ÉuCuE xxvii - Jan. 2009 - "Plugged"
Université Concordia University // Salle Oscar Peterson Concert Hall
7141 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal QC
(Take the 105 bus from Metro Vendome to the Loyola campus)
FREE ADMISSION
Wednesday, Jan. 28 - 19:30
Thursday, Jan. 29 - 14:00, 19:30
Friday, Jan 30 – 14:00, 16:30, 19:30
Webcast @ http://music.concordia.ca/EuCuE/EuCuE_WEBCAST.html
Friday 30/01/2009 - 19:30
Alessandro CORTINI - Blindoldfreak - Live electronics (4 ch) - 45’
Notes:
After four years being the keyboardist for the band Nine Inch Nails, L.A. based artist, Alessandro Cortini (also with the band Modwheelmood), takes us into a very unique realm of sound exploration. Blindoldfreak is a voyage through sound in its purest form. In his own words, "It's just me and an electric music box (the Buchla synthesizer)". From minimalist percussive gestures to highly layered rich drones, it will carry you away for a unique and memorable auditory journey.
James HARLEY and Ellen WATERMAN - ~spin~ - Flute + live electronics (8 ch) - 45’
Notes:
~spin~ is a new project by James Harley (electroacoustics, processing and sound diffusion) and Ellen Waterman (flutes/voice). Improvisation and electroacoustic composition are spun together in multi-channel performance environments. The program includes Harley's piece Wild Fruits 2: like a ragged flock, like pulverized jade (2006).
Wild Fruits 2 is a hybrid, both composition and improvisation, both pre-recorded and live, both fixed and mutable. It is a collaboration in which both partners have complete autonomy over their contributions, necessitating a high degree of trust. Amplified flute sounds are put under a sonic microscope, spun reverberating around a multi-speaker scenario, but in other ways are left untouched. The flute/voice acoustically mimics recorded and digitally manipulated signals. Real time spatialization blurs the line between acoustically and electronically rendered sounds (which is which?) in a cyborg piece that spins a utopic myth of pristine nature in the full realization of its absence. Recordings made in both “urban” and “natural” environments are transformed through digital manipulation into a raw and wild presence.
Harley’s compositional sub-text provides inspiration for my improvisation; it is a series of excerpts from Annie Dillard’s hymn to nature: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
“In September the birds were quiet...In October the great restlessness came ...the restlessness of birds before migration... The birds were excited, stammering new songs all day long. ...I watched at the creek. A new wind lifted the hair on my arms. The cold light was coming and going between oversized, careening clouds; patches of blue, like a ragged flock of protean birds, shifted and stretched, flapping and racing from one end of the sky to the other."
Like most works for live, acoustic musician and digital manipulation, the performance of Wild Fruits 2 is deceptive. The eye is drawn to the embodied performer, wired flute, animated flutist, but the sound is equally controlled by the unassuming figure hidden behind his laptop. Speakers are the real mouths of the piece, which is a chorus not a duo.
Biography:
ELLEN WATERMAN
Ellen Waterman is a dynamic flutist/vocalist and creative improviser who specializes in contemporary and experimental music. She is known for her flamboyant physical presence and wild range of vocalizations on the flute, and for her dedication to Canadian experimental music. Her performance practice intersects closely with her work as a cultural theorist and musicologist.
Ellen is Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph, where she leads the Contemporary Music Ensemble and teaches courses in 20th century and avant-garde music. She holds the Ph.D. in Critical Studies and Experimental Practices from the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego. For over a decade she performed with iconic Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer on several of his Patria music/theatre projects, and her scholarly work on Schafer has been widely published.
Ellen is represented on premiere recordings of works by Brian Ferneyhough (CRICD 652) and Schafer (CMCCD 8902). Her own compositions and improvisational work have been released on Radiant Dissonance Volume Two, a set of ten radio programs produced by the Canadian Society for Independent Radio Production, and on her CD Sound Crossings. As an improviser she has been fortunate to perform with such artists as George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Malcolm Goldstein, Susie Ibarra, Joëlle Leandre, Jean Derome, Lori Freedman, Nicole Mitchell, Pauline Oliveros, Anne Bourne, James Harley, and Jesse Stewart. She has performed at the Guelph Jazz Festival, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival (with VCMI), and Montreal’s The Upgrade! Waterman was artist-in-residence at the 2008 Sound Travels Festival in Toronto, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women.
JAMES HARLEY
James Harley is a Canadian composer presently based at the University of Guelph, where he teaches digital music, composition, and related courses. He obtained his doctorate in composition at McGill University in 1994, after spending six years composing and studying music in Europe (London, Paris, Warsaw). His music has been awarded prizes in competitions in Canada (CBC, New Music Concerts, SOCAN), USA (McKnight Foundation), UK (Holland Prize, Huddersfield Festival), France (Bourges, MC2), Poland (Lutoslawski, Serocki), Japan (Irino), and has been performed and broadcast around the world. Some of Harley's compositions are available on disc (Artifact, ATMA, Kappa, McGill, Musicworks, PeP, Soundprints) and his scores are primarily available through the Canadian Music Centre. He has been commissioned by, among others, Codes d'Accès, Continuum, Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Hammerhead Consort, Kappa, Kore, Kovalis Duo, New Music Concerts, NUMUS, Oshawa-Durham Symphony, Open Ears Festival, Polish Society for New Music, SMCQ, Transit Festival—Belgium, Trio Phoenix, Vancouver Bach Choir. He composes music for acoustic forces as well as electroacoustic media, with a particular interest in multi-channel audio. According to Marc Couroux (Musicworks 69), Harley's music "resides at the intersection of a network of influences rather than proliferating from a central ideology… Harley accepts that the complexity of nature requires a more artistically imaginative interpretation than the simple extension of an Arcadian, placid contemplation… Harley consequently oriented himself towards the theory of chaos, which derives its principles from a much more global study of natural mechanisms than was previously allowed due to hyperspecialization… James Harley defends on the highest level the great Canadian creative tradition, rooted in the natural world, a metaphor for the irreducible complexity of Canada and, by extension, of universal humanity."