Dynamic Duo: How a Composer and Her Bird Came to Make Beautiful Music Together

This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about California composers. Listen to this and more in-depth storytelling by subscribing to The California Report Magazine podcast.

It’s early evening and a group of musicians — led by co-composers Wendy Reid and Lulu — is beginning to assemble in Berkeley’s Live Oak Park under a small redwood grove wrapped by a creek.

Unlike at a concert hall, the audience here is tasked with finding their own seats. Some settle into the ivy or perch on the stairs that lead down to the performance area. Others sit on the grassy bank high above the musicians. I find a spot under a redwood tree. There is a sense of anticipation in the air.

Some of the people here tonight have been following Reid’s work for years. ”Her pieces are virtuosic,” said Kattt Atchley, a Bay Area improvisational artist. “ Wendy’s unusual — I mean, this is unusual — but she can pull it off. I don’t think many people can. But she can.”

But in many ways, Lulu feels like the star of this unusual performance. People whisper her name and strain to see her warming up.

Lulu and Reid have been making music together for almost two decades. And though they don’t speak the same language, they communicate through musical composition.

“When I interact with Lulu, I’m learning her language and then she’s learning my language,” said Reid, who earned a Master of Arts degree from Mills College and studied with renowned composer, Nadia Boulanger.

As the musicians start warming up, they form a semicircle around the star of the show, Lulu, the one so many people came here to see. But Lulu is still quietly observing, unassuming.

Lulu is perched on a bar in a brightly lit cage — because Lulu is a bird: an African grey parrot.

‘Ambient Bird’

This performance is called Ambient Bird. It’s based on Reid and Lulu’s interactions, which Reid transcribes into musical compositions and invites ensemble members to perform. Tonight, there are a dozen musicians playing alongside the two co-composers.

The quietest of all the performers is Lulu herself. With all eyes on her and so many interesting sounds, she tends to get a little stage fright. However, Reid is prepared for that and plays recordings of Lulu alongside the live music.

As the performance begins, some people wander over from the park to join the audience. The music intermingles with birdsong, dog barks, and kids playing in the creek below.

For Reid, these sounds are not interruptions but part of the reason she loves performing in these kinds of public spaces and surprising people who happen upon her music — like Joe Silber.

“We just stumbled into this with our kids,” he said in a whisper. “I think it’s a human/bird collaboration.”

And though they aren’t paying attention to the performance, for a moment, Silber’s kids become part of it, yelling to each other across the creek as they scramble over the bank’s exposed roots. The musicians continue to play.

“That’s exactly what I want in this piece,” Reid said. “I want that ambient sound of people just living their lives as this odd little piece goes on.”

The kids, the dogs, the water, cars whizzing by, wind in the trees — it’s all part of Reid’s composition. It also feels like a celebration of her relationship with Lulu and of the liminal human/bird world that they’ve created together.

Housemates

At Reid’s home in Berkeley, Lulu’s crate is next to the door, surrounded by stacks of books and records. She’s gray, with light eyes and a bright red undercoat. And she likes being sprayed with water.

Wendy sprays her as she talks to her. They go back and forth, saying “OK” to each other and laughing, Lulu imitating the sounds of Wendy’s laughter with an almost eerie perfection. Lulu is an entertainer and has learned how people interact with each other and with her. She repeats phrases people say to her: “cute” or “pretty girl” or “beautiful bird.”

But don’t get too close.

“If you get too close to her, she’ll bite you,” Reid said. “And she’ll know you’ll say ‘ouch.’ So she says ‘ouch’ before you. And then she’ll start laughing because that’s what people do.”

Laughing, Reid said, “It’s kind of embarrassing because it’s not her intellectual side. It’s her conniving side, really.”

The composition process

Reid and Lulu compose music in their living room. “We improvise a little bit probably every day,” Reid said.

She records and transcribes their interactions. Their composing process is spontaneous and unique every time. Sometimes, Reid will try to inspire Lulu with a birdcall. “You know how you kind of yell to somebody when you want to just hear their voice?” she said.

Reid also teaches violin lessons at her home and said that when a student is practicing, Lulu loves to chime in with squawks, songs, and, occasionally, a note correction.

“Sometimes somebody’s playing a little out of tune, and then she’ll throw them the right note, and I’ll say, ‘Just like Lulu — a little bit higher.”’

This has a way of lightening the mood. “When a teacher corrects you, it’s much more intimidating, but when a bird is correcting you, it’s funny,” Reid said.

Reid’s been making music with animals for decades. She even collaborated with her border collie, Twinkie.

“That dog didn’t have the vocabulary of a bird, so she wasn’t going to be featured in all my pieces,” Reid said. “But all the birds that I’ve had have been featured in my music since 1980.”

Birdsong is also embedded in Reid’s earliest memories of music when she’d go to her grandmother’s ranch in Wyoming and escape to a nearby forest to play her violin.

The ranch was similar in some ways to the Live Oak performance space.

“It was surrounded by all these trees and a creek,” said Reid, recalling how she would take her violin and explore the music she knew.

As a child, Reid didn’t want people to follow her to the creek and listen to her play. “I just wanted to be out there by myself and do my own thing and not be thinking that I have to perform for somebody,” she said.

‘I think of her as an equal’

In the materials for the Live Oak performance, Lulu’s name is listed before Reid’s — a signal that Lulu is not a mere sound effect in their music.

“I think of her as an equal when I write a piece of music. She can’t write the notes down, but she’s definitely creating the ideas with me,” Reid said. “I always call her half-human, and I’m half-bird.”

On the night of the performance at Live Oak Park, Reid doesn’t pay much attention to the audience and their response, or let it inhibit her work. “If somebody thought it was stupid, that wouldn’t have any effect on me,” she said.

As the performance ends and the sounds of chirping crickets fill the void, I walk up to Reid and Lulu to ask them how they think it went.

“She likes to listen to herself I think, that’s the problem,” Reid said. “She might have done a few peeps.”

Just a few peeps. Lulu cocks her head to the side. I wonder what she makes of all this — I wish I could understand her the way Reid does.

“I think she gets mesmerized by the whole situation,” Reid said. “She hears the instruments playing, and she hears herself playing, and she’s thinking, ‘Maybe I should just be listening.’”