Frequencies

By Aaron Collier with Francesca Ekwuyasi and Stewart Legere

“In early 2018 I wanted to create a new music show, and I was interested in two seemingly disparate things: the understanding of reality as simply interrelated frequencies, and recurring dreams. I would get curious about some kind of relationship in nature that occurs in milliseconds, hours, days or over millennia and then work to manifest it mathematically as music. Then there’s the recurring dream about a red sphere I’d had since my earliest memories. I tried to create music to capture the feeling of the dream. I wanted to find ways to see the world and myself differently, and I did. I discovered the music the earth plays over millions of years, the chord our solar system plays, and how a bee might experience time. What I didn’t expect to discover through all of this deep observation of the outer world and my own inner world was my dead brother. But the making of this show led me directly to him. And so, very carefully, I cast him in the show. and with the audience as witness, I speak with my brother. I play him my music and tell him about the discoveries I made, about my life with our family, and about how I found him. Frequencies is about connectedness beyond words and ideas, beyond time, and even beyond death. I believe that experiencing that connection, remembering it, can heal us.” ~ Aaron Collier

Frequencies premiered via livestream in February 2021 at the Bus Stop Theatre in Kjipuktuk Mi’kma’ki / Halifax, Nova Scotia, with presenting partners and audiences across Canada including Pi Theatre (Vancouver), Theatre Outre (Lethbridge), Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg), and Kings Theatre (Annapolis Royal, NS). The score was released as an album on November 5th, 2021 in tandem with the National Arts Centre’s livestream presentation as part of their Theatre and Physics Symposium.  The show and it's themes were were made the subject of a panel discussion titled The “I” in Physics: The Inner Lives of Physicists  featuring Collier speaking with leading Canadian physicists Dr. Shohini Ghose and Dr. Kevin Hewitt, moderated by CBC Radio's Nahlah Ayed. This talk was subsequently made into an episode of CBC's IDEAS. 

Frequencies is available to tour as an in-person performance for live audiences, and/or as a live digital experience to online audiences.