Jody Redfarge Ferber playing her cello in response to her environment below a cliff

An Aural Nest Tuned to Nature’s Musings:
Jody Redfarge Ferber on her process and upcoming concert on May 17th at Montage Music Society in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Olivia Ann Carye Hallstein

Jody Redfarge Ferber has developed an expertise in tune with the natural world. Her compositional and performative concepts as a cellist draw directly from her on-site experiences and interactions with the natural world. A process parallelled by NILS-UDO, a German Environmental Artist, Jody and her quartet will respond to his piece Red Rock Nest from 1998 in an evening of music on May 17th with the Montage Music Society, at Quail Run Clubhouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico. (4pm)

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Audience at an Ecotones concert with Jody Redfarge Ferber and orchestra, photographer Andrea Swenson

On May 17th you will be playing cello alongside 2 singers (Ilana Davidson, Soprano; Krista River, mezzo) and a pianist (Debra Ayers). What considerations have you taken while preparing this concert and what are you hoping to create in this evening’s experience?  

On Sunday, May 17, 2025 we’ll perform a full program for 2 sopranos (Ilana Davidson and Krista River), cello (Jody Redhage Ferber), and piano (Montage Music Society director and founder Debra Ayers). These three musicians with whom I am privileged to collaborate are absolutely world-class and I am honored to have musicians such as these premiere a new work of mine.
This concert will be my first time in Santa Fe. So although this Montage concert wasn’t a chance for me to musically respond to the flora and fauna of Santa Fe, I did chose this particular work of Nils-Udo’s because of a Santa Fe connection: ecoartspace founder & director and current Santa Fe resident Patricia Watts was responsible for commissioning Nils-Udo’s Red Rock Nest in 1998 when she lived in Los Angeles.  

I’ve responded to photographic documentation of Nils-Udo’s piece Red Rock Nest, made in a cave in Topanga Canyon, California in 1989 (and which ended up existing for 10 days before being dismantled by local residents).  Additionally, as the piece involves vocalists, I’ve chosen a poem by 15th century Indian poet Kabir as lyrics, which intriguingly converge with Nils-Udo’s piece. The program features a variety of nature-themed works for 2 sopranos, cello and piano from a vast span of composers from the baroque, classical, impressionistic, and modern eras. Montage Music director Debra Ayers, sopranos Ilana Davidson and Krista River and I all worked together to program the repertoire.  Along with the premiere of the commission Build a Nest for the Mystery, we'll also perform two of my existing compositions: snow peace calms us, written while I was caught (indoors!) during a blizzard in Vermont, with a sublime poem by Wyoming poet Ella Cvancara as the lyrics; and The Silent Articulation of a Face, in which I have set a Rumi poem (translated by Coleman Barks) as the lyrics--with Rumi encouraging those willing to “dive deeper under, a thousand times deeper” to "hear the green dome's passionated murmur."  

Ecotones concert, photographer Andrea Swenson

You are drawing from such a range of experiences and considerations! As part of Montage Music society with a unique vision for music in response to art: what has informed your process while responding through music to Montage’s environment and art concept?

I characterize my current compositional process as ‘whimsical sonic representation’ of the specific traits, characteristics, design features or the materiality of a chosen nonhuman being or species to which I am creatively responding. With Nils-Udo’s Red Rock Nest, he has crafted a nest out of Arundo donax reeds, and instead of his ubiquitous eggs, he uses citrus fruits that grow in the Topanga canyon area as ‘ovum.’  Nils-Udo’s repeating circular pattern of overlapping donax cuttings and the spherical dimensionality of the citrus led me to choose a time signature of 3/4, to give the piece a rolling, circular feel of three-beat patterning. The entire composition is based on an ostinato (recurring pattern of notes) that swings backs and forth between two tonal centers—sonically reflecting Nils-Udo’s physical motions of laying the donax twigs overlapping in a circular, unfurling pattern that expands outward like a a fractal expansion, with each twig slightly overlapping the next. I imagine that he began in the center of the nest and expanded by spiraling outward. Similarly in the music, I begin with a simple, pared-down representation of the toggling between these key centers—and as the piece unfurls, I reach to different harmonic destinations that seem blissful or joyful—harmonically reaching a celestial realm where Kabir’s “bird spends the night.”

NILS-UDO, Red Rock Nest, Old Topanga Canyon, California, 1998

As he builds his work, I imagine Nils-Udo embodying the mystery bird of which Kabir speaks— dipping into the realm of ‘no color, no form, no shape, no boundaries—in the shadow thrown by love” as an animating spirit leading him toward his decisions in every moment as his work unfurls. In building this work, Nils-Udo builds a nest for Kabir’s mystery bird—an encouragement for us all to build our own nests.

It was fascinating and somehow very intimate to continually imagine Nils-Udo bending, choosing, collecting, sorting, hiking, balancing, stopping, cutting, placing, balancing, discarding, forming, breathing, thinking, feeling, weighing, & considering as he crafted his piece. All of Nils-Udo’s physical movements seemed to take on a rhythm for me—as if my musical imagination was creating a soundtrack for his nature-art-build. And in fact, this responsive process has allowed me to connect the ephemerality of Nils-Udo’s work, Kabir’s focus on the ephemerality of the “mystery” as “no form, no color, no shape, and no boundary,” and the fact that I work in a most ephemeral of artistic mediums: music.

In a number of ways, these topics are an extension of your ongoing project “EcoTones” where  you are also exploring the ‘interrelatedness amongst humans, flora, and fauna.” What are some differences and similarities in approach between the EcoTone and the Montage concerts?  

My ongoing public performance project EcoTones Concerts sites live musicians on trailside stages with a mobile audience in public nature spaces, performing creative acoustic music directly inspired by the flora and fauna surrounding each trailside stage. I partner with entities that control the land (conservation groups, park nonprofits or other ecology organizations) and I engage in multiple site visits to make field recordings of the nonhuman inhabitants. Each event is specifically designed to celebrate and highlight the nonhuman residents’ unique characteristics, design features, and notable abilities through the music.  

By inviting human performers and audience to a nature space, we are literally creating an ecotone between the human biome and the natural biome of local flora and fauna— encouraging direct engagement with nonhuman beings, and a questioning of the mainstream human perspective of dominance over all other beings. This music is for growing stewardship, humility, and compassion from the humans to the nonhuman members of a local ecosystem. These performances get locals asking questions, shining attention on the chosen nature site, digging deeper into the "personalities" of the local flora and fauna… there are so many layers of intrigue!

Jody, this sounds like a fabulous and one of a kind evening of music you are preparing! I wish I could join and cannot wait to hear all about it from our members who attend!

"Light Bending the World", Montage Music Society Salon Premiere
(Recording of a previous Montage Music Society salon concert in response to the Art of April Gornik, November, 2023)