside Baltimore City that supplies water to both the county and the city and beyond that practical role, it’s become a major destination for hiking, fishing and kayaking. For Noah, though, the location is where his father took him hiking at Loch Raven many times when he was a child, giving the place a sentimental significance that inevitably becomes part of the music. Gradually taking shape with sparse piano notes, delicate melodies begin to form as twinkling tones glide among the soft sweep of found sound textures, casting a truly transportive listening experience.

Among bird song and gliding wind, Noah’s intricate performance pairs warm tones with fluttering leads to deliver a musical voyage unlike any other. By the end, the combination of piano and natural sounds creates a calming feeling that makes the title feel almost like an invitation. With a full album already in the works, “Welcome to Loch Raven” offers an intriguing window into where Noah Crist’s music is heading and as his work has already travelled from choral traditions and contemporary composition into experimental and ambient areas, here, he takes another step, allowing the world around him to become part of the music.

Listen to Welcome to Loch Raven below

More from Music

---

Editor Picks

---