The Audio Foundation presents an installation of electronic and video works as part of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World New Music Days. The ISCM, founded by a gathering of composers at Café Bazar in Salzburg a hundred years ago, is coming to Aotearoa on 23 August for the first time, hosted by CANZ (the Composers Association of NZ).
Each year, ISCM Festivals bring the newest music of its members from over 50 countries to the host country to share what’s new and engage with the local culture and music.
The programme at The Audio Foundation includes:
Alice Shields (USA), Mayo Miwa (Japan), Thomas Barrett (USA) – White Heron Dance
“The original White Heron Dance (Sagi Mai) is a 500-year-old Shinto rite from Tsuwano, Japan. I created my White Heron Dance to be a ritual in sound in which a human being experiences a moment of union with nature in the form of a Great White Heron.” – Alice Shields
Charo Calvo (Belgium) – The Grass
“Based on the poem The Grass by Jeffrey Yang which was enough to unleash a powerful cluster of sound images in my head. The word ‘grazed’ inspired the sound of the filters. Fabrice Moinet developed a Max Patch using CrossSynthesis, Morphing and Source Filter signal processing. The sound of the poem read
by
the author modulates all other recorded sources: a brush dance around binaural microphones, a
brushed piano, strumming drums, wind. Guess who is talking…
wind strips, slips
of time, the leaves,
words weave, unweave
the
grass.” – Charo Calvo
Juan Jose Eslava (Spain) – Máscaras
“The concept of mask, when referred to vocality, is liminal: the identity built from what we call aesthetics. In brief: transgression, reformulation, equi-vocal, mediation with the exterior of the human world. In his classes, the ethnomusicologist Gilles Léothaud applied the concept of vocal mask to the analysis of traditional vocal techniques. Reformulations of self, and with it of singing as a possibility, and of the polyphony as an emergent, intangible matrix. Voices recorded that are originally physical transformations (by resonance, filter, echo…). Polyphony of gestures, words and fluid identities in a fixed space: a wall open to pieces.” – Juanjo Eslava
Jan Jacob Hofmann (Germany) – Coloured Dots and the Voids In Between
“In the piece Coloured Dots And The Voids In Between spatial textures of dot-like sounds occur, expanding and evolving in space and time. Important are not only the events of sounds themselves but also the spaces in between which expand in different dimensions spatially and temporally, overlapping and thus creating the actual space.” – Jan Jacob Hofmann
John McLachlan (Ireland) – Sparśa
Roxanne Turcotte (Canada) – Alibi des voltigeurs
Albertas Navickas (Lithuania) – silences
For more information about ISCM and a list of the twenty concerts and events in this festival, see: www.iscm2022nz.com
Opens: Tuesday 23 August, 5.30pm with refreshments provided by Liberty Brewing Company
Hours: 12 – 4pm, Tuesday – Saturday
Closes: Saturday 17 September
Artist biographies:
Alice Shields
As a pioneer of electronic music, composer Alice Shields creates operas, chamber music and music for dance influenced by music from around the world, including Noh Theater and Bharata Natyam dance-drama. Shields received her doctorate in composition from Columbia University and has served as Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Director of Development of Columbia’s Computer Music Center.
Mayo Miwa
Mayo Miwa majored in Noh Theatre at Tokyo University of the Arts, and trained at Kanze School. Now living in New York City, she collaborates regularly with artists from different media toward the development of the art of Noh in contemporary forms. As part of the Noh Society she facilitates educational programs by Noh actors from Japan.
Thomas Barratt
Thomas Barratt is a photographer and videographer based in New York City. Barratt has worked in various industries including film, graphic design and fine art. He holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and is currently employed as a photographer for the Pace and the Hauser & Wirth galleries.
Charo Calvo
Charo Calvo is a Spanish electroacoustic composer, sound designer and professor, living in Brussels. Her work across a range of media has been presented internationally at festivals, dance performances, theatres, and on film and radio. She has received several important prizes including Palma Ars Acustica 2014 EBU, Phonurgia Nova Awards Paris in radio art 2017, and Prix Marulic in 2018, and has been a guest of the residential program for international artists in Berlin DAAD (Berliner Künstler Programm) during the year 2017/2018.
Juan Jose Eslava
Born in 1970, Juan Jose Eslava studied composition at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris under Emmanuel Nunes, Gérard Grisey, Michael Lévinas, IRCAM, Royaumont-Voix-Nouvelles Foundation, and Centre Acanthes. His work has been presented at a number of international events and festivals including Festivals ICMC, Seoul Computer Music Festival, Time-of-Music, World Saxophone Congress, and has been supported by the Li (Luo) dance company, Foundation BBVA, Autor/AEOS, CNDM, Plural Ensemble, ORCAM, Quincena Musical, and Sigma Project.
He teaches composition at the High Conservatory of Aragon.
For more see: https://www.babelscores.com/fr/composer?userid=8113&view=vendorprofile and https://soundcloud.com/juanjo-eslava
Albertas Navickas
Albertas Navickas is a Lithuanian composer based in the U.S.A.. He studied composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, and biochemistry at Vilnius University. As part of the New Opera Action Festival he was awarded the prize for the best stage work by the Lithuanian Composers’ Union in 2008, and the prize for the best multimedia work in 2011 at the same competition; in 2009 he won the first prize at Vox Juventutis.
Since 2012, Albertas has studied genetics and biology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris where he gained his PhD in 2016.
Jan Jacob Hofmann
Jan Jacob Hofmann has worked as a composer, photographer and architect since 1986 dealing with sound-composition and electronic music. His work since April 2000 has utilised the spatialisation of sound and other ambisonic techniques and resulted in several performances in America, Europe and Asia and the publication of Csound based tools for sonic spatialisation via third order Ambisonic principals.
For more see: http://sonicarchitecture.de
John McLachlan
John McLachlan is an Irish composer, born in Dublin, currently living in rural Donegal. John is a member of Aosdana, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy for the creative arts and has worked with many new music specialists from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Poland, Japan and the United States.
See also www.johnmclachlan.info and www.cmc.ieandsoundcloud.com/john-mclachlan-compose
Roxanne Turcotte
As a composer and sound designer, Roxanne Turcotte has won numerous awards and distinctions. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). Under her belt, she has many recordings, a few publications, numerous concerts with various music ensembles, and multiple tours and concerts in Canada, the USA, and Europe : Aix-en-Provence, Barcelona, Birmingham, Bourges, Brussels, Crest, Edmonton, Geneva, Guelph, Lyon, Manchester, Marseille, Millery, Montpellier, Montréal, Nîmes, Orford and Oslo