NUIT BLANCHE SINGING IN THE SHOWER audio installation

 site-specific sound installation curated by Dawn Matheson for Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel Nuit Blanche on October 2, 2010 at 7pm to sunrise.

Supported by the Ontario Arts Council, and agency of the Government of Canada.

The project will consist of pre-recorded private shower performances sung by amateur (and some professional) singers
—child and elder alike—from across Ontario (47 so far!).

The anonymous recordings will be broadcast from the balcony on the second floor of the Gladstone Hotel for NUIT BLANCHE– like an open window from a hotel bathroom to the street below, as if ” hotel guest’s” private shower performances were broadcast to an audience of thousands.

This was the original call for participants. Songs were sent in from all over the world!

Who doesn’t sing in the shower?

For some, it’s a necessity, for if they sang in public, they’d surely be shot.

For others, the bathroom is an intimate venue ripe for improv where every singer becomes a virtuoso. Raw and naked belting out their very best to the gods of porcelain, the shower performer is centre stage at the Met, perhaps weeping a song of sorrow, perhaps living out a diva fantasy of fame, each show without the risk of a boo.

The shower creates the perfect conditions for the chanteuse. The tiled walls act as an echo chamber enriching the voice, bottoming out the bass, boosting the volume…and, the hum of the shower, drowning out the sour notes.

The widespread phenomenon of singing in the shower rarely gets a public audience.
Here, a secret community of closet minstrels—“The Mighty Shower Singers”—is given a venue at the prestigious Gladstone Hotel and its all-night art show.
Shrouded in ** anonymity** , the once-private shower concert finds an ear in the passerby, the art fan, the music critic.

Singing in the Shower coverage