Sound Travels Performances

Performance pass $40/30 student (includes 5 performances)
naisa@naisa.ca or 416-652-5115 for details
Click here to buy tickets online.

World Listening Day Concert and SOUNDwalk
July 16, 1 pm, Admission by Donation (recommended donation $5)
NAISA Space, Artscape Wychwood Barns,601 Christie #252, Toronto

To commemorate the birthday of R. Murray Schafer, NAISA will take you on a SOUNDwalk through the local neighbourhood around the Barns. Following the SOUNDwalk will be a soundscape concert that will feature a number of interesting sounds: nightingale floors in Japanese temples, fish burps in the North Saskatchewan River, and special ambisonic soundscape recordings of Toronto.

Programme:

Haiku by Rohan De Livera
Haiku takes as a primary sound source, a recitation of the epic Japanese poem ‘Oku no Hosomichi’ (The narrow road to the interior) by Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694). The work was penned as he made an epic journey of around 1200 miles on foot through feudal Japan. In one of its most memorable passages, Basho suggests that “the journey itself is home”.

Nijō by David Berezan
Nightingale floors are floors found in Japan that are designed to make a chirping sound when walked upon. They were used in the hallways of some temples and palaces, including Nijō Castle in Kyoto. Dry boards naturally creak under pressure, but these floors were designed so that the flooring nails rubbed against a jacket or clamp, causing chirping noises. The squeaking floors were used as a security device, assuring that none could sneak through the corridors undetected. For a composer that explores, collects and "uncovers" sounds as part of the creative process, this is a powerful concept both literally (sonically), and metaphorically. Developing further the idea that underneath and within the floorboards reside nightingales, Nijō delves deeper into, and within, the floorboards, revealing not only birds but many voices and sounds of traditional and contemporary Japan. Sound recordings for Nijō were completed during a period of research residency in 2007 with the kind support of Tamagawa University (Tokyo).

Inside The Music of Murray Schafer by Andrew O'Connor
Inside The Music of Murray Schafer is a rare look at the groundbreaking work composer Murray Schafer has done in the field of acoustic ecology. Starting with his research at Simon Fraser University right up to his pieces of environmental music in such works as Princess of the Stars, Murray in a rare interview takes us through his four plus decades of work in the field of sound study, from its inception to what is now an international movement. The full documentary will be aired in September on the new season of CBC Radio's Inside The Music heard every Sunday at 3pm on Radio2 and 9pm on Radio1. Check www.cbc.ca/insidethemusic for more details.

new phonography work using Ambisonic field recordings of Toronto by Hector Centeno

Breakfast – a morning ritual
performances by Matt Miller, Rob Piilonen and Sam Morgenstein
Aug 6, 10am-noon FREE
Outdoor Farmer's Market, Artscape Wychwood Barns,601 Christie, Toronto

An homage to the morning ritual of preparing breakfast, featuring Rob Piilonen (flute), Samuel Morgenstein (various kitchen appliances / utensils) and Matt Miller (laptop). The piece will be subdivided by a series of timed devices found in the kitchen: 3 Minute Egg Timer, Toaster Oven, Coffee Maker, Microwave Oven.

Welcome to My Parlour
a special one-on-one performance with Chan Ka Nin
Aug 10, 6-8 pm
FREE (as part of the TES symposium reception)
NAISA Space, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #252, Toronto

This is your chance to hear the stringed sound sculpture performed by its creator, Toronto composer Chan Ka Nin. In this encounter you are welcome to ask questions and try out the sculpture with the guidance of its creator. See the installations section of the Sound Travels web page for more information about Welcome to My Parlour.

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium Concerts
Aug 10 & 11, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for TES symposium participants
Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto

NAISA and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community host two concerts with works chosen by an international jury of electroacoustic practitioners, snapshot of the latest research and exploration in sound art.

Sound Travels concert #1 - Places for our ears to go...
Aug 12, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for TES symposium participants
Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto

Featured in this sonic journey is recent work by Jonty Harrison, artist in residence for Sound Travels and the keynote speaker for the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium. Harrison has been a mentor for the development of many UK and Canadian sound artists that also have since gone on to teach sound art to the next generation. One of these is Canadian sound artist David Berezan now teaching at University of Manchester who will be presenting a new work in this concert. Also featured is a new work by Toronto sound artist Nick Storring from his album Rift released in the UK on the Entr’acte label. The film in this cinema for the ears happens inside the mind during an adventurous sonic journey through many other worlds real and imagined.

Programme:

Thumb by David Berezan
Thumb uses sounds from a Balinese thumb piano as its primary sound source, subjected to transformations of pitch and grain, and mapped onto 8-channel space. I aimed to reduce the variety of sound-types and materials used in the work as much as possible, while still creating an engaging and evolving soundworld. A number of spoken expressions that include 'thumb' came to mind during the composition of the piece (rule-of-thumb, all-thumbs, thumbing-through, thumbs-up/down, under-thumb) which acted, at some level, as informers upon the work. The work was completed in 2011 in the studios of CMMAS (Morelia, Mexico), University of Calgary and University of Montreal, with thanks to New Adventures in Sound Art/Sound Travels (Toronto).

Understatements [i] by Ilya Rostovtsev
Understatements is a five-movement electroacoustic study of acoustic instruments. The first movement of the work relies on the persistent recycling of through-composed and computer-assisted improvisation of musical and control data. The narrative is derived from temporal observations of sounds reflecting the faktura (material essence) of the source instrument.

Indeces of Refraction by Nick Storring
Indices of Refraction was created in fits and starts from autumn 2005- to early 2011. It appears on his debut album Rife out now on UK imprint Entr’acte. The piece employs a wide range of acoustic instruments, alongside analog synthesizers, voice and field recordings as a foundation for eclectic electronic manipulations. Mapping a frenetically luminous trajectory, ebbing and flowing through dense energetic waves of sound, it culminates in a long ruminative release. The work is motivated by feelings of awe and wonder, and probes their relationship to foreboding and mystery.

Phantom Power by Jonty Harrison
In 2002, my friend and then colleague at Birmingham, Dr Erik Oña, invited me to compose a piece for the Cologne-based Thürmchen Ensemble which he conducted. At first I was hesitant as, since about 1992, I had written only two pieces involving instruments. Erik countered my scepticism by stressing that he and the group specifically wanted me to compose ‘in my normal way’ – i.e. starting from the sonic properties of sound material itself, just as I do in my acousmatic work. On this basis I agreed, and made two trips to Cologne to meet and record the players. During the recording sessions I made notes on the extended techniques they demonstrated and how the resulting sounds might be notated. Work on the piece was delayed by illness and other factors and, when I finally started to explore the sound materials I had recorded, I discovered that I had lost my notes on the sounds’ production and notation. This meant that I really did have to work acousmatically (in my normal way), composing from the recordings purely as sound materials, often with little recollection of how they were made or what they were. The resulting piece was Force Fields, which I described as ‘musique concrète for 8 instrumentalists and fixed sounds’. The title reflects the ‘gravitational pull’ of certain materials and the manner in which particular sound types or sonic behaviours dominate for a while and then become dormant. While working on Force Fields I became increasingly aware of another aspect of this sound material – specifically that in a purely acousmatic context, with no live performers (and especially when the material is subjected to radical signal processing in the studio), only a ‘ghostly presence’ of the original instrumental presence would remain, even though some of its power might still be perceived. I determined to explore this side of the Thürmchen recordings in a complementary piece to Force Fields (which I had already taken to referring to as FF in my notes and file names). The title Phantom Power suggested itself immediately (PP in my shorthand): not only is ‘phantom power’ a feature of audio mixers (the delivery a voltage to power capacitor microphones), but the musical resonances of ff and pp (standard notation for fortissimo and pianissimo) also seemed an apt reflection of the respective characters of the two pieces – one somewhat clear and brazen (‘upfront’ or even ‘in your face’, to use the vernacular), the other rather veiled, hidden, subdued and reflective, but always with the lurking sense that, at any time, there could be an eruption, an unstoppable, overwhelming surge of power. When I was invited by Andrew Lewis to be the first Parry Williams Visiting Composition Fellow at Bangor University, I saw an opportunity to develop these ideas further. What I had not foreseen was that I would also find during my visit two wonderful additional metaphors for my piece… On a Sunday afternoon drive around the region, equipped as usual with field recorder and microphones, I spotted a wind farm on Anglesey and finally (and probably with a bit of trespassing) managed to get close enough to one of the turbines to make a reasonable recording. I also recorded, up a hillside on the road towards Snowdon, the sounds of pieces of slate being handled, scraped and knocked together. The images of force and power involved in the creation of geological layers over past millennia and in the potentially limitless availability of the wind for the future are so clear that I hardly need mention them. I have many people to thank for their contributions to this piece: firstly, Erik Oña and the members of the Thürmchen Ensemble for their patience, their generosity and for their musicality – features which extended to a remarkable willingness to put their skills (and their valuable instruments!) entirely at my disposal; secondly, Professor Andrew Lewis (one of my former students, though he may not thank me for reminding him!) for inviting me to be a Parry William Visiting Composer Fellow; and finally Dr Ann Lloyd Jones for her generous funding of this wonderful and unique residency project.

Undertow by Jonty Harrison
Plunging beneath the waves we discover a world teaming with life and pulsing with energy. But we cannot hold our breath forever. (And not only that, there seem to be cars down here, masquerading as breaking waves!) Undertow was composed in 2007 in the composer’s studio and was premiered on 2 June 2007 as part of Océan-Cité, a civil spectacle by La Compagnie Pierre Deloche Danse, Lyon, France. It was commissioned by La Compagnie Pierre Deloche Danse. Thanks to Martin Clarke for additional sea recordings made in Shetland.

Internal Combustion by Jonty Harrison
Internal Combustion is the second piece of ReCycle, a series of four works based loosely on ‘the elements’: Rock’n’Roll (2004 – earth), Internal Combustion (2005-06 – fire), Free Fall (2006 – air) and Streams (1999 – water). Each piece in the cycle uses a slightly different configuration of 8 audio channels and explores different aspects and types of motion, trajectory and spatial organisation. As its title suggests, ReCycle revisits many themes and sound types I have used in earlier works and listeners may also detect a sub-text of environmental concern running through much of my work since the 1980s. In Internal Combustion, I would like to think that the overt use of the sounds of car engines is an ironic underlining of this theme, but I must also confess to a dilemma here. The fact is I like cars, even though I fully acknowledge the increasingly devastating effect they are having on the environment. In addition to recordings of car engines (many made using accelerometers as well as air microphones), other forms of transport (trains, planes, ships, bicycles, motor-bikes and a Basel tram) are sonically present in Internal Combustion. The work is in four sections (echoing the intake-compression-ignition-exhaust cycle of the 4-stroke internal combustion engine), separated by dramatic ‘arrivals’ and ‘departures’, and framed by more ‘environmental’ scenes (which include the sound of traffic as an unavoidable part of our everyday experience). The piece was composed during a period of research leave made possible by the University of Birmingham and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). It was finished in the Elektronsiches Studio of the Musik-Akademie, Basel during a residency in the Atelier Zum Kleinen Markgräflerhof. I am especially grateful to my friend Erik Oña, the Director of the Studio and a former colleague at Birmingham, for his invitation to work well away from another curse of our modern environment – the ringing telephone! Thanks are also due to Keith Moule and Paul Rodmell for putting their vehicles at risk by allowing me to attach accelerometers to the engines and to two former doctoral students, Pete Batchelor and Daniel Barreiro, for their wonderful Max patches.

Sound Travels concert #2 - About Time
Aug 13, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for TES symposium participants
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto

Sound is expressed in time so it is no accident that there is a wide diversity of ways to reflect on time in sound art. In this concert, NAISA is featuring a number of younger generation artists such as Ana Dall'Ara-Majek, Dominic Thibault, and Georges Forget while also including a work by Chiyoko Slavnics that uses graphic notation and pure sine tones, a work by Yves Daoust whose title was the inspiration behind the “About Time” programming theme for NAISA in 2010 and a performance using various small alarm clocks by Montreal percussionist and sound artist Martin Messier.

Programme:

Lucilio Magus by Ana Dall'Ara-Majek
Here’s a sound, a little tune that imitates a clock. It is yours. Shrink it, extend it, freeze it. Don’t hesitate to pummel it in all directions and you’ll find out that the more you work on this sound, the more thousands of others sounds will come out of it.

For Eva Hesse by Chiyoko Szlavnics

L'instant en vain by Dominic Thibault
Time is dust. A handful of sand that runs out of my grip. That grain that falls is already part of our memory. The present moment instantly becoming past. Why are we obsessed by time?

Requiem by Georges Forget

About Time by Yves Daoust
I put together this self-portrait with an old tape recorder, which seemed only natural for this project, considering how crucial this machinery had proven to be in my musical evolution. Made from overlaps of different layers of times and situations, it goes from working on the piece, to the abstract resulting from transformations of my voice. The work was created for the Deep Wireless festival and CBC Radio One's program Outfront.

L'horloger by Martin Messier

Toronto New Music Marathon
September 3, 2 to 9 pm
FREE
Yonge-Dundas Square – corner of Yonge and Dundas, Toronto

NAISA will once again be participating in the day long Toronto New Music Marathon organized by Contact contemporary music. Come out to hear the wide spectrum of new music and sound art going on in Toronto.

All performances are at the Artscape Wychwood Barns

World Listening Day Concert and SOUNDwalk
July 16, 1 pm

Breakfast – a morning ritual
Aug 6, 10am-noon

Welcome to My Parlour
Aug 10, 6-8 pm

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium Concerts
Aug 10 & 11, 8 pm

Sound Travels concert #1 - Places for our ears to go...
Aug 12, 8 pm

Sound Travels concert #2 - About Time
Aug 13, 8 pm

Toronto New Music Marathon
September 3, 2 to 9 pm