Reflections alfresco

Ben Shemie’s “Stages” plugs
into Westmount Park

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE PARK: Ben Shemie

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The “Stages” event that Ben Shemie is conducting in Westmount Park this weekend is almost a homecoming, in that the Montreal composer, noted for ambitious efforts at bridging classical and electronic music, grew up metres away, overlooking the green space.

“I spent so much time in that park,” Shemie recalls. “My earliest memories are from there, and it’s only now, in retrospect, that I think how integral it was in my childhood and teen years.”

Shemie’s first shot at such audio-visual environment building was at Alberta’s arts colony, the Banff Centre, in 2006. “You couldn’t see anything, people were walking into trees and tripping all over themselves. It was also the fall in the Rockies, and it was freezing. Still, it was one of the most exciting and fulfilling musical experiences I have had and despite the conditions, people really dug it.

“The more of these installation-type performances I have been doing, the more interested I have become with alternative spaces, with transforming the landscape with sound.”

And vice-versa, to a degree, as Shemie explains. “‘Stages’ started as a four-part suite of sorts, inspired by sounds sampled in Westmount Park, whether it be found sounds or musicians I brought to the park to record. It’s developed into more of a stream-of-consciousness audio blitz. The music is diffused in eight-channel surround sound, so the monitors are set up in a very large circle. The audience sits on the grass inside the circle to get the full effect.

“I am trying to play with the natural hum of the park,” Shemie says of the intensely quiet passages of “Stages,” but adds, “on the other hand, there are beautiful noise elements, drones and loud beats that will just make the park change colour.”

Actually, that job falls to artist Paul Warne and his accompanying visuals, projected onto the park’s trees. “The music starts as the sun begins to set, and ends in the dark,” says Shemie. “Gradually, the visuals will reveal themselves and when the set is over, the images will have really come to life.

“I just pray it doesn’t rain…”

At Westmount Park (4574
Sherbrooke W.) on Sunday,
Aug. 24, 8 p.m., free, all ages