A Closer Listen
The musicians come in, the musicians come out; the instruments come in, the instruments come out; and not a note is played. Pavel Zlámal‘s 306 Beers event was convened to celebrate the 200th birthday of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana and the 106th anniversary of Czech independence. Those who visited Brno’s Besední House that night, including many leading instrumentalists from symphonies and ensembles, were treated to an unforgettable quiet that was far from quiet: a 90-minute take on John Cage’s 4’33”.
But the event didn’t end there. Also in attendance was field recordist Tomáš Šenkyřík, capturing the event for posterity. Šenkyřík’s interests stretched beyond the ambient sounds of conversation and clinking glasses to the reverberations of the Besední dům, which once hosted conductor-composers Leoš Janáček and Antonín Dvořák.
And then things got really interesting.
Šenkyřík took the recordings home and began to feed them through banks of effects, creating a sonic narrative that touched not only on the physical, but the spiritual. But something was still missing. Returning to the site, saxophone in hand, Zlámal started playing in the halls, and here “the album found its anchor.” The finished version (which may not yet be finished, as one may continue to add layers) is a sonic miasma of past and present, live and studio, actual event and projected meaning. a 35- minute distillation of a 90-minute event.
The single-track album begins with intimations of sound: suggestions of a rail car from which the “performers” disembark; the hum of lights and sound equipment; birds that have flown into the theatre; disjointed laugher; glassware and steam. The effect is surreal, somehow disjointed from time, which allows the ghosts to wander in. When saxophone notes begin to enter, they do so as invited guests rather than disturbances, voices given to the voiceless.
In the fifth minute, melody takes control, albeit briefly; yet even here, the reverberations simply shift from foreground to back. One receives this passage less as an ode to the building than as a duet with the Besední dům, or an interpretation of how the building might feel. When this passage dissipates, the event again begins to speak. The irony is that an instrumentalist is commemorating an event in which instruments were never played, a meta approach to a real-life event. The beauty of the soundscape is the alternating and often literal voices of the attendees, the building, and the commentators. In the center a bell seems to toll: a long, slow peal, exuding a tone of holiness.
Even if one were not aware of the 306 Beers or the Besední dům, one might receive this tape as a beguiling work of experimental drone, a modern composition in its own right, while realizing that anything can be an instrument: even brick and mortar, even silence and ghost. (Richard Allen)
Thu Oct 30 00:01:28 GMT 2025