LONG STRINGS
Public shows: July 18, 2025 at 5 and 7:30 pm
Private show: July 19, 2025 7:30 pm
Zidell Shipyards, Portland OR

Get your tickets HERE!

LONG STRINGS is a visually stunning concert of new music that transforms Zidell Shipyard’s barge building into a gigantic sonic sculpture!  

For this once-in-a-lifetime performance, audiences will experience ARACHNE, the world’s largest tensioned-steel-cable Long String Instrument: a massive web of tuned steel cables up to 160+ feet in length that spans the cavernous building’s interior through both vertical and horizontal space.  Bound to the building’s metal girders, ARACHNE’s mighty strings create a resonant body from the architecture itself. 

The incredible sounds made by this sculpture as it is played with full-body choreography will be interwoven with voice, harpsichord, percussion, strings, and storytelling in an unforgettable tapestry of tones ancient and new. 

​Special musical guests include Diane Chaplin on cello, Lucas Marshall Smith on spoken word and throat singing, and Paul Safar on medieval hurdy gurdy.

As Composer in Residence @ Zidell for 2 1/2 years, composer-musician Jennifer Wright has immersed herself in the site’s physical and cultural archeology, reimagining it through an artist’s eyes and ears as a playground full of hidden potential while honoring its deep and complicated layers of history and meaning. 

​Featured in LONG STRINGS will be multiple large sonic installations and sound machines that she built from 3000+ pounds of metal industrial debris and ship parts found on site, including the Cloud Gamelan, the Ceremonial Bound Gong, the Steel Mandala, The Kelp Forest, The Hanging Gamelan, The Albatross, and the original 20-foot-long Long Strings.

In creating LONG STRINGS, Wright invites Portland audiences to an unforgettable performance experience celebrating Zidell’s raw, post-industrial state, creating an immersive space to reflect on the power of placemaking, history, connection, community, and human environmental impact.