PORT ANGELES — As soon as this work week is done, they’re planning to take you on an unusual trip.
This Friday night, three music makers — each a lover of soothing sound — will provide as a mode of transport their voices, knit together with a large, wooden resonating chamber.
“We’ll be playing the music of the people, literally,” promises James Hoskins, the guy with that resonating chamber commonly known as the cello.
At 7 p.m. this Friday, the Boulder, Colo., musician will perform with a pair of Port Angeles sound therapists, Marline Lesh and Vickie Dodd, in a concert titled “Rest in Restless Times” at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
“Vickie sees, hears, [and] feels the body as an instrument,” said Hoskins, “so she sings what she gets from the audience members attending the performance.”
This is all about resonance, Dodd added.
Her vocalized sounds, much like any music or chanting, resonate inside listeners’ bodies.
It’s a biological reality
This may seem a little far out to the uninitiated, she said. But sound therapy is a biological reality, with well-documented benefits such as lowered blood pressure.
“Rest in Restless Times” is a response to the fine arts center’s current exhibition, “Outbreak!”
The display features San Juan Island artist Bryn Barnard’s images of epidemics — Spanish flu, bubonic plague, smallpox — that have changed history.
As an antidote, center director Jake Seniuk has arranged a series of events, starting with Friday’s concert, that focuses on ways to find peace and healing amid today’s technology-dense culture.
“The epidemic what we seem to be finding now is an epidemic of stress,” said Dodd, a sound therapist and one of Hoskins’ collaborators.
“Most of us are living as if there’s a tiger on our tail. We keep feeding that tiger with more and more caffeine, more sugar and less sleep.
“What we hope to do this night,” Dodd said, “is just stop,” and relax with music.
Vibrational waves
This music is not from the kind of orchestra you might expect. Dodd and Lesh uses their voices to create vibrational waves, waves that are conducive to relaxing the mind.
An internationally known therapist and teacher who lives in Port Angeles, Dodd seeks to help her listeners use the parasympathetic nervous system, the system that allows them to meditate and rest.
It’s possible, Dodd said, to train the body and mind to clear themselves of stress, to let go, to digest our experiences.
And vocalized sound, she believes, is a great soother.
“It’s a positive feedback loop that is impossible to define before it happens and unique every time in its result. I feel that the cello is perfectly suited to this work as its voice is very close to the human voice in terms of range and timbre,” added Hoskins, whose cello has accompanied modern dance ensembles for about 20 years.
Lesh, for her part, was director of the Sound Healers of Washington based in Seattle before retiring in 2004.
She had met Dodd at a symposium in Colorado before moving here and was delighted to discover that her fellow sound healer also lives in Port Angeles.
From body and breath
Vocalizing and sound therapy, Lesh said, comes from body and breath, and is free of structures such as words and melody.
“When it all comes together, it is like a subtle dance,” she said. “It feels effortless and spacious, as if I am playing, singing and celebrating with something infinitely greater than myself.
“Experiencing this in community with other voices or instruments is especially magical and vitalizing,” Lesh said
Added Hoskins: “People coming to this event have an amazing opportunity to have music brought forth, some from within their very deepest selves, which allows their parasympathetic, or resting body, system to come to the forefront, in much the same way that meditation can.
“A very real and healthy transformation can take place,” Hoskins said. “I know it does for me whenever I work with Vickie. It’s beautiful and quite satisfying on many levels.”
Ticket information
Admission to Friday’s “Rest in Restless Times” concert is $15, or $12 for Friends of the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
Tickets are on sale at Port Book and News, 104 E. First St., and at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
To find out more about the event and others in the series, phone the center at 360-457-3532.
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.