Audio Foundation presents…
A ROOM THAT ECHOES
Surround and surround and surround with its own sound
July 29 – August 1, 2021
Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand
A festival of immersive music, surround sound and deep listening. Through quadraphonic, octophonic and dodecaphonic sound systems, portable speakers, massive analogue synthesiser arrays, multiple radios and more – the festival promises unique technological listening experiences for all.
Featuring sounds from legendary pioneer of electronic music Suzanne Ciani (USA), Mexican sonic adventurers Concepcion Huerta, Jose Ōrozco Mora and Jimmy Solōrzano, Guatemalan cellist/composer Mabe Fratti, Argentinian microtonal sax master Sergio Merce, heavyweight Australian composers Thembi Soddell, Judith Hamman, Natasha Anderson and Anthony Pateras, NZ sound explorers including Phil Dadson, Jo Burzynska, Malcolm Riddoch, Thomas Arbor and Al Fraser and live performances by Mhz (Iran), Richard Francis, Kraus, Flo Wilson and many more.
LINK TO FULL PROGRAMME
Featured artists
SUZANNE CIANI
Suzanne is a five-time Grammy award-nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist who has released over 20 solo albums including “Seven Waves,” and “The Velocity of Love,” along with a landmark quad LP “LIVE Quadraphonic,” which restarted her Buchla modular performances. Her work has been featured in films, games, and countless commercials as well.
She was inducted into the first class of Keyboard Magazine’s Hall of Fame alongside other synth luminaries, including Bob Moog, Don Buchla and Dave Smith and received the Moog Innovation Award. Most recently, she is the recipient of the Independent Icon Award from A2IM.
mHz
mHz (aka. Mo H. Zareei) is an electronic musician, sound artist, and researcher. Using custom-built software and hardware, his experiments with sound range from electronic compositions to kinetic sound-sculptures and audiovisual installations. Regardless of the medium, Zareei’s work aims to highlight the beauty in the basics of sound and light production, and reductionist audiovisual elements that draw inspiration from physical and architectural principles.
Publishing his electronic music projects under the moniker mHz, Zareei’s albums have been released on LINE (US), Important Records (US), leerraum (CH), and Kasuga Records (DE). His installation Rasping Music was the recipient of the first prize for sound art in the Sonic Arts Award 2015.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in physics from Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music Technology from California Institute of the Arts and a PHD in Sonic Arts from Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa, where he is a lecturer in composition and sonic arts, and creative director at Aotearoa Audio Arts.
SERGIO MERCE
Sergio Merce is a saxophonist and sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is known to use a microtonal sax that he built modifiying radically the mechanisms of an alto saxophone and synthesizers to create rich harmonics and slowly moving tonal works, layering aberrant and alluring tones in restrained configurations that allow each stratum of sound to be distinguished and appreciated, creating mesmerizing compositions of elusive and illusionistic sound.
THEMBI SODDELL
Thembi Soddell (b. Bendigo, Australia 1980) is a sound and installation artist, electroacoustic composer, and practice-based researcher with an interest in psychology, perception, extreme emotion, and the subjectivity of experience. They work with the sampler, generating sounds from field recordings, instrument textures, played found objects, and synthesis to form surreal and ambiguous realisations of place and experience. These volatile, filmic sound worlds often exploit the dynamic extremes, toying with a listener’s sense of expectation and disquiet.
CONCEPCION HUERTA
Keen documentarian of the experimental scene in Mexico for more than five years, Concepción Huerta has extended her creative practice of visual media towards sound design. With a constant activity in the noise, improvisation and audiovisual collaboration circuit, she creates aural textures of narrative background with ambient and noise as pillars. Concepción has an EP “Cueva de Cristales” (2018) for Vorágine, an album for Static Discos, Personal Territories (2019), an EP with Fliae.latam “Lost Time” (2020), an imminent album in collaboration with Mabe Fratti, and an upcoming release with the Amor Muere ensemble and an extensive list of collaborations that include artists such as Fernando Vigueras, CNDSD, Mabe Fratti, Camille Mandoki, Gibrana Cervantes, RSNNC, José Orozco M, Rodrigo Ambríz, Camilo Ángeles.
JOSE OROZCO MORA
José Orozco Mora is a Mexican musician, composer and producer from Chapala, previously releasing music under the name ‘Camedor’, having published two LPs under Seattle’s experimental label ‘Debacle Records’, and his latest album ‘Formas Apparent’ with Oakland’s label ‘Constellation Tatsu’. Orozco is also active as the synth player in the band Lorelle Meets the Obsolete for their live performances. With his recordings and live sets, Orozco explores the meditational and trance- inducing qualities of sound, based on repetition and polyrhythmic arrangements that create intricate textures, using electronic and acoustic instruments as the medium
MABE FRATTI
Mabe Fratti is an experimental cellist and composer. Originally from Guatemala, Fratti is now based in Mexico City. She uses cello, voice and synthesizers to present sound in the form of installation, composition & free improvisation. Mabe’s music takes us to sensible sounding boards: through a hypnotic and captivating performance, she sews contemporary elements like shoegaze and dream pop with ancestral influences that go from Gregorian chants to Sephardi music, transforming them in ingredients of a potent sonic ritual that causes a profound emotional impact.
ANTHONY PATERAS
Anthony Pateras is a composer, pianist and electronic musician active since the late 90s. His music explores multiple creative approaches including notation, improvisation, electro-acoustics, songwriting and cross-disciplinary projects.
At 2021, his core concern is how electronics & instruments can work together in multi-speaker environments. To this end, he recently wrote Nonsite Satellite for piano and 32-channel acousmonium (Festival Archipel, Geneva, 2021), Syncope(s) for 5 masked singers, piano & electronics (Centro di Musica, Modena, 2020), Mécanique Céleste for a building by architect Alberto Figuccio (HEIG-VD, Yverdons-Les-Bains, 2020) and Pseudacusis for electro-acoustic septet (Musica Sanae, Naples, Sokolowsko, Berlin, 2019).
JUDITH HAMANN
Judith Hamann is a cellist and performer/composer from Naarm/Birraranga (Melbourne), Australia, now based in Berlin. “Long been recognised as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary-music cellists” (RealTime Arts), Judith’s performance practice stretches across various genres encompassing elements of improvised, contemporary classical, experimental, and popular music. Currently their work is focused on an examination of expressions
and manifestations of ‘shaking’ in solo performance practice, a collection of new works for cello and humming, and ongoing research surrounding ‘collapse’ and the ‘de-mastering’ of instrumental practice.
PHIL DADSON
Phil Dadson is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice working essentially in sound, music, performance and moving image. In 1970 he founded Scratch Orchestra (NZ) and later, in 1974, the music/performance group From Scratch, which subsequently performed to wide acclaim in New Zealand and overseas. His own practice includes building and performing with experimental musical instruments, sound sculptures, digital media, music compositions, graphic scores and drawings. Moving image and foregrounding sound has been a feature of his practice since the early 70s, referencing
body, land, nature, triadics and the human condition.
MALCOLM RIDDOCH
Malcolm Riddoch’s sonic arts practice melds experimental electroacoustic technique with phenomenological method: An investigation of acousmatic listening and electronic transformation of soundscapes; notions of indeterminacy in composition for installation and performance; the use of whole acoustic spaces in installation and music performance; and electroacoustic feedback as an embodied, intentional, temporalizing process. His medium is non-tonal, timbrally focused and technologically organised sound with themes of dissolution
FLO WILSON
Flo Wilson is a composer, performer and artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Her creative interests include computer music, embodied performance, spatial sound design and immersive installations. In particular she is curious about the relationships between people and technology; how technology can extend, reduce and manipulate our modes of being.
RACHEL SHEARER
Rachel Shearer investigates sound as a medium through sound installation, experimental music, live performance and sound design/composition for moving image. She has received public commissions for sound art and has actively participated in a culture of composing and performing experimental music, releasing recordings on Xpressway (in group Angelhead), Drag City, Flying Nun (in group QMP), Corpus Hermeticum, Ecstatic Peace, Family Vineyard (as Lovely Midget & Rachel Shearer) along the way.
JIMMY SOLÓRZANO
Jimmy Solórzano is an electronic musician and sound artist from Guadalajara, México. He holds a Bachelor of Audio Engineering from SAE Institute in Mexico City, and has been active as a recording engineer and music producer since 2015. Throughout 2020 Jimmy has worked as the in-house technician at the Audio Foundation, as well as developing bespoke electronic musical devices and workshops for the Musical Electronics Library. His principal creative focuses are performative and generative electronic music and his recent work has explored creative means of incorporating natural sounds into installation and performance contexts, as well as the development of different forms of psychoacoustic expression.
THOMAS ARBOR
Thomas Arbor (ex I.Ryoko) is a composer, producer and audio engineer with an interest in progressive politics. Thomas runs Sonorous Circle, an Oceanian outlet for adventurous music, art and communities.
CLINTON WATKINS
Since 1994 Clinton Watkins has produced artwork that investigates affects that combinations of sonic and visual information can have on an audience. The key conceptual issues of his work are drawn from an interest in constructing immersive experiences through the use of sound, colour and scale of installation incorporating video projection, television monitors and custom-made audio and video hardware. The visual and sound base of his work focuses on the characteristics, structures, phenomena, and processing of sonic and visual material through the exploration of repetition, distortion, colour, duration and form via a minimalist sensibility.
Watkins is also a practicing musician who regularly produces and performs as a solo artist and collaboratively as an active member of the minimal electronic improvisation sextet, Plains and one half of the electronic noise duo 1000.
ANDREW MCMILLAN
A dedicated improviser on saxophone and laptop computer, Drew has also worked in composition and sound design.
Andrew has experience in the New Zealand music and performing arts as an improviser, composer, musician and sound artist. He has combined his commitment to improvised music, theatre and sound art and design with ongoing studies in composition.
Andrews music and sound has led to opportunities to work with Pacific music and instruments, electronics, in dance projects, theatre, film, and for big bands, orchestra, large and small improvised ensembles, interdisciplinary improvisation, art installations and interactive technologies.
COLIN WOODS
Colin James Woods is an Irish born freelance artist and sonic practitioner based in Port Waikato, (Aotearoa/ New Zealand). Colin was born in Belfast (N.Ireland) and first came to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2002. He was previously guitarist with Irish punk band Music For Deaf (not the later US band of the same name) and participant in UK/Ireland based Allotropes experimental collective. His interests include experimental music (both composed and improvised), site specific installations, video, song writing, performance, and composition for conventional solo instruments and ensembles. He has been a regular participant in the Auckland improv collective Vitamin S and is one half of the duo Toy Triptech (with Rohan Evans, owner of the iconic Wine Cellar venue). His work featured in his solo exhibition It’s for You at the Audio Foundation (Auckland) in November 2017.
ALISTAIR FRASER
Alistair is a widely respected player, composer, and researcher of ngā taonga puoro with a performance background that enables him to provide a sensitivity that suits the intimate nature of these remarkable instruments. Alistair Fraser has been researching, making, performing and composing with ngā taonga pūoro since 1999 and in his time has worked in a diverse range of art forms with Aotearoa’s top arts practitioners.
JOHNNY CHANG
Berlin/NZ-based composer-performer Johnny Chang engages in extended explorations surrounding the relationships of sound/silence and the in-between areas of improvisation, composition, performance and listening.
Current collaborations/projects include: Antoine Beuger, Alessandro Bossetti, Lucio Capece, Olivier Di Placido, Jürg Frey, Chris Heenan, Christian Kesten, Annette Krebs, Luke Munn, Koen Nutters, Michael Pisaro, Derek Shirley.
MICHAEL PISARO
Michael Pisaro (born 1961 in Buffalo, New York) is a guitarist and composer. He is member of the Wandelweiser collective. While, like other members of Wandelweiser, Pisaro is known for pieces of long duration with periods of silence, in the past fifteen years his work has branched out in many directions, including work with field recording, electronics, improvisation and large ensembles of very different kinds of instrumental constitution. Called “patient, unpredictable, exceedingly beautiful” by the New York Times, Pisaro’s music has been featured on many recordings in the last decade. Ben Ratliff of the Times writes: “The American composer Michael Pisaro likes his music to develop as a slow-motion force, with adjustments of tone and pitch and instrumentation so long-brewing that you lose your awareness of the player’s hand and the composer’s will.”
THE OBSERVATORY PROJECT
The Observatory Project is a collaborative project which observes and engages the ways in which scientists and artists operate. The project is headed by Ziggy Lever and Eamon Edmundson-Wells, exploring and expanding the idea of the observatory as a site that contextualises perceptions.
Converting data into sound as an interpretive tool is a current trend in scientific data analysis to provide an alternative perspective to visual representation. We are interested in the subjective nature of this process, and how this can be manipulated to serve the politics of individuals and institutions. Using installation we designate spaces within galleries and observatories as institutions in and of themselves, with their own sovereignty and politics. These produce physical and temporal experiences that poetically explore and critique the structures they emulate.
CLOVIS MCEVOY
Clovis McEvoy is an award-winning composer, sound artist and researcher. He specialises in creating experiential installations for virtual reality, mixed media and musical works for instruments and electronics. His works have been performed in America, France, England, Italy, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland. An active researcher, Clovis has presented papers on audio-visual relationships, virtual music and compositional practice at conferences in Japan, Italy and New Zealand.
TORBEN TILLY
Torben Tilly traverses the fields of sound, moving image, performance and installation. Recent work weaves together
ideas of synchronicity, time travel and time consciousness, exploring methods in which media and material processes may represent, embody or manipulate the passing of time.
RICHARD FRANCIS
Richard Francis uses field recordings, modular synthesizer and computer to compose and improvise sound works. He has released solo and collaborative albums on a number of labels including Korm Plastics (NL), Monochrome Vision (RU), Aufabwegen (DE), Last Visible Dog (USA) and his own record label CMR (NZ). Recent published collaborative CDs have been with Bruce Russell (NZ), Mattin (ES), Jason Kahn (USA) and Francisco Lopez (ES).
WARREN MAXWELL
Warren Maxwell (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngai Te Rangi, Ngai Te Riu, Ngati Whare, Ngati Rakaipaaka, Ngai Te Rangi) has been a professional working musician and composer for the better part of two decades. He has composed for film and television and appeared at numerous festivals internationally, including Celtic Connections, WOMAD NZ, and the Byron Bay Blues, Woodford Folk, Big Chill and Roskilde Festivals. Warren is currently a Senior Lecturer at Massey University where he teaches composition and performance. In 2016 was inducted into the Institute’s prestigious ‘Hall of Fame’.
KRISTIAN LARSEN BLUETOOTH ORCHESTRA
Kristian Larsen is an Auckland based artist working in choreography and sound via improvisation. Coming from an exhaustive background in contemporary dance performance, Larsen’s artistic interests lie currently in live collaboration, sonic experimentation & spatialisation, naivete, acousmatic and electronic sound, technical skill coupled with non-comprehension, and the poetics of decay and delay in bodily movement. Larsen is currently on a doctoral scholarship at University of Auckland researching movement and sound in performance.
JOHN KIM
John Kim is a sound engineer and composer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He is a technician at the University of Auckland and has been an integral part of the Auckland composition and electro-acoustic music scene for many years.
TASH VAN SCHAARDENBURG
Tash van Schaardenburg’s (Citacsy/Unisex Fuck Club) art practice explores the acoustic anthologies and social negotiations of sound in the cityscape through audio, film and installation works. They are also known for their experimental music project Citacsy-D which extends their practice into ambient biographical journeys with a synthesis between live sound sculpting of field recordings and electronic instruments. Tash is also a regular contributor to the monthly ‘There not Here’ field recording broadcast on AFM, and host of Sound Dose.
SAM LONGMORE
Sam Longmore is an artist and electronic musician based in Tāmaki Makaurau. His work is informed by minimalist aesthetics, theories of architecture and geography, and aural experiences of the world around us, and has been performed and exhibited at galleries and project spaces throughout Aotearoa and abroad.
JO BURZYNSKA
Jo Burzynska – who also performs and records under the name Stanier Black-Five – is an Australasia-based sound artist, wine writer and curator whose work in these areas has increasingly converged in the production of multisensory art and the design of immersive environments, which include the establishment of the world’s first ‘wine and sound’ bar. As a sound/multisensory artist she has exhibited, performed and released her work around the world.
NATASHA ANDERSON
Natasha Anderson is an Australian composer, musician and installation artist. She makes instrumental, audiovisual and acousmatic works in a variety of forms; from solo performance and notated scores, to installation and multichannel diffusion. A primary interest lies in creating idiosyncratic, preternatural electronic sounds from acoustic sources, and exploring the relationship between these and their live physical source in composition.
FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAMME:
OPENING NIGHT
Thursday 29 July @ Audio Foundation, 7pm
Suzanne Ciani (USA)
Flo Wilson – LIVE
Thembi Soddell (AUS)
Concepcion Huerta (MX)
JIM-S (MX) – LIVE
mHz (IRAN) – LIVE
THERE NOT HERE
Thursday 29 – Saturday 31 July @ Audio Foundation, 12pm – 7.30pm
There Not Here – Tash Van Schaardenburg, Jimmy Solōrzano, Sam Longmore field recordings installation
NIGHT TWO
Friday 30 July @ Audio Foundation, 7pm
Jōse Orozco Mora (MX)
Natasha Anderson (AUS)
Sergio Merce (ARG)
Judith Hamman (AUS)
Jo Burzynska
Malcolm Riddoch – LIVE
Clinton Watkins – LIVE
AFTERNOON SESSION
Saturday 31 July @ Audio Foundation, 2-6pm
Musical Electronics Library Performance
John Kim
Phil Dadson – Radiophonic work with Sam Longmore / Torben Tilly / Rachel Shearer / Flo Wilson
Partitions & Resonances curated by Johnny Chang performs Michael Pisaro(USA): Transparent City (2), with Los Angeles field recordings, sine tones and instruments, and Seamus Cater: Another History of Musical Pitch for violin, sine tones, pitchforks and re-tuned concertina
NIGHT THREE
Saturday 31 July @ Audio Foundation, 8PM
Warren Maxwell sound installation activated by Malcolm Riddoch Al Fraser
Clovis McEvoy
Mabe Fratti (GUA)
Richard Francis (LIVE)
Anthony Pateras (AUS)
Thomas Arbor
Kraus (LIVE)
FINAL DAY
Sunday 1 August @ Old Folks Association (Gundry Street), 2-6pm
The Observatory Project
Bluetooth Orchestra – Kristian Larsen
Colin Woods, Andrew McMillan
Malcolm Riddoch Organgy