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Performances
Breakfast – a morning ritual performances by Matt Miller, Rob Piilonen and Sam Morgenstein
Jul 31, 9-12 pm 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.
Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium Concerts
Aug 4 & 5, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for symposium participants
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto
Celebrating electroacoustic music from an international perspective, this concert includes works selected by an international jury of electroacoustic practitioners as part of the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium.
Note: more information will be available soon.
Expansive Spirits Concert
Works by Marcelle Deschênes, D. Andrew Stewart and David Eagle
Aug 6, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for symposium participants
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto
This concert will feature three works from one of Québec pioneering women in electroacoustic music – Marcelle Deschênes. "Stormy, serene, tender, bold — the music of Marcelle Deschênes moves with ease through the gamut of emotions, often with an exhilarating rapidity. And inherent within her music is an energy that demands a far-from-passive from the audience." - Rosemary Mountain in Musicworks #86. Also included will be D. Andrew Stewart’s Everybody to the Power of One featuring a new electroacoustic instrument called the T-Stick developed at McGill University by Joseph Malloch and Stewart as well as Passages & Scenes, Reflection and Memory by David Eagle that documents the cultural history of the prairies and its evocative soundscapes.
Indigo by Marcelle Deschênes
Le bruit des ailes by Marcelle Deschênes
Lux by Marcelle Deschênes
Everybody to the Power of One by D. Andrew Stewart
Passages & Scenes, Reflection and Memory by David Eagle
Programme Notes:
Indigo by Marcelle Deschênes (2000)
"... a ribbon around a bomb." — André Breton
"Neither the inner world nor the outer world is a bed of roses." -Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Part 1: Peur apprivoisée (Tamed Fear) (Blue Beard, Charles Perrault)
Knowing how to browse to gain access to the darkest secrets. Accessing isolated lairs. Not being afraid of the wound that will not stop bleeding. Following the fearsome intruder who turns crossroads into closed roads. Daring to open the door hiding everything that has been destroyed. Acknowledging and taming this malign force to avoid its destructive energy.
Part 2: Trame de tension (Weft of Tension) (Snow-white and Red-rose, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm)
A world where roses have no thorns does not portray the realities of life. It needs a bear coming with the roughness of winter. So that darkness can make sense, forgetting the horizon-less Eden and letting the anger — so full of vital energy — explode. Tapping back into the instinct of claws and teeth to pick oneself up and defend.
Indigo was recomposed from Musique défilé (1999-2000) and contains quotes from the music works L’impatience des limites (1992-93) by Bernard Fort, Derrière la porte la plus éloignée... (1998) by Gilles Gobeil, and Électro-Prana (1998) by Jean-François Laporte, plus some early music samples.
The pieces composed for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s music/fashion show event "Musique défilé pour une fin de siècle" were later reworked into standalone acousmatic works — Indigo and Le bruit des ailes. They became the first two parts of the large-scale work Griffes (Claws), still in progress and inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s research in psychoanalysis (Women Who Run With the Wolves) and by Marie-Louise von Franz (Feminine in Fairy Tales). Through the use of sonic metaphors and highly evocative referential sounds, the music stages mental pictures associated with various “wild woman” archetypes taken from myths, dreams and tales. These first two parts are introspective works digging into the intimate space of affects. Also rolling through them are the tragedies of the origins and the fascinating forces of creation. Attempting to explore these buried memories, these untamed torrents, cannot be done without some commotion or tidal waves.
[English translation: François Couture, viii-06]
Le bruit des ailes by Marcelle Deschênes
To all those who feel the urge to stretch their wings “Is the bird scared of the sound its wings make when they open?” -Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“I reign in the azure like an unknown sphinx;
I unite my heart of snow to the whiteness of swans” — Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal: XVII. La Beauté
The trampled otherness, the wrench, the wandering, the freezing, and then the itch and the explosive freedom of the stretched out wings of an Ugly Little Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen).
Le bruit des ailes (The Sound of Wings) was recomposed from Musique défilé (1999-2000) and contains self-referential quotes from the music works Écran humain (1983), Lux (1985), D-503 (1987) and Ludi (1990). The materials used for this piece are taken from a “soundbase” of ice storms (from the ice storm that struck Quebec in 1998; thanks to Jean-François Laporte for helping with the recordings), erupting volcanoes and nuclear tests in forgotten deserts. This soundbase was created together with Nicolas Boucher.
The pieces composed for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s music/fashion show event “Musique défilé pour une fin de siècle” were later reworked into standalone acousmatic works — Indigo and Le bruit des ailes. They became the first two parts of the large-scale work Griffes (Claws), still in progress and inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s research in psychoanalysis (Women Who Run With the Wolves) and by Marie-Louise von Franz (Feminine in Fairy Tales). Through the use of sonic metaphors and highly evocative referential sounds, the music stages mental pictures associated with various “wild woman” archetypes taken from myths, dreams and tales. These first two parts are introspective works digging into the intimate space of affects. Also rolling through them are the tragedies of the origins and the fascinating forces of creation. Attempting to explore these buried memories, these untamed torrents, cannot be done without some commotion or tidal waves. [English translation: François Couture, viii-06]
Lux by Marcelle Deschênes
“An architecture starts living. The visual space emerges from a shape-shifting stage sculpture that is tied to the sonic imagination and the mobile images. These sculptural entities in constant mutations, protagonists in a mineral dream, are living their lives cut off from mankind.” -Renée Bourassa
On the subject of primitive, mythical light as an object of knowledge, the various forms of stage play are reminiscent of the repeated cycle of beginnings and endings. One finds in it the ever-present vibration of a vital energy, the dualities between power and fragility, outer and inner worlds, expansion and relaxation. The kaleidoscope of sensations and emotions, bellies and knots stacked in levels, creation and destruction of a universe looking for its own meaning.
“Neither pure music nor painting, theatre, sculpture or cinema, but a little of all that. Lux was offering a new stage language blending sound, image, movement, space and voice.” -Renée Bourassa,
“Le spectacle total,” Québec-Science, 25:2, October 1986
Lux contains quotes from the following music works: OUT (1985) and Quarks’ Muzik (1983) by Alain Thibault, and deUs irae (1984) (self-referential). It also quotes the writings of Georges Bernard Shaw, Ernest Rutherford, Robert Oppenheimer, Emmanuel Kant and Renée Bourassa.
Everybody to the Power of One by D. Andrew Stewart
Everybody to the Power of One, for solo soprano t-stick, is a counterpoint between sustained winds and bouncing-breaking metals. The performer, fused with his instrument, taps, thumps, and pounds his way through imaginary walls. We hear the winds through the aperture he creates. “The power of one” is embodied in the performer's ability to fissure his virtual enclosure, single-handedly.
Passages & Scenes, Reflection and Memory by David Eagle
My goal was to compose a large-scale sonic artwork that explores aspects of ecological and social change in the Canadian west. Having grown up in the prairies and as an adult having made it my home, I wanted this work to be rooted in and reflect upon the specific cultural experience and historical perspective of life in the west. In composing this work my aim was to communicate with listeners in a musical mode using melodic lines and instrumental sounds, in a sonic mode using electroacoustic textures and sound objects, in an associative and evocative mode using soundscapes and sound events, and in a semantic mode where the meaning of the spoken word and intonation of the human voice predominate. The composition was realized in the Sonic Arts Lab at the University of Calgary and in my home studio. Special thanks to the Rubbing Stone Ensemble.
About HOME Concert
Works by Manuella Blackburn, Natasha Barrett, David Hindmarch, & Ned Bouhalassa
Aug 7, 8 pm
$15/10 – FREE for symposium participants
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #176, Toronto
The theme of Home is explored from a number of perspectives in this concert that pairs Montréal composer Ned Bouhalassa with three exciting artists from the UK. Bouhalassa's two works on this concert blend his influences of techno and soundscape composition to comb through the soundscapes of Berlin, Montreal and Las Vegas to take you on an evocative listening journey. The works by Blackburn, Barrett and Hindmarch explore sounds of their respective homes and explore the hidden musicality of objects and places often taken for granted. All of the works will be spatialized live on a 20 channel loudspeaker system.
Kitchen Alchemy by Manuella Blackburn
Kernel Expansion by Natasha Barrett
Homespun by David Hindmarch
Urban Cuts by Ned Bouhalassa
mOrpheus by Ned Bouhalassa
Programme Notes:
Kitchen Alchemy by Manuella Blackburn
While composing this piece, I began to think of the analogy of alchemy and its applicability to the compositional process of acousmatic music. I wanted to create something seemingly precious and elaborate that showed no similarity to the original source sounds from the kitchen.
Kernel Expansion by Natasha Barrett
Kernel Expansion contains three interconnected sections and addresses the essence of sound in its rich multiplicity, ambiguity, schizophrenia and passion, exposing the 'kernel' or heart of some specific sound sources of personal connection to the composer; from outdoors, from inside, from realities, dreams and imaginations. 'Kernel Expansion' was commission by, and realised in the studios of ZKM, with additional support from the Norwegian Cultural Council.
The following technical notes may be of interested to some listeners. 'Kernel Expansion' is composed spatially in a hybrid ambisonics format. Some source materials were recorded with a 'b-format' microphone. Other materials are synthesised in higher-order ambisonics (in fact, third-order). The work was to be premiered over ZKM's 43-loudspeaker Klangdome concert system and I needed to find a practical approach to decoding the ambisonics. After thorough testing I found vertical information in the source too unstable when decoded for the given loudspeaker system. This was not surprising considering the decoding limitations of our current methods. So instead I worked with a vertically displaced three-layered horizontal decoding of both b-format and higher-order material. Furthermore, anyone familiar with ambisonics will know that decoding b-format over more than four loudspeakers is somewhat suspect (in fact it tends to confuse the spatial image). To decode the b-format over 14 loudspeakers in the first horizontal layer of the Klangdome, instead of the ambisonics decoder I used an alternative method of sound separation that departs from 'purist' ambisonics theory. A final layer containing standard octophonic panning techniques is added, positioned in the Klangdome with the Vbap panning tools embedded in the Zirconium software. This traditional panning layer I found to be important as its 'flatness' highlights the three-dimensionality of the ambisonics picture. Apart from the 43-speaker decoding, Kernel Expansion exists in 'ready to play' decoded stereo, quadraphonic and octophonic formats, as well as the encoded original.
Homespun by David Hindmarch
The music shows the transformation of everyday domestic objects from the physical to the atomic level. Everyday domestic objects that I recorded evolve from referential to an abstracts form. The resonant and tonal attributes, which are added to the sounds represent, the movie into the atomic world.
Urban Cuts by Ned Bouhalassa
Performers: Delphine Measroch, cello; Christian Olsen, drums; Fortner Anderson, narrator Commission: Sabine Breitsameter / Akademie der Künste (Berlin, Germany), with support from the CALQ ; and from Andreas Hagelüken of RBB/Klanggalerie
This is a work where I explore urban spaces in Montreal, Las Vegas, and Berlin — 3 very different cities, with truly unique soundscapes. I gathered many recordings of spoken phrases, and used them as natural reference points for the listener. Cars are everywhere in these cities: a continuous drone in the background or right in front of my microphones, ready to roll. While I have incorporated sampled drums and loops in my electroacoustic music for many years, with this piece I wanted to collaborate with two talented musicians from Montréal. Christian Olsen’s drumming is both explosive and subtle, while Delphine Measroch, who is also a composer, transforms the sound of her cello into a metro turnstile, a cricket, a hovercraft.
mOrpheus by Ned Bouhalassa
This piece is a loose interpretation of the myth of Orpheus. In this version, Orpheus runs after his muse from rural Québec to Berlin. There, he wanders the streets and parks, the zoo and the train stations, searching in vain. I have incorporated the ambience of my friend Michael Smith’s farm (in the first movement Orpheus’ First Dream), the streets of Berlin, the famous former-East Berlin square of Alexanderplatz. There are, of course, the ever-present sounds of the trains. These feature the other-worldly voices on the PA systems, which sound to me like a virtual guide from the future. The doors of the trains exhale with loud hisses, spewing out a chorus of legs and arms. These compete for space with pigeons, motorcycles, cars, and loud young men. Berlin is a giant train station.
Sound Travels Intensive Concert
Aug 13, 8 pm
$5
Theatre Direct's Christie Studio, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #170, Toronto
Hear newly created works performed and realized at the Sound Travels Intensive – a 4 day development workshop for emerging sound artists. Feedback and discussion from audience is encouraged.
3-SIDED SQUARE, A NEW MUSIC MARATHON CONCERT
curated by Darren Copeland
September 25, 2 - 9pm
free, SOUND TRAVELS CLOSING EVENT
Yonge-Dundas Square, corner of Yonge and Dundas, Toronto
The final weekend of Sound Travels coincides with the New Music Marathon at Yonge-Dundas Square and will include a performance of 3-sided Square from 2 - 9 pm during the marathon. Curated by NAISA artistic director, 3-sided Square includes performers Richard Windeyer, Michelle Irving, Matt Miller, Eric Powell, Jessica Thompson and more TBA.
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All performances are at the Artscape Wychwood Barns
Breakfast – a morning ritual by Matt Miller, Rob Piilonen, Sam Morgenstein
Jul 31, 9-12 pm
Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium Concerts
Aug 4 & 5, 8 pm
Expansive Spirits (Sound Travels Concert #1)
Aug 6, 8 pm
About HOME (Sound Travels Concert #2)
Aug 7, 8 pm
Sound Travels Intensive Concert
Aug 13, 8 pm
3-SIDED SQUARE, A NEW MUSIC MARATHON CONCERT
Sep 25, 2-9 pm
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