Pyramids of Compassion

Hovering above the bustle of MacLeod Trail, due West of City Hall and protected against the inevitable, unpredictable, unconscionable November climate, lies Werklund Centre’s +15 Soundscape, an interactive multichannel sound gallery. If you aren’t quite sure what a ‘multichannel sound gallery’ is, that’s fine. Essentially, withholding all the technical jargon that this writer himself doesn’t quite have a grasp of, it boils down to an exhibitive area designed with the expressed purpose of presenting the art of sound by way of a series of multi-directional speakers. The independently differing directions of the projected sound generate a sort of three-dimensional audio wave that engulfs whomsoever walks through its scope, immersing them in the typically atypical music, often sophisticatedly experimental and richly textured. 

At the moment of writing this, Jairus Sharif and Francis Willey, two Calgarian multidisciplinarians uniquely suited to this type of exploratory recreation, are comfortably put up in a french chateaux, just outside Paris, siphoning the European abundance of airborne energy, galvanizing it in ways that, to many of us would be nonsensical, but to them would seem as natural as breathing, producing the class of sonic atmospheres that make the +15 Soundscape such a worthwhile installation.

Sharif is nominally, and for sheer ease of simplifying his work (risking reductiveness, mind you), a jazz musician — specifically, a multi-instrumentalist who focuses on his saxophone. He released his debut album in 2022 — Water & Tools, a combustible mix of transcendent blowing and avant-garde production that touches on ambient, industrial and funk — to widespread critical acclaim. His follow-up this year, Basis of Unity, was more lush and serene, though no less virtuosic. His solo releases, not to mention his collaborations as part of the Calgarian institution Bug Incision, or his work with other Canadian jazzists (be sure to check out the We Want Rain SOON!!! EP), have established him at the forefront of a new vanguard of the national elite. 

Willey, in his own respective way, is just as tricky to categorize. The bio on his website refers to him as a ‘multi-expressive artist,’ and his portfolio speaks to the eclecticism of his work. Arguably, his most accomplished work is his 35mm photography, processed traditionally by hand in a darkroom, which has been celebrated the world over for the empathy and depth of humanity captured in his images. His incorporation of progressive digital manipulations, as well as more traditional inks and paints, gives his work a temporally nonlinear format, making them, effectively, contemporary artifacts. 

Individually, their primary focuses represent the diametric ends of the artistic spectrum: sight and sound. Together, they are Pyramids of Compassion. 

It is an artist's role — their responsibility, maybe even — to connect the disparate elements of the human experience and articulate them in a way that can resonate with those undergoing those very same elements in their daily lives. Art resonates with us, vibrates through our coils and wraps itself around the fibres of our being because, in so many ways understated and forever misunderstood, it reflects the world unique to each of us. Great art, that which touches us and drives a reaction or sensation that is uncategorical and altogether beyond the geometry of our otherwise Euclidean lives, can often garner emotional (sometimes physical) responses of great spiritual worth. It can be in the poignant lyrics of poetic songwriting, the liquid remnants of a considerate brushstroke, a sweeping camera shot in the right light, a frayed hemline or dusting of zest.

For Pyramids of Compassion, that medium is sound. You could call it music if you wanted. If you felt the need to categorize it, their compositions would fall somewhere along the lines of spiritual jazz. But to even attempt to classify them is purposefully defeatist. Their joint effort — the marriage of piano and saxophone — isn’t about songs, but an exploration of modes and tones. Their bandcamp page refers to their process as a “stretch toward the ineffable — not to escape the world, but to reimagine it. To feel more. To be more. We are drawn to the raw, the ruptured, the radiant.” It’s not a conjuring so much as a rendering.

While their working relationship began at an artist’s workshop at the Banff Centre, the power in their output feels of a primordial kind, from a time before the windowpanes and ironworks, treated lumber and concrete landings, when the space where the Centre now sits was an untouched sanctuary of tree and stone and sky. The two sound structures that adorn their bandcamp page, “Vishudda” (the fifth Hindu chakra, found in the throat and responsible for communication, creativity and self-expression) and “Coniferous & Deciduous” (an homage to the woodlands), are frequencies of high order. They burn slow and secure, stretching — like their authors — ever outward, exploring gracefully in space. Willey’s piano acts as a frame upon which Sharif’s saxophone weaves, and the coy interplay between the two results in a sublime convergence of two equally sedate auras meeting in copacetic bliss. 

So if you find yourself strolling amongst the scuttle of downtown, lost in the rush, feeling perhaps even crushed by the weight and scale of sprawl Calgary hosts, a walk through the +15 Soundscape is highly recommended. It is a moment, brief as you like, to breathe, to feel, to unburden and lose oneself when one otherwise may find oneself lost. In the wake of Pyramids of Compassion, there is reprieve in even the most dense chaos.