Music from the heavens with Sky Orchestra

Sky Orchestra by Luke Jerram (2007)

It felt like a kind of dream. The 2007 Sydney Festival began with seven hot air balloons, each with speakers attached, taking to the sky at sunrise and drifting westwards. Unearthly music gently wafted down to Sydney suburbs from the blue above.

Likened to “whales calling in the ocean” and drawing on research into how sound shapes our REM dream state, British sound artist Luke Jerram transformed sky into an event that was part scientific inquiry, part poetic spectacle.

For early risers looking up, it was spectacular; for those stirring with the dawn light, it was an alarm call unlike any other, a gentle invitation to wakefulness and wonder.