South Philly musicians combine high-altitude climbing and classical music for art’s sake

Along the edge of the Wissahickon Creek, and perhaps the edge of sanity, three South Philly friends shimmied out along a thick branch far above the water. But what at first seemed profoundly stupid on this Monday morning soon teetered on the sublime.

Colin Doyle, 26, wore a gold jacket and tuned his guitar. Beside him, soprano Anaïs Naharro-Murphy, 27, swung back and forth, warming her voice while her white tutu flailed in the wind. Willis Kuelthau’s feet dangled just inches from the creek, his melodica already taking on water, but he hoisted himself up a rope with climbing gear, each tug on the ascender sending moss and bark fluttering from the branch above him.

“It feels intense when you’re up there, and that’s what we like about it,” Kuelthau, 27, said before he swung out from the trunk to the branch.

A fall into the shallow, icy water from that height could have broken bones, but the branch held, and the latest performance in the High Art Project began with an audience of one trout fisherman, a handful of bewildered hikers, and a dog. Doyle, a tenor, opened with “La Barcheta” by Reynaldo Hahn, the ripple of the creek, and the ever-so-soft hum of risk in the background. In many ways, it was the crew’s most accessible performance yet.

“Well, I never seen anything like that before,” a man in an Eagles hoodie said as he passed the scene.

Hanging from a tree 20 feet over a creek is relatively low stakes for Doyle and Kuelthau and their High Art Project. Boulder, Colo., where they were born and raised, sits at 5,328 above sea level. The Comcast 2 Tower, by comparison, is 1,121 feet tall. But Doyle, a classically trained singer who performs for Opera Delaware, a professional company in Wilmington, and Kuelthau, a writer and musician, didn’t just putter around Boulder strumming instruments in their youth. The longtime friends are also avid climbers and outdoorsmen, and together, the two have traveled higher than any mountain in Pennsylvania, to elevations with less oxygen, where one mistake meant they could fall off the world.

The High Art Project was a vision Doyle had while climbing in the Eastern Sierra. He pictured a piano on a steep ledge. That hasn’t happened yet, but the two have performed on Crystal Crag in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., and on the east face of Longs Peak in Colorado, which at more than 14,000 feet is more than double the height of the tallest peak on the East Coast.

“There’s a kind of vulnerability, which is really helpful for art. We thought that that would kind of be a valuable tool,” Doyle said. “It’s raw and intense, and it makes you really honest.”

Doyle came to Philadelphia to pursue his career in classical music, and Kuelthau followed. Locally, most of their climbing is done at indoor rock gyms or on boulders along the Wissahickon. Doyle said he’s learned to find inspiration in skyscrapers, bridges, and other man-made structures. He and Kuelthau recently performed from a swing they suspended 50 feet below the Henry Avenue bridge. The shows are free and open to anyone willing to make the climb, though the performances are often filmed.

Sometimes they’ll travel to New York’s Shawangunk Mountains to perform, but they still long for higher peaks out west. This summer, the duo are planning a concert series atop El Capitan, the world’s most famous climbing wall, in California’s Yosemite National Park.

“There’s a reason I go out to California every summer. I have to get my fill in,” Doyle said.

Naharro-Murphy, a Baltimore native, had never climbed before but agreed to come out to the Wissahickon last Monday to help Doyle and Kuelthau. They told her it would be easy, but Naharro-Murphy lost her wool hat to the creek, got her feet soaked and her tutu stuck on tree branches. Her rendition of Victor Jara’s “Te Recuerdo Amanda” made it all seem worth it, the forlorn lyrics carrying over the water up into the bare trees along the creek’s steep banks.

Two Canada geese swam together in an eddy in the distance while she sang.

La sonrisa ancha,

La lluvia en el pelo,

No importaba nada

Ibas a encontrarte con él,

Con él, con él, con él, con él.

After a 10-minute battle with a tree trunk, Naharro-Murphy, who also sings for Opera Delaware, was back on the trail, picking bits of bark and moss from her mouth.

“I like that they are defying musical expectations in a really physical way,” she said.

Kuelthau sang “Don’t Wait Too Long” by Madeleine Peyroux, and once the creek water dried out of his melodica, he performed a solo from his high perch toward the edge of the branch.

Doyle said classical music, highbrow in nature, rarely means sweat, bloody fingertips, and flat, granite walls. Classical music’s landscape is deeply stained woods, red drapes, and an audience fading into the darkness from the stage.

Doyle’s two passions have prompted him to ask a lot of questions, but ultimately, he said, probing too deeply into the “why?” of any art is boring, even if it’s on the edge of a mountain.

“Do we all have to be wearing tuxes all the time? Do we have to be performing in all the same spaces? I think it’s important for music to be exposed to different elements," Doyle said. “No one would do this, and that’s kind of a cool thing.”