Highway Music

Highway Music was written for a group of viola da gamba students at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. I wrote this during a period when I was playing quite a lot of Geoguessr — a game where you’re placed in a random spot on Google Street View and have to use environmental clues to guess your location.

The score consists of three “photo spheres” (the individual panoramic photos that make up Google’s Street View coverage) with musical notation superimposed. The performers wear VR headsets and explore the photo spheres, allowing whatever catches their visual attention to draw their eye, and performing the notation under it.

The performance was cancelled at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 — instead, I uploaded the scores to their various physical locations on Google Maps. They’re embedded below.

Movement I — Indiana Highway 6

Movement II — Gardiner

Movement III