Tanner Menard, Antenna Gallery and Experimedia Records plan to present Sommeil: Concert for Sleep in New Orleans on April 11-12.

Sommeil will be an all-night event beginning at 10:00 pm on Saturday, April 11th, and ending on Sunday, April 12th, at 7:00 am. Participants are asked to slowly fall asleep while live ambient and environmental music is performed through the night by Tanner Menard.

Sommeil: Concert for Sleep will be Menard’s reinterpretation of the sleep concert experiment, first created by Robert Rich in 1982. It will be presented at the Antenna Gallery, 3161 Burgundy St., New Orleans, LA 70117, in he heart of the St Claude Arts District. The concert will be realized with Rich ’s permission and guidance.

Sounds like this could be an awesome evening. Details below.

Sleep concerts are all-night events in which the audience is asked to attend the concert with a sleeping bag and pillow and to fall asleep while slowly unfolding sonic texture evolves over he course of the night and into the morning. People attending the event are asked to be willing to sleep during the event or at least to remain silent during the course of the nine hour experience.

Not merely a recreation of Rich’s original idea, Sommeil is a conceptual, global remix of a performance type that addresses one of the most basic functionalities of ambient and environmental sound; music by which to sleep.

In the spirit of remix and the Creative Commons movement, Menard, Louisiana native, has compiled submissions of audio material for the concert from nearly seventy artists across the globe. These artists answered a call for submissions marketed online by Experimedia Records which asked for music and field recordings to be used, remixed and mashed up during this nocturnal event.

Submissions include drones, found sound, recordings of natural and unnatural environments and synthetic music created on synthesizers and computers. Submitters have included radio scientists, geologists, psychologists, sound artists, musicians, composers, installation artists as well as several well-known figures in the ambient music scene.

During the course of the evening, Menard will remix these sleep submissions into a constantly evolving sonic texture that will lull the audience to sleep. Quad-channel surround sound system will be provided by Piety St Studios for maximum sonic enhancement of the sleep space and ambient video lighting will be provided in the form of a video loop by the internationally acclaimed VJ HIKA. Experimedia Records has  agreed to release multiple out takes from this concert on its internet label under a free Creative Commons license.

Sommeil: Concert for Sleep will be nine hours of uninterrupted music beginning at 10:00 pm on Saturday April 11th and ending at 7:00 am on Sunday April 12th at Antenna Gallery. Tickets to the evening event will be $15 and will include a light breakfast at waking time.

During the day of April 11th, Antenna Gallery will be opening the space to allow people who do not wish to sleep through the night to hear the original submissions from the international community of artists. Organizers are asking $5 per hour to experience the meditative environment of the sleep space and $3 per half an hour from noon to 9:00 pm on Saturday April 11th.

Information via Ephemeral Radio