Created 20 years after the events of 9/11, September Song is an immersive visual and sound installation based on Heather Nicol’s first-hand experience and lingering memories of that cataclysmic morning in Lower Manhattan. Haunting sounds, images and imagined scenarios distilled over many years are at the core of September Song.

A spatialized audio score for September Song is performed by absent, ghost players. Featuring a baby grand piano suspended overhead, captured as if in a photograph, the menacing object references Damocles’ sword, the origin story of the phrase “dangling by a thread.” Once a focal point in public and domestic gathering places, pianos are now being tossed away. Delicately cascading bits of paper flicker, and a lone figure sweeps the detritus.

The passage of time is gently embedded in the commemoration of 9/11 so many years later; there is a distant, frozen-moment aspect to the fall of the “Twin Towers.” Some are too young to remember that day at all. The installation is an invitation to the public to safely gather and collectively reflect on that disruptive event of 20 years ago, its links and resonance with our current pandemic times, and to remember those lost.

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