Review: Orchestra of Sound

Stephen Viner is a musician from Canada who calls himself a sound miner; he excavates sounds from the world around us which he then makes musical arrangements out of. He tells us a bit about them between the songs he plays but doesn't provide any context except for the superfluous. Explaining his back story and what he does would have really added the human interest that this show needs. 

Many of his sounds come from a cross-country road trip across his home country that he took with his wife, stopping at bridges, car shops and caves to record sounds there. As it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of sounds you can make from instruments is from when you hit them – aka percussion. 

These percussive sounds serve as the focal point of the majority of songs Viner plays through the show's hour. It is just one of the ways the songs get tired and predictable. Each song slowly layers up similar sounds to create a dully saccharine vibe. There is no dynamism or difference in atmosphere to the songs and they are mostly displayed to the audience through videos which are also pretty indistinguishable, as we see Viner drum the same everyday objects again and again in amongst some uninspired 2000s era WordArt and Powerpoint transitions. 

Viner does play some live instruments that he has brought along and some of them are interesting to see and listen to, including a wind instrument made out of salvaged beach materials and programmed to sound like a whale’s call. Yet the instrument he plays the most is a keyboard and even if it has been reprogrammed or reassembled, it seems odd to use this as your main live instrument in a show about the sounds around us.