Foreign and impassable to humans who can only dream of what lies below the water, the depths of Earth’s oceans are a place of mystery. Composer Lei Liang and oceanographer Joshua Jones, two UC San Diego researchers intrigued by the immeasurable seas, sought to demystify them through sound. Their pursuits culminated in “The Inaudible Ocean,” a sold-out collaborative chamber music event between Liang, Jones, and Liang’s Lei Lab, which premiered at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on May 20.
Fascinated by the elusive soundscapes of the underwater realm and its diverse populace, Liang and Jones brought sounds beyond human hearing into concert. They presented dynamic whale songs, dolphin clicks, and even the groaning of ice floes in concert –– all sounds that are usually well outside the 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz range of human hearing. Whales, for example, can produce sound that is both infrasonic — as low as 10 hertz — and ultrasonic — up to 150,000 hertz. This task captured me from the get-go, and I sat down in the packed concert hall excited and curious about how Liang and Jones would translate the noises of the ocean into music.
Contrabassist Mark Dresser, percussionist Steven Schick, and pianist Cory Smythe performed the hourlong event, which was broken into seven movements all backed by real underwater recordings of ocean life captured all over the globe. The lighting and staging were both simple, drawing focus to the three musicians onstage. Each subsequent movement incorporated these audio recordings at a decelerated rate to make their nuances easier to hear over time. Dresser, Schick, and Smyth — incredibly talented musicians and longtime affiliates of UCSD’s music department — used their instruments in unconventional ways. They played below the contrabass’ bridge, modulated piano strings to intentionally sound off tune, and mimicked the percussive cetacean calls by tapping on the rivets, screws, and rims of their wooden and metallic bodies.
As a longtime concertgoer across many genres and cultures, “The Inaudible Ocean” was one of the most experimental works I have seen to date. However, this degree of experimentation felt too avant-garde; each movement lasted for almost 10 minutes, with little melody to follow. To an ear untrained on the subtleties between whale species, the movements sounded similar to one another despite the progressively slowed-down background audio. These sentiments resonated with most of the audience that night, as palpable confusion rippled throughout the concert hall when the show ended. Since this was my first exposure to Liang and his lab’s work, I was unacquainted with the ambient nature of his repertoire. Without knowing his prior projects — which heavily focus on sound design and the Lei Lab’s audio research — I admittedly had my expectations set for something more traditional.
Although I felt “The Inaudible Ocean” was a compelling idea on paper and had marvelous technical execution, I left the night wishing the concert included more music rather than simply a sonic environment.
It was visually interesting to watch highly skilled professionals challenge what sounds could be produced by orthodox Western instruments, but the night seemed to linger longer on reconstructing underwater noises rather than creating melodic arrangements. These sparse moments when the instruments sang were definitely the performance’s highlights, and I wished the concept had leaned further in this direction. It could be argued that Liang and Jones’ vision was realized too literally. Despite the undeniable technical achievement of this effort, for me, “The Inaudible Ocean” is a musical project I would have preferred to have included more music.
