Artist residencies have been around for decades. A musician or painter or filmmaker will set up shop in a new place for a limited period of time. Most of those places, understandably, tend to be on land.

The Vermont pianist and composer Ben Cosgrove has never taken obvious paths though, and last fall he did his work sailing from Vietnam to Australia on the massive research vessel Falkor. While onboard, he wrote and recorded songs inspired by his aquatic surroundings, some of which appear on his new record Salt. “It was my first time at sea, and I was deeply fascinated by the way one has to orient oneself in a place like that,” he says now. “I’d never been anywhere that simultaneously felt so still and so in motion.” Continue reading »