Returning to Ambient Church for Mezame New York

Most of the people I worked with were new to me. Brian and Andrew Fox were familiar faces from Baltimore, and it was especially nice that Andrew remembered me too. There was coffee, a production food table, and plenty to get started on. Someone also told me they had read my last Ambient Church post, and I was like, yes—shout out to that!

St. Bartholomew’s was an incredible place to spend the day working.

The congregation dates to 1835 and moved to its current Park Avenue location in 1918. Architect Bertram Goodhue designed the church to incorporate Stanford White’s elaborate triple entrance portal, which was relocated from the congregation’s previous building on Madison Avenue. The great dome was added in 1930, and the church and community house became a National Historic Landmark in 2016. St. Bartholomew’s Conservancy documents that history here.

Moving through the building, I felt like I was getting access to an older part of New York. There were so many levels, enormous arches, and stone stairs connecting the spaces we were working in. The architecture was impressive and honestly intimidating for a production like this. The scale and acoustics alone were a lot to take in.

Working there also made me curious about everything that happens before a crew arrives. How did the conversation with the church begin? What does the proposal for something like Mezame look like? What do the organizers and the church each hope to bring to the space?

I had explored some of those questions in Baltimore through my conversation with Reverend Sutton. At St. Bartholomew’s, I kept thinking about the relationships and decisions that make it possible to invite people into a historic sacred space for this kind of event.

Our part that day was very physical. There were crates to collect from the truck, equipment to move, cables to run and mark, and lighting to position across different levels of the church. I was ready to work, although it was a lot. I was also conscious of how easily women can be underestimated in these spaces, and I wanted to contribute fully.

I started by assisting Andrew Fox, who led audio and spatial design for the event. His practice spans music production, sound design, and immersive audio installations. I then moved into lighting, following Cleo Perez’s direction. Both were patient and open as I learned the specifics of their setups.

The production brought together several domains I’m interested in: audio, lighting, projection mapping, and the architecture they all had to work within.

I already had a foundation in audio through programming, live coding, and hosting events. Working with sound in code involves learning a considerable amount of audio terminology, and I was familiar with equipment such as audio interfaces, XLR cables, event speakers, and subwoofers. Being around DJs, musicians, and performers has also shaped how I understand those systems.

Lighting was where I was encountering the most new material. I had worked with smaller setups and uplights, but this production involved equipment and placement decisions at a different scale. Helping with lights around the arches and upper levels gave me a much closer look at that work.

I wanted to go around the church and document every piece of hardware: the lights, lasers, brands, models, and specifications. What exactly were we using? What made each piece appropriate for this building? I didn’t get to make that inventory, but those were the kinds of questions I was carrying through the day.

That is part of why I value being involved in production. You get to watch experienced people solve problems in real time, including the small preferences and adjustments that rarely make it into a tutorial.

I also got a look at Gabriel’s TouchDesigner workspace and parts of the projection mapping process. Watching the architecture get traced and accounted for was especially interesting to me. Every arch and change in the surface gives the visual artist something specific to work with.