Duration: 25-40 minutes

A Murmur in the Trees is a half hour piece by Eve Beglarian, made in response to Robert Black’s idea to set a piece for twenty-four double basses playing in a grove of trees. The music was created by treating a piece of birch bark as a musical score, where the lines on the birch bark are notes that are read at the rate of one-third inch per minute, said to be the speed at which plant signals travel. The y-axis has been mapped to notes in the overtone series, so the basses are playing open strings and up to seven harmonics above each string, creating a palette of 32 possible pitches. The title is inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson.

In live performance, audience members are free to move among the players. The sounds of the basses merge with the music of the birds, wind, and trees. The basses are playing in honor of the trees from which they are made, as much as for the humans who experience the music.

For the recording, released on Cantaloupe Music in September 2026, Robert Black tracked each of the twenty-four parts three times. Eve recorded the sounds of early fall twilight on her land in Brandon, Vermont, and we created both a stereo and an immersive mix that emulates the richness of the experience of hearing the piece live. Robert’s recording is the last he made; he died in June of 2023.

Development of A Murmur in the Trees was sponsored by a 2020 grant from the MAP Fund for Eve and Robert to do a project with visual artist Aviva Rahmani and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, a project that took a different form due to COVID-19.

There is no score of the piece in standard notation. Performers listen to audio guide tracks that give them the information they need to play the piece. Parts range in difficulty so that even very beginning students and amateur community members can participate alongside professional musicians.

If you are interested in presenting A Murmur in the Trees in your community, please reach out to us here.