Rocked by Waves of Drumrolls

The ducks that frequent Central Park Lake are used to keeping clear of people in rented rowboats lurching about the water. But on Monday afternoon they looked rattled by the strange sights and stranger sounds coming from makeshift platforms floating in the middle of the west side of the lake.

A marionette version of the Iannis Xenakis opera Oresteia at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. More Photos The event was a rare performance of Persephassa, by the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, a piece for six percussionists first heard in 1969 at the Shiraz Festival in Iran. This ambitious undertaking was a high point of the fourth annual Make Music New York, a one-day festival that promised more than 1,000 free events in parks, squares and streets in every borough of New York.

Besides being a path-breaking modern composer, Xenakis, who died in 2001, was a music theorist and an accomplished architect. Like many of his works, Persephassa has a spatial element. He intended the percussionists to be placed far from one another in a hexagonal formation with the audience in the middle. The 30-minute piece has never been performed on a lake, the producers say.

A veritable flotilla of rowboats made it to the west side of the lake on a hot, clear afternoon to hear Persephassa. Mostly there were four people to a boat. In mine, George Grella, a composer and critic who has a music blog, The Big City, heartily took on the rowing duties proof that newspaper and blog critics can live in harmony.

Two percussionists were stationed in gazebos on the shore; another performed from a bluff of rocks. Three others played on plywood platforms, constructed by Floating the Apple, atop two boats secured together. These boats had two rowers charged with keeping the platforms relatively steady.

Along with the percussionist Steven Schick, formerly of the Bang on a Can All-Stars and a Xenakis expert, and Doug Perkins, formerly of So Percussion, the accomplished performers included Greg Beyer, Nathan Davis, Robert Esler and Brett Reed. Since they were too far apart to communicate directly, they listened to a click track of audio cues through earphones.

It took time for the platforms to be moved into place. Audience members, in scores of rowboats, grew restless waiting and started their own percussion piece by breaking into rhythmic clapping. But by 4:45 p.m., a half-hour late, the first of two performances began.

The percussionists played myriad instruments: drums of all sorts, wood blocks, whistles, cymbals, sirens, maracas, pebbles, gongs and metal sheets to emulate thunder. The piece began with waves of drumrolls, spiked with flecks of sounds from maracas and somnolent gongs. Soon the music took off, and there were rhythmic volleys and overlapping bursts from all directions.

Though the lake was a wondrous setting for the music, water is not the most conducive surface for sound dispersal. Sometimes, during agitated episodes of the piece, I would see a distant percussionist on shore flailing his arms but could not really hear anything. The musical experience also varied according to the position of your boat. Most drifted about or moved slowly, often gently colliding.

For one long stretch Persephassa grew hushed and restrained, with minimal sounds and musical activity. I was impressed by the way most people entered into the spirit of the piece and listened attentively from their boats, hardly talking. Some closed their eyes meditatively.