Manitoga, The Russel Wright Design Center  is the former home, studio, and 75-acre woodland estate of pioneering 20th-century industrial designer Russel Wright located in Garrison, NY. It is a masterwork of Organic Modern architecture and landscape design, integrated into a former quarry and designed to live in harmony with nature.

Ben Neill’s relationship with Manitoga spans more than a decade and has played a central role in the development of his recent music as well as his book, Diffusing Music. Beginning with residencies in 2014, Neill has used the unique setting and acoustics of the Quarry Pool and surrounding landscape as a laboratory for exploring brass resonance, spatialized sound, and the interaction between natural environments and electronic systems.

His explorations led to a series of projects developed specifically for the site. Among them was a collaborative piece with sculptor Carol Szymanski, who created a series of natural horns that were processed and interwoven with the Mutantrumpet across the landscape, activating Manitoga as a shared acoustic environment. In 2023, Neill developed a wireless, multichannel sound system for a performance of his extended ambient work Trove, distributing layers of sampled trumpet and environmental sound throughout the site and allowing listeners to move through a continuously shifting field of resonance.

Manitoga has remained an ongoing site for both performance and research in Neill’s work. Its integration of architecture and landscape has been particularly influential in shaping his approach to sound as a physical, moving presence in space. Across multiple returns to the site, he has refined a practice that bridges historical source material, live electronic transformation, and spatial audio.

In September 2026, Neill returns to Manitoga with countertenor Ryland Angel for a major new performance combining Fantini Futuro and Echo Quarry. Presented at the Quarry Pool, the program transforms the site into a living field of sound through the wireless network he developed, distributing sound throughout the landscape.

Fantini Futuro reimagines the music of early Baroque trumpeter/composer Girolamo Fantini, extending his historic shift of the trumpet into indoor art music through real-time electronic transformation using the Mutantrumpet, voice, and keyboard. Its development was strongly influenced by Neill’s residencies at Manitoga.

Echo Quarry, created specifically for Manitoga, draws on Venetian Renaissance antiphonal traditions to create an ambient, spatial work in which fragments of sound circulate through the environment, dissolving conventional boundaries between performer, audience, and site.

Together, these works reflect Neill’s long-standing engagement with Manitoga as both a place of experimentation and a recurring performance site, where historical resonance and contemporary technology meet in an open, evolving dialogue.

MANITOGA (2014)

Trove live at Manitoga (2023)