The theme of this weekend’s Doors Open Hamilton event is music and there is lots to see and hear

What do you say about sounds that float through the air and disappear?

Well, interestingly, the theme of this weekend’s Doors Open Hamilton event is music and architecture. There will even be a little dancing as well.

And today, I’ve decided to write about it.

The two-day annual event, presented by the Architectural Conservancy Ontario Hamilton Region Branch, offers the public a chance to go inside 52 “in person sites,” many of which relate to music in some way.

There will be live music and demonstrations about music, along with tours of concert halls and other arts venues as well as recording studios. See the Doors Open Hamilton website for details.

“A lot of these places are examples of adaptive reuse to be used for music,” says Shannon Kyles, who headed the group of volunteers which organized the event.

“What we are trying to do is get people to save buildings, so it is right up our alley.”

Kyles is president of the Hamilton Branch of the ACO, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting Ontario’s architectural heritage.

At the Doors Open event, numerous historic churches, such as Stewart Memorial on John Street North, will host musical offerings. A highlight of the weekend, on Saturday at 12:30 p.m., will be the Stewart Memorial Choir singing Black spirituals passed down from the original congregation, that were sung along the Underground Railroad.

Over in Dundas, at the Hamilton City Ballet/Hamilton Academy of Performing Arts, ballet classes will be given. The Park Street West facility is a splendid example of a heritage building finding a place in modern times. Its original gable front has a history dating back to 1842.

But to me the most interesting place to visit on the weekend is only 10 years old.

LIVELab at McMaster University is a 106-seat research-based performance theatre and testing centre for “the study of music, sound and movement and their importance in human development and human health.”

Laurel Trainor, who is the founding and current director of the facility, said “It is worth noting that LIVELab had to be designed from the ground up. There is not another building like it that has the same isolation from the outside and background noise.”

By being able to control the internal sonic environment to such a degree, she said “it becomes a blank slate that we can introduce reverberation and other different acoustic elements to use in research.” Brain wave monitors and motion detecting technology is frequently used on musicians as well as audience members.

Also notable, she says, is how the experience of LIVELab has increased awareness of the role of sound in architectural design more generally.

“Architects, in my personal opinion, are more focused on the visual, making things esthetically pleasing as well as making sure the flow of people makes sense,” she said.

“But so much of how people work and feel in spaces is affected by acoustics.” For example, she says, a restaurant may want a lot of reverberation to help create an atmosphere of energy. Whereas an office setting would probably prefer deadened sound to be less distracting. Imagine being able to flick a switch to change the acoustic quality of a room to suit changing needs.

Tours are scheduled throughout the weekend and reservations are recommended through showpass.com/doors-open-hamilton-interactive-livelab-tours.

Also, in keeping with the music theme of Doors Open this year, will be the opportunity to visit the legendary Grant Avenue Studio.

Built inside an old house on Grant Avenue in 1976 by record producers and musicians Daniel Lanois, Bob Lanois and Bob Doidge, the music-recording mecca gained international attention, attracting artists such as Gordon Lightfoot, U2 and Johnny Cash.

Last year it was sold to film industry businesspeople Mike Bruce and Marco Mondano, who say they are dedicated to maintaining the facility’s legacy.

Debbie Bruce, the studio’s operation manager, says: “We have done some updates, but we are definitely keeping the original Grant Avenue vibe and feel.”

Other highlights

St. Mark’s Church

St. Mark’s Church, at Bay and Hunter Streets, has been going through a long restoration process and is finally set to officially reopen in the fall. But you can take a sneak peek at the project as part of Doors Open Hamilton. The City of Hamilton bought the church for $425,000 in 1994 to protect it from demolition, and after more than 20 years of being mostly vacant, the building went through $6.4 million in construction over two phases. The refurbished church, with plans to rename it as Magnolia Hall, will be used to host arts, cultural and community events.

Hamilton Wentworth District School Board Archives

The Hamilton Wentworth District School Board Archives is a treasure trove of memorabilia from former students. There are pieces of former school buildings, photos, yearbooks, desks, clocks, school uniforms and school signs, along with many other collectibles of local educational history. The archives also contain records from nearly 350 former and current Hamilton-region schools, which can be useful for family tree researchers.

The Theatrix Costume House

Who knew? But Hamilton has one of the largest collections of costumes in North America. The Theatrix Costume House has more than 50,000 professional-quality outfits and accessories representing centuries of history that are used in theatre, film and at masquerade events. Theatrix, on Kensington Avenue North near the fabric district on Ottawa Street, will be highlighting music-inspired clothing for Doors Open.

Walking tours

Locke Street, Stoney Creek, Waterdown and Westdale will be featured among many guided tours over the weekend.

This year’s “Famous Hamiltonian” is Martin Short.

Each year, the City of Hamilton’s Tourism and Culture division hosts a Famous Hamiltonian contest with differing themes. The 2024 theme was “stage and screen.”

People were given the opportunity to vote online for one of six nominees, with the winner being announced earlier this month. Martin Short was born in 1950 in Hamilton and attended Westdale Secondary School and McMaster University. He gained notoriety through “SCTV” and “Saturday Night Live” before starring in numerous movies.

First runner-up in the contest was his SCTV colleague Eugene Levy, with second runner-up honours going to Graham Greene, who grew up in Ohsweken on Six Nations of the Grand River and lived in Hamilton before gaining fame as a respected actor.

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