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Tone List x Fremantle Biennale: Sound Sauna w/ Stuart Orchard

November 20, 2025 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

$30

Sound Sauna is a one-of-a-kind sensory ritual — a resonance spa at Manjaree (Bathers Beach), perched on the edge of the Indian Ocean. Set within a repurposed shipping container and lined with locally sourced timber, this installation fuses the restorative heat of traditional sauna culture with a transformative sonic experience. This intimate space invites you to sweat, float and dissolve into a curated sonic journey.

Across a series of 60-minute sessions, sound artists, musicians, poets, and cultural leaders create immersive soundscapes designed to deepen connection to place. Inspired by the Fremantle Biennale’s 2025 theme of sanctuary, each session is an exploration in active listening, collective care and embodied transformation. Sound changes with the time of day: morning meditations and vocal landscapes drift toward late-night DJ sets and experimental bass vibrations. Your body becomes a conduit for deep frequency — buoyant, dissolving, alive.

Whether you’re drawn by tradition, curiosity or the lure of sound and heat, Sound Sauna offers a space to reflect, to soften and to feel, floating between breath and rhythm. Come alone or with others. Sit, listen, sweat. Let the ocean hum at your back. The warmth will carry you and the sound will stay with you.

 

Stuart Orchard is a West Australian composer-performer, sound designer and educator. His work with ambient piano soundscapes, aeolian music, self-made string instruments and adventurous rock music have seen him perform around the world, including at SoundOut Festival (Canberra), Tanzforum (Berlin), and the Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music (Perth). His music has been used in the ABC TV production The Heights (2019); he has also been commissioned by Tone List (Audible Edge Festival, 2020) and by Joseph Simons’ for his solo choreographic work First Thing’s First, which toured in over 40 venues worldwide. He has worked, recorded and played with influential musicians across genres, including Mark Reeder, Jean Luc Guionnet, Jim Denley & Jodie Rottle. He is active playing in an array of bands and improvised collaborations across Perth.

Stuart is interested in immersive listening, and the connection of musicians and listeners to their environment through its natural forces & stories. He has a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) in music composition, where he focused on interactive aeolian instruments & sculptures. He has undertaken further intensive studies with Billy Martin (The New School, NYC) and Jim Denley (via Tone List), and also holds qualifications in writing & secondary education.

LIVE SET – Stuart will use his aeolian (wind-powered) instruments to create an improvised piece shaped by the environmental forces at Manjaree.

Details

Date:
November 20, 2025
Time:
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Cost:
$30
Website:
https://fremantlebiennale.com.au/event/sound-sauna/

Organizers

Fremantle Biennale
Tone List

Venue

Manjaree
Bather's Beach Precinct + Google Map