GEORGES LENTZ - composer / sound artist
GEORGES LENTZ - composer / sound artist
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About the Cobar Sound Chapel
Click here for the official Cobar Sound Chapel website. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above? Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" (1854) The Cobar Sound Chapel is the permanent home of my 43-hour 4-channel digital composition String Quartet(s) (2000-2023). It is housed in a disused and graffitied water tank from 1901 on the outskirts of the town of Cobar, in Outback New South Wales (see below for Google Maps location). The Cobar Sound Chapel is a marriage of nature, music and architecture, an immersive walk-in sound installation in the shape of an intimate 5x5x5 metre concrete cube (at first sight somewhat reminiscent of a James Turrell building), set inside the existing 10-metre-high water tank. The whole aesthetic of the Cobar Sound Chapel, with its rusty graffitied steel and exposed concrete, feels much rawer however than the aesthetic of Turrell's work. More importantly, its purpose is quite different - the cube functions above all as a 'MUSIC box', with the sound colouring the atmosphere of the architecture, and vice versa. String Quartet(s) plays continuously day and night. The Cobar Sound Chapel's water tank does not have a roof. The ceiling of the artwork's inner cube has a golden 'lens' in its centre, also open to the elements. Thus the sky - and, at night, the stars - is visible from a central concrete bench. The composition "String Quartet(s)" is heard in four-channel surround sound on a loop, day and night, whether someone is listening or not. Sound also spills out of the Chapel and out of the tank into the vast surrounding landscape, giving the impression of a 'musical water tank' in the midst of the silence of the Outback. I have never really thought of the Cobar Sound Chapel structure primarily as an architectural project, but rather as a MUSICAL one - just as, conversely, I often think of my music in ARCHITECTURAL terms. From an architectural point of view, the Cobar Sound Chapel has been designed into a little jewel by world-renowned architect and Pritzker Prize winner Glenn Murcutt (Glenn and I worked on the design between 2016 and 2021). The Chapel's proportions are influenced by and are in direct dialogue with structural/rhythmic principles found in "String Quartet(s)". The Cobar Sound Chapel and surrounds will also be the home of a new yearly Cobar String Quartet Festival Weekend, showcasing concerts of extraordinary works from the string quartet repertoire and presented by a different string quartet ensemble each year. Extensive school and educational activities are also planned around the festival.  The Cobar Sound Chapel, seen on approach at dawn.  Inside the Cobar Sound Chapel, looking out.  Architect Glenn Murcutt at the water tank in Cobar. 30 April, 2018.  Glenn Murcutt inside the water tank. 1 May, 2018.  During construction. September 2020.  Some of Glenn Murcutt's early drawings for the Cobar Sound Chapel, with an early design of the entrance that was later altered significantly. 16 October, 2017.  A 2019 drawing for the Cobar Sound Chapel by engineer Peter Thew, with Glenn Murcutt's corrections marked in red and in pencil. This drawing represents the definitive design of the entrance.  The Cobar Sound Chapel at night (photo: Simon Pradhan) Cobar Sound Chapel on Google Maps.
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