Looking for anonymous SHOWER SINGERS
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A site-specific sound installation curated by Dawn Matheson for the Guelph Jazz Festival’s Nuit Blanche on September 11, 2010.

The project will consist of pre-recorded private shower performances sung by amateur (and some professional) singers
—child and elder alike—from across Southern Ontario (approx. 30).

The anonymous recordings will be broadcast from the public fountain in St. George’s Square, Guelph.

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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 Guelph Jazz Festival and its all-night art show.
Shrouded in ** anonymity** , the once-private shower concert finds an ear in the passerby, the art fan, the discerning jazz critic.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE?

• Record yourself singing in the shower! Give it your all—fumbling, forgotten words, improvised or polished. (With the street noise and the gurgling of the public fountain, your voice won’t likely even be recognized)

• 3-minutes maximum.

• Use your own digital recorder (mini-disc, digital video camera, ipod, etc—many personal electronic devices have sound recording capacity)
• Or, borrow a digital recorder from a musician you know. (If you throw a stone in Guelph, you’ll hit a musician)
• Or borrow one from me if you are local by sending me an email at mathesondawn@gmail.com

• Email me an audio file of your recording by AUGUST 20, 2010, OR contact me to collect your audio track in person.

Thanks ever so much—and please spread the word far and wide.
It would be lovely to have a great diversity of song.