Parchetypes Description

Parchetypes is based on two real-life personalities who define the experience of attending Point Pleasant Park through their musical performances. These two parchetypes or fathers of the park use this extraordinary urban forest in order to nurture the park’s natural elements and entertain park-goers with their musical expressions.

The first I have encountered as an anonymous bag piper. His disembodied sounds are a common auditory occurrence and are part of the Point Pleasant Park experience on any given summer day. Like a living ghost nestled in the park’s forest this musical patriarch offers up his kinship with the park by leaving only trace chanters and drones from his pipes into the wind.

The second is an elder who provides an embodied auditory experience. Like a guardian to the park he plays fiddle music on his small portable cassette tape stereo at the Tower Road entrance. As the park’s proverbial gatekeeper he provides a transitional point by projecting a unique tone onto the park experience.

My performance project will pay tribute to these two musical fathers by utilizing their sonic templates, but infused with my own and others unique soundscapes (using bagpipes & piano), which will attempt to respond dynamically to the environment of the Park.

Week One Performances - Monday, August 15th, 2011 until Monday, August 22nd, 2011

The intention is to (dis)embody the sounds of the rogue bagpiper. For the duration of one week, check performance schedule for details, myself and other commissioned musicians (pianists & a bagpiper) will be playing piano and bagpipe music anonymously in the park’s forest. The music, songs and sounds myself and others create and perform will be informed by the surrounding natural environment and momentary experiences. The performance camp will consist of an old upright piano. Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend the scheduled performances as well as play the piano during park hours.

Week Two Performances - Monday, September 5th, 2011 until Sunday, September 11th, 2011

I will sit as the gatekeeper to the park playing the recorded sounds from a mix tape of Week One’s performances on a portable cassette player. Sitting on the stone wall near the Tower Rd. entrance from 12pm until 5pm I will act as the doppelganger of the park’s elder guardian, by setting my new and specific sounds onto those who enter the park.

Cassette mix tapes and printed matter from the performance will be distributed to various local art galleries and environmental related organizations to be sold as charitable items. All the proceeds will be donated to the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax NS.

This project was made possible by the funding and support of HRM Open Projects & Point Pleasant Park.