River Ode: The Schuylkill Freed

River Ode: The Schuylkill Freed
Fairmount Water Works—Philadelphia, PA
May 30 + 31, 2026

With original music by Martha McDonald

Costume in collaboration with Kelly Cobb
Glass armonica by Charles Jarboe

River Ode: The Schuylkill Freed was a site-specific installation and performance exploring the history of the Fairmount Water Works and the Schuylkill River as a sentient being. Sited in an abandoned swimming pool inside the building, the performance activated the space through movement, costume and original music reflecting on the engineering feats that harnessed the power of the river to bring clean water to the people; tales of the Schuylkill Rangers, 19th century Irish river pirates from nearby Grays Ferry; and the rebirth of the river after decades of pollution and neglect.

Anchoring the piece in the country’s 250th anniversary year, I worked with a glass artist to make a glass armonica—an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin that uses water to make music—and taught myself to play it. A series of spinning glass bowls that create ethereal tones when touched with wet fingers, the glass armonica evokes the water wheels that once hummed in this building. Once a majestic engineering marvel, the Water Works is now a forlorn ruin haunted by its past glory. River Ode sought to conjure a mournful resonance within its crumbling walls.

The piece was commissioned as part of Currents, an exhibition curated by the Philadelphia Sculptors.

Photos by Ryan Collerd