a new sound bath experience
for the ages

ABOUT

The Great Alberta Sound Bath Experience invites participants to a sonically-driven meditative ritual to cleanse and shed the profound impacts of COVID while creating space to reconnect and immerse oneself in nature. It is a means to help envision a hopeful future.

What is a traditional Sound Bath?

Though sound baths may seem like a “new age” concept, the practice of healing bodies through sound is thousands of years old. This spiritual, cleansing music varies according to place and culture. It can be as simple as chanting an “Om” following your yoga session or as complex as an hour-long experience in a dedicated space with a sound practitioner.

A sound bath is a meditative experience where those in attendance are “bathed” in sound waves. These waves are produced by various sources, including healing instruments such as gongs, singing bowls, percussion, chimes, rattles, tuning forks, and even the human voice. The music doesn’t have a catchy melody or rhythm like you’d experience at a rock concert or symphony, but instead is a carefully selected wash of instruments and voice with notable resonance and overtones.

What is OUr Interpretation of a Sound Bath?

We plan to make this a truly innovative creative experience - a compositional journey involving multiple voices and instruments such as First Nations drum, flute, violin, piano, and pedal-steel guitar mixed with elements of sound design and spoken text. Our goal is to facilitate an unlocking of space in the participant - the space taken up by stress, feelings of ineffectuality, despondency, guilt, anger - and create an opening for positive action, energy, and hope. The sound bath journey will consist roughly of four ‘waves’:

  1. Tuning people into the environment: whether the Rocky Mountains or prairie badlands, evoking the specificity of place and history can be difficult. Participants may visit dark places - traumas, fears, anger. The sounds will mirror this. It is a processing of pain, a releasing of the conscious ego.

  2. Unlocking and cleansing: tones made to evoke personal or societal nostalgia, a sense of community, and ritual. A repair of damage.

  3. Letting go: a version of ‘tuning meditation’ will bring group catharsis. Participants. A gorgeous dissonant swirl of sounds affects the body and nervous system.

  4. Hope: bring across musically a sense of expectation, possibility, a vision of the future. 

The sound bath is an experience, not spectacle. The ‘show’ is a sonic interpretation of the sound bath within the minds and bodies of the audience, conjuring feelings and mental imagery that will hopefully release the audience into an ecstatic state. There may be minimal words in between the waves - poetic connections, or suggestions related to breathing or physical position - but the music will be the guide. The Great Alberta Sound Bath Experience will be a carefully constructed and performed immersive composition meant to energize and inspire. 

PRODUCTION HISTORY

April 2022: Workshop Presentation, Calgary

Summer 2023: World Premiere

ARTISTIC COLLABORATORS

Kris Demeanor: Artistic Lead/Creator/Musician/Composer

Kenna Burima: Artistic Lead/Songwriter/Musician

Cedric Lightning: Musician/Composer

Chris Dadge: Musician/Composer

Chantal Vitalis: Musician

Allison Lynch: Musician/Sound Design

Jamie Konchak: Actor

Tauran Wood: Audio Engineer

Marina Buston: Stage Manager

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

We’re currently seeking partners and residencies for The Great Alberta Sound Bath Experience. If you feel an artistic calling to this show and are interested in the project, please get in touch with us.

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Special Thanks to