From Here to Eternity: The Cobar Sound Chapel
Author: Peter Salhani
In the outback NSW mining town of Cobar, on the traditional lands of the Ngiyampaa Wangaaypuwan people, the Cobar Sound Chapel stands watch. A sentinel in a landscape of harsh beauty. An intimate sound space that merges music, architecture, art, poetry, light and nature.
Completed in in early 2022, the Cobar Sound Chapel is a permanent sound installation artwork in a former water tank – a collaboration between composer / sound artist Georges Lentz and Australia’s Pritzker Prize-laureate (2002) architect, Glenn Murcutt AO. Important contributors to the project also include the four musicians of The Noise String Quartet, Indigenous Cobar artist Sharron Ohlsen, and technical / artistic adviser, Oliver Miller, and Cobar Shire Council who supplied the site.
Cobar Sound Chapel, a theatre in the round. Image: Katharina Hendel
Inside this deeply resonant space, a 43-hour surround-sound composition – String Quartet(s) – plays continuously. Anyone can visit to listen for as long, or short as they like. The music is mainly soft, mysterious and otherworldly, with a backdrop of millions of tiny musical dots or stars, from which occasionally emerge much more dramatic sounds and textures, or moments of near to absolute silence.
Lentz was born in Luxembourg in 1965 and has lived in Australia since 1990. The Cobar Sound Chapel is the culmination of a life’s work and dreaming. A reflection of his music – his fascination with astronomy, his spiritual beliefs, questions and doubts, and a love for the landscape of his adopted country and its first peoples.
Oculus to the sky.
Image: Katharina Hendel
Remoteness is central to the idea – a purpose-built space for music – far from civilisation. Not only to situate the Chapel in the very environment that has inspired his music (amidst a red earth sea and starry night sky), but also to make it a journey for people to get there. To make them more receptive.
In the 2022 documentary about the Chapel by film-maker Catherine Hunter, Glenn Murcutt revealed that he too had long ago dreamed of a music space in the desert. Decades earlier, Murcutt was approached by the Aboriginal sportsman, author and activist, Burnum Burnum, who wanted him to design a sound space “somewhere out of Alice Springs” for performances of the didgerido and Mozart. Burnum died before the project began, but the seed was planted in Murcutt.
In the hands of two maestros, a rusted water tank became a heavenly instrument.
Image: Katharina Hendel
When Council offered Lentz a site for the project, they also offered to knock the old water tank down to give a clean slate, but Lentz was adamant that the iconic tank – set high on a hill and visible for miles – was pivotal to the experience and the project. Murcutt agreed. “I think the tank’s brought a lot to the project. This has a cultural link, and I think that’s important to the town.”
Inside the cylindrical steel tank, a square, concrete box with fluted walls has been inserted. Inviting the visitor in, is a concrete plinth seat beneath a gold ceiling dome, and oculus, open to the sky. At rehearsal for the Chapel’s opening in April 2022, Noise String Quartet violist James Eccles and violinist Veronique Serret reflected on the space and how they felt about it.
A concrete plinth as creative comfort inside the auditorium. Image: Katharina Hendel
James Eccles: “It’s funny, it’s slightly smaller than I’d imagined it in my head. But it is a beautiful meditative space, and the sound is amazing.” Veronique Serret: “It’s wonderful to have a place that just exists. It’s part of everything. Because, for us [musicians] it’s usually a performance, or you listen to the recording and then it’s over. But this is on 24 hours, with animals going past, with people. It’s something that just keeps going… for eternity.”
A beacon of light under a blanket of stars.
Image: Katharina Hendel