Following a successful weekend at the Klassik am Odeonsplatz open-air classical music festival in Munich, the d&b Soundscape recently spanned both the globe and a universe of musical styles.
While Max Richter performed Sleep in Los Angeles, the WOMAD Festival took place in an unusually sun bleached English countryside looking more like Southern California.
This was Max Richter’s first outdoor and largest performance of Sleep, an 8-hour lullaby performance that runs right through the night. Under the Moon, stars and eclipse, the piece had the audience safely tucked up in bed in Downtown LA’s Grand Park for a performance of the score for piano, strings, and voice by Max Richter with members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble.
By an uncanny coincidence, just as the audience in LA were about to climb from their beds in the park, across the world the WOMAD afternoon audience were taking a horizontal position and bedding down on the floor of the d&b Soundscape stage.
They were being enveloped by Chris Watson’s Riding the Silver Tide project, recordings he’s made of the dawn chorus as summer daybreak filters down Britain, from the far north of Scotland to the far south west of England.
At WOMAD the d&b Soundscape stage engaged audiences to deliver its part of the festival’s typically eclectic program over the long weekend. Hosting a diverse selection of international acts, the singer-songwriters, bands, field recordists and DJs took the d&b Soundscape through its paces well into the small hours.
By surrounding the audience with a loudspeaker system, the d&b Soundscape creates an acoustic environment in which people feel performances, real or abstract. The Soundscape delivers an aural perception aligned with what the eye sees, wherever the listener is within the audience. Soundscape and landscape linked in flawless harmony, even with eyes closed.
