Review: 30,000 Notes

30,000 Notes is an intense, intimate, and compelling experience. Josh Belperio’s new show invites you into the gallery, and his life, with walls covered with the notes and music he’s made since his early childhood.

A classical composer and compulsive note-taker, these papers range from drawings of mermaids and shopping lists to the real-life monsters in his head.

Belperio takes the audience through some of his most important notes. He tells us about the relationship he had with this nonna, his struggle with his sexuality, the first boy he fell in love with (who didn’t love him back), and the man who helped bring this show, and others, to life.

Interspersed with these stories, Belperio shares with the audience four of his compositions, showing us how beauty and pain can be represented through music. Each choral piece was recorded binaurally and the effect, played through surround sound, is that the music seems to embrace us. As the notes wash over it is to be adrift in a sea of Belperio’s memories: his nonna’s home videos projected onto the wall before you.

Undoubtedly talented as a composer and writer, 30,000 Notes is brave. Belperio bares himself discussing not just the confusion of a period with no notes, but also his fear, repressed sexuality, and depth of emotion associated with his coming out narrative.

Poetic, powerful, and highly visual, Belperio’s show is an invitation into his world.