This Odyssey started with our arrival at the bus stop behind Kitchener City hall. Here we met Robb our Open Ears Ticket agent and all round nice guy. While he was only handling a group of nine people, he knew our names, and greeted everyone warmly.
The bus was an old yellow school bus. Most us mentioned out loud that it was a giant blast from the past. My friend suggested we sit at the back. The back of the seat in front of us was covered with lighter burns and thick patchings… memories. The bus was more of a charter type though, it had a short luggage rack near the front, and speakers mounted in the ceiling. The bus ride was fulfilling. There was even a moment of that airbourne feeling when he hit a bit bump on the highway.
The first stop was a talk with R. Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer who talked about acoustics in nature. His talk included how each tree makes a different sound, how music in our culture is “inside music,” and “inside” is a very antisceptic envirment that required the development of dynamics such as crescendo to mimick the natural environment. He brought up the idea that you can apparently hear better if you hold your breath.
It started to rain during the Schafer talk. Ok, back on the bus. It starts to rain a bit more, but nothing too threatening.
First Stop: A group of women performing a traditional first nations song. As the song developed the audience (us) began to participate in the call and answer sequences of the song.
Second Stop: A kind of minstrel in the forest perfomance piece featuring a man dressed as an eagle. There is a large aparatus representing his wings controlled by a young woman in black hidden behind the tree.
Third Stop: We walked down to the conjuction of the Speed and Grandriver. There a man with a canoe and paddle was waiting for us. He tells us that he is holding the paddle that he gave his son on his 15th birthday, along with a poem. A women in along blue gown emerges from the river bank playing a clarinette. The man began reciting a poem about how a child grows up, paddling at the front of the canoe, learning to handle the paddle in the uncomfortable position of the bow, and learning to understand the rapids, and respect their motions. This one hit home a bit. Mainly, because I to remember hating the fact that I had to sit in the bow and do all the paddling.
Forth Stop: A woman playing flute under a tree. I really enjoyed his piece.
Fifth Stop: A series of speakers playing various found sounds from nature. Some of them were human voices, instruments, and man made sounds.
Sixth Stop: A woman singing operatically on a ledge.
Seventh Stop: Jessie Stewart playing his water phone. Sort of a water filled hub cap looking thing with an array of tubes jutting out the edge. It kind of looks like a flying saucer taking off in a comic book if you were to set it tubes down. The waterphone has an interesting array of sounds.
Eighth Stop: A performance piece of two people acting out a road trip, and producing various percussive sounds from an old wreck in the woods.
Ninth Stop: A choir of throat noises, bird chirps and various other sounds produced by the human voice.
Tenth Stop: A listening contraption with a set of headphones attached to two giant cones that looked like over sized megaphones. My first thought when I saw this was the big sound mirrors from WW1.
Eleventh stop: A wood xylophone type device hanging in the tree branches. Some people played it a bit, but the rain had waned our enthusiasm, and I think everyone sort of looked at it as a bunch of silliness. Rain can do that to people :)
Then one more visit with the first stop.
Understandably this kind of thing defies non-eye-rolling-description. The guy dressed like an eagle… I have a mountain of snark for that one, but I don’t really need to. I find the sound of rain on an umbrella is absolutely thunderous, and I would often fold it up just so I can hear what was going on in the environment. It seems like the umbrella acts like a giant soundmirror for the tapping of the rain on it’s surface.
