Jason Hausman Composes Complementary Soundscapes to the Arts

The Charlotte International Arts Festival (CIAF) has become an annual celebration within the Queen City that dedicates multiple weeks to imaginative visual arts, interactive displays, and captivating musical showcases, inspiring folks of all ages and providing real depth for folks with a desire to explore the festival’s many angles.

Since the festival’s second year, local musician, sound designer and composer Jason Hausman has been at the center of CIAF’s axis, working together with Blumenthal to provide soundtracks to many of its bigger public installations.

Jason Hausman began partnering with the festival in 2022 with the “Man” installation, a large-scale, inflatable and modernized interpretation of Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” sculpture, created by Australian artist Amanda Parer and set up in Ballantyne’s Backyard.

Musically, “Man” was composed of two opposite tracks — one that played during the daytime and another for night. Working with Derel Monteith, Hausman wove serene soundscapes into the installation, driven at times by keys and drums, but always moving back to a sea of atmospheric echoes that worked to pacify listeners, taking them to their own secluded imaginative places to ponder and wonder at the world around them.

Hausman returned in 2023 for a different type of exhibit: “Sky Of Bubbles,” which was displayed over Levine Avenue of the Arts. Looking up into the luminescent globes, during the day, one might be reminded of the lighthearted moments in childhood, in chasing the blown liquid globes with neighborhood friends and family.

At night, the many parts of the display were lit up, covering the alleyway they occupied with bright shades of pink and blue. Hausman crafted the soundtrack to this piece with local artists Troy Conn (guitar), Emily Sage (vocals), and Monteith (keys), sending up an equally fluffy and uplifting collaborative piece that only adds to the jubilance of the exhibit.

Queen City Nerve joined Hausman in his Hot Sake studios on a recent afternoon to hear his next piece for inclusion within CIAF. He has created a soundscape this year for the installation of ‘Gaia,’ a large globe created by international artist Luke Jerram that may look familiar to Charlotteans as it has hung suspended over Founders Hall in years past.

“It’s a big, giant Earth, lit from within,” Hausman described. “[The piece will be] hung from the ceiling, and it rotates very slowly, so they wanted a space that just felt good.”

Hausman said he aimed for pensive vibes with uplifting moments spread throughout, similar to the history of the actual globe we’re all living on.

“[I wanted] to have a little humanity in it, heavenly even, those kind of moments,” he said.

Listening in, the draft of the soundscape does take on those elements and then some. There’s an ethereal quality to how the track is pieced together. Looking over the long monitor sitting to the rear of his desk, hovering slightly over a slightly smaller one, I was guided through many of the layers that stretched on to various degrees.

For the heavenly quality, Hausman connected again with Sage, to add vocals. Admittedly, I had imagined Sage coming into the studio and singing certain notes, but I was shocked to see a more technological process at work. Hausman isolated Sage’s vocal layers for me, then started hitting a few notes on the keyboard, bringing forth different pitches in her voice.

Hausman had instrumentalized one of our best local vocalists to fit her into the soundscape. He moved through the layers again to present another surprise, grinning as he uncovered certain sounds hidden in the project’s depths.

“I took a blue whale sound and put it into a synth, and now I can perform it,” he said, carrying out the action as he described it.

“There’s a plug-in that I just go and mess with, and,” he explained while pointing at different layers within the music program, “I can create random generation stuff here, and then I put it through Portals [another program], and if I turn off Portals alone, you’ll start to hear this more heavenly section.

“This is basically granular synthesis,” he described, “so I can basically go in and tweak how I want these things to sound through the pad, flutter, and reverb, I can add as much of [the qualities] I want and as less.”

Having heard the parts of the whole, nothing was lost in again immersing myself in the full final product. Presented with only a slight portion of the influences, the longform track gives off a sort of radiance to the mind in how the elevated tones hit the ears.

There are string pieces woven in, doused to the point where the sound is indistinguishable from its origin, and when placed alongside Emily’s voice, they come together in a minor but stunning collision that sounds viscerally religious.

There’s so much about Jason Hausman’s “Gaia” composition that is subtle, but when opened up and dissected becomes mind-blowing. His soundscape is not just an ode to the exhibit at this year’s CIAF, it is an homage to the sphere we call home.

View ‘Gaia’ at Blumenthal Arts’ Blume Studios from Sept. 20-Nov. 10. Audiences can also see Hausman play with his band, The Shallow Sea, on Oct. 11 at Stage Door Theater.