Last day of Suoni. From hypnotic to ethereal, a sacred night took place in the Église Sacré-Coeur de Jésus – one that we won’t forget so easily.
Crossing the tall entrance of the church, the atmosphere is already another short minutes into the start – eyes shut, ears open, the ear becomes full-body and there’s a feeling of trespassing into another realm of sensing things, being the architecture of a sound wave or the acoustics of space, being yourself or another.
Surrounded by an enigmatic scenography of instruments, with two upward piano soundboards pairing with a set of objects and percussions on one side and the mystical Ondes Martenot one the other, Noam Bierstone and Daniel Áñez carry us through the threads of a caring dissonance and noise and melodies that seem being drawn in the air – a crossroad of sonorities, perhaps unattended ones, but clearly the translation of a very meticulous and wise listening. There is continuity, flow, there is texture, there is gravity, there is attention, care and definitely astonishment—one that traverses the space through the air towards the opposite side of the church—beast takes the relay in the smoothest transition between sets and fills the church in a holy sonic bath for the next 40 minutes.
Walking around the space one could truly feel the psycho and the physical acoustics through the flesh and spirit, the structure of a sound wave as it lives in the space; how sound is physical and perception is body + space; how listening is a full body experience, is active, and it is part of the organised system of sounding. Beast, the local duo composed by Katelyn Clark (organ/historical keyboards) and ben grossman (hurdy-gurdy/vielle à roue), reminded this in a way that felt grounding into a moment of collective introspection, self-reflexion, and deep listening.
After the break, the acclaimed organist Kara-Lis Coverdale gifts us with a 1 hour long set—synesthetic twirls transition into soft blankets of sound, a colour on top of another fusion into depth, sound waves flow and break through wall reflections—this was the sonic voyage and spiritual cleanse we needed to feel at peace with the end of these two weeks of the most varied and groundbreaking musics and performances. Coverdale is a spectral sculptor and an aural alchemist – she crafts the harmonic lane in which one drifts away, finds their way and transcends. Deep, luminous, ethereal – life is blissful.
Thank you, Suoni.
