Before Music (Dugal McKinnon)

• Notes: A generative soundscape, for icosahedral loudspeaker, originating from a recording of roosting sparrows and nesting in the aural architecture of the Upper Chartwell Gallery.

• About the Artist: Dr. Dugal McKinnon is the Deputy Director of NZSM and Co-Director of the Lilburn Studios for Electronic Music. He is a composer and sound artist whose output encompasses electronic, acoustic, visual and textual media, and often intermeshes these. Recent work includes Path 99 (with Grayson Cooke), which premiered in the 2021 NZ International Film Festival, and VEX (2020), a live modular synth performance for the City Gallery Wellington’s Terminal exhibition.

A Mouthful of Locusts (Alexis Weaver)

• Notes: A Mouthful of Locusts is named for the buzzy, insectile sounds which abound in the work. Many of these sounds are made with the mouth: whispers, consonants, clicks, tiny pitched fragments which are looped and shaped to create writhing new textures. These sounds were captured close to the microphone. In the context of the work, they dip into the foreground and then quickly swerve out into the distance. A metaphor, perhaps, for the remote intimacy of internet messaging and telephone calls.

  I started composing this work at a time of transition in my life. While perhaps not evident in the final structure, the development of the work was guided by the image of a long, straight highway stretching into a dark night. As the work continues, my metaphorical eyes adjust to the new surroundings, and a swirling ecosystem of possibilities (perhaps presented in the form of flying bugs!) light up the night. 

• About the Artist: Alexis Weaver is a composer and educator based in Sydney, Australia. While her principal interest lies in composing fixed-media acousmatic music, she has also composed soundtracks for animation, short film, theatre, dance, and in 2022 has produced podcast music for companies ARN, Amplify, Sunny Studios and Shameless Media. Alexis’ work has been broadcast in Australia, the US, France, Scotland and Scandinavia, as well as featured on New Weird Australia’s Collapse Theories (2022), Solitary Wave (2019) and RMN Classical’s Electroacoustic and Beyond II (2017). While studying a Bachelor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney, Alexis was awarded People’s Choice Award and First Place in the 2015 and 2016 University of Sydney Verge Awards respectively for her acousmatic works. In January 2018, Alexis was awarded the National Council of Women’s Australia Day Prize for her research undertaken during her Honours year on the visibility and practice of female electroacoustic composers. She recently completed a Master of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she now lectures in composition and music technology subjects alongside tutoring in design and Museum and Heritage Studies within the wider University. Two acousmatic works produced during her Masters were awarded Highly Commended in the 2020 Ars Electronica Forum Wallis Competition, Switzerland. In 2021, she joined the Nanosonic Stories research team within the Nano Institute, University of Sydney, with whom she will begin a PhD developing sound-based education tools in late 2022.

CagedStructures#4 (Alessio Rossato)

• Notes: The dynamic and temporal structure of this work is inspired by the J. Cage's piece 7’10.554” for a percussionist, specifically the electronic realization of a voice/line (A - All Others) of the score, left (freely) interpretable by Cage who did not exclude a realization ( freely) with electronic/electroacoustic devices supports already in 1956...

  I then created a layering of the resulting “voices “ reaching the overlap of 28 independent voices (Digital Tracks) divided into periods. The periods are delimited by reverberated sound events and granulated events.
  Realized the line A "electroacoustically" usable for the performance with a percussionist (original version of the score), this electronic material is elaborated and re-organized to give shape to different acousmatic pieces. The acoustic material is modeled, redesigned and sculpted to shape new pieces with common source material. In this way a sort of wide range of sound variations / sculptures is generated which see material as the main focus in the relationship between space and the vibrational energy (timbre) of sound.
  My main interest is the spatial dramaturgy of music, which in this case allowed me to work on at least three spatial planes at the same time, hoping to have created a musical event that would transmit a totally immersive and engaging experience.

Vocal Traces: Movements II & III (David Hirst)

• Notes: Vocal Traces; Movements II & III, by David Hirst: This work started out as a 60 second piece to honour Scottish resident composer Pete Stollery’s 60th birthday, which used samples of Pete’s voice. It then developed into a longer electronic work called Vocal Corruptions that used processed voice using the author’s Max for Live based suite of signal processing contraptions. Sections were improvised using Ableton Live. This work then formed the basis of a three Movement piece called Vocal Traces. In Vocal Traces, the electronic sounds were analysed using MaxOrch, designed by Jérôme Lesueur and Per Bloland, which is a front end for the Orchidea set of Max objects designed to orchestrate music ideas from a sound file. Orchidea is an IRCAM-originating research project developed by Carmine Emanuele Cella. In this performance, we hear the second Movement in which there are the orchestrated sounds derived from the original electronic music piece. This is then followed by Movement III where the original electronic work is actually mixed with the orchestral sounds it created.

• About the Artist: David Hirst’s electroacoustic music compositions have been performed in the United States, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea and nationally across Australia. He studied computer music at La Trobe University with Graham Hair and Jim Sosnin, composition with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, and completed a PhD in electroacoustic music composition and analysis at the University of Melbourne under Brenton Broadstock and Neil McLachlan. Hirst has lectured at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, La Trobe University, and the University of Melbourne. He is currently Honorary Principal Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. His most recent albums are “The Shape of Water” available on iTunes and Spotify, and “Images of Portugal” on Bandcamp.

Sleep Jelly (Neil Aldridge)

• Notes: Here we are all, by day; by night we’re hurled

  By dreams, each one, into a several world.
  
  Sleep Jelly is inspired by Dreams — a poem by Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

The Eighth Island (Lidia Zielinska)

• Notes: Inspired by the music from Southeast Asia The Eighth Island is an impression of some islands on Pacific Sea and their cultures getting lost during our times – by our desistance, lack of interest, disrespect, hypocrisy of political correctness, global warming.

• About the Artist: Lidia Zielińska is a Polish composer. She studied composition with Andrzej Koszewski at the State High School of Music in Poznan. She has worked at the electronic music studios in Cracow, Stuttgart, Swedish Radio Malmoe, Experimental Studio of Polish Radio in Warsaw, IPEM/BRT in Ghent, EMS in Stockholm, ZKM in Karlsruhe and Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg.
  Lidia Zielińska currently holds the post of professor of composition and head of the SMEAMuz Studio of Electroacoustic Music at Poznan’s Music Academy; she also was a professor in sonology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (1989-92 and 2001-10).
  She has conducted summer courses, workshops and seminars, published and lectured extensively on contemporary Polish music, the history of experimental music, sound ecology and traditional Japanese music, on the invitation of universities in Europe, Americas, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
  For many years, Lidia Zielińska has fulfilled many official functions; she is currently Vice-President of the Polish Association for Electroacoustic Music, former Vice-President of the Board of the Polish Composers’ Union, member of the programme committee of the Warsaw Autumn Festival (1989–92 and 1996–2005), of the ISCM World Music Days in Warsaw, of the Musica Electronica Nova in Wroclaw.

Order 81 (Ricardo Thomasi)

• Notes: The idea of Order 81 comes from creating noise with high-order digital filters and feedback loops exploring the whole audible spectrum. It is an approach to sound modeling at a microstructural level that brings to light one of the concepts behind the idea of order from disorder: recursion. Noise highlights the differences. Small differences become more salient. New conditions are given and new relationships arise. From the iteration emerges a continuity that groups the sound grains and outlines the gestural profiles. Multiple noise layers merge into sonic colors. Noise is a universe where pure sound is only a part. 

• About the Artist: Ricardo Thomasi is a Brazilian sound artist and researcher of music and technology with strong influence of feedback procedures and theories of emergence. His artistic work involves electroacoustic and audiovisual improvisation, collaborative multimedia performances, video art and interactive art installations, among others related to commercial, pop and Brazilian music. Hi is manager of the experimental music label Arte Estranha and member of Núcleo Música Nova group. He has Master degree in music composition (UFPR) and PhD in creative processes and sonology (USP), both in Brazil. He also teaches courses and workshops in the field of music and sonic creation with contemporary technologies for a diverse audience.

Fusion:Fission (BJ Leo)

• Notes: "Fusion:Fission" explores new techniques in sonic fusion and fission in an ambisonic environment.

  
  The starting point for this work was Albert Bregman’s work on sonic fusion/fission. Bregman proposed that listeners perceive different audio 'streams' within a single work in a variety of ways including frequency, rhythm, and meter. These streams can then be combined (fusion) or separated (fission) to create new streams as heard by the listener, regardless of their original source.
  
  This piece explores Bregman's theory through three main techniques; spectral decomposition, phase shifting, and ambisonic spatialisation. Familiar sound sources such as vocal samples or drum rythyms undergo spectral fusion and fission by separating harmonic partials (Fourier series), sinusoidal components and transients.
  
  These elements can be pulled apart, recombined, added and subtracted, phase shifted, and moved around the three dimensional sound space of the ambisonic environment. 

• About the Artist: Ben Leonard (BJ Leo) is a sonic artist and post-graduate student based out of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. His practice focuses on spatialised sound and spectral analysis, with particular attention given to spectral decomposition in an ambisonic environment. His current work applies both spectral and spatial techniques to Albert Bregman's theories of sonic fusion/fission.

De faux échos (Stylianos Dimou)

• Notes: “De faux échos” is an acousmatic composition that explores the timbral dimensions of AI-generated sonic material. The piece formulates a continuum of interchangeable and superimposed timbral spaces that comprise sounds subjected to various re-synthesis and spectral transformation techniques. Its sonic canvas revitalizes the sonic flaws of AI-generated audio samples such as noise and annoying glitches, focusing instead on the creative narratives deeply ingrained in this material. The exploitation of a noisy roughness and the retrieval of hidden sonic nuances, valuable in the conception of the music, impacted Dimou’s artistic choices and the nature of the DSP tools designed and used throughout. The piece is heartily dedicated to Roberto Alonso Trillo, supporting the creative investigations of Debris.

• About the Artist: Stylianos Dimou (Thessaloniki/ Greece, 1988) is a composer of acoustic, electroacoustic, and acousmatic music. A recipient of numerous International Awards and Grants, his music has been premiered and commissioned by multiple Festivals and Institutions such as the
  the 64th International Festival Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn 2021, the Festival Ensemble(s) 2021, the 2021 New York City Electronic Music Festival, Société des arts technologiques [SAT], impuls 2019, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival 2019 IRCAM/manifeste, and Gaudeamus Music Week. His academic and artistic activities have been supported by organizations such as the Fulbright, IRCAM, SWR Experimental Studio, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Herrenhaus Edenkoben, etc. His music was premiered by renowned ensembles and orchestras, such as the Ensemble InterContemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, International Ensemble Modern Academy, the Arditti Quartet, Talea Ensemble, and ICE ensemble. His awards include the Charles S. Miller Prize (2019) from Columbia University, Award for artistic excellence as a Promising young Composer from the European-wide Ulysses Network/ IRCAM (2018-19), 1st Prize at the International Prize for Composition “Luigi Nono”, 3rd edition, 2nd Prize in the 24th Annual Martirano Award, etc. Dimou is an alumnus of the prestigious professional training program Cursus at IRCAM in Paris. He holds a doctorate from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. He is currently a Research Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University.
  

Oro Rua Rangi ki te Whenua (Jerome Kavanagh & Michael Norris)

• Notes: Oro Rua Rangi ki te Whenua (literally ‘double tone’) is an exploration of the way that complex, organic, live electronics can form shifting sonic tapestries from the unique timbres and textures of Aotearoa’s indigenous instruments (taonga puoro). In this piece, taonga puoro expert Jerome Kavanagh brings together a collection of instruments, seeking to discover fragile, liminal sonorities, often with multiple tones sounding simultaneously. These sounds are sustained and texturised by the live electronics practice of Michael Norris, which includes spatialised granular synthesis and spectral sustains, combining in an improvisational, multichannel context. The sounds of the taonga puoro become interwoven (‘raranga’) to form a rich ‘sound environment’ that amplifies and uplifts the mana of the instruments.

• About the Artists: Jerome Kavanagh (Mokai Patea, Maniapoto, Kahungunu, Irish: Caomhanach) is the CNZ/NZSM Composer-in-Residence 2022. He is a Grammy award-winning featured solo artist and internationally renowned Māori Taonga Puoro practitioner. Recent film score compositions include The Dead Lands (2020, Shudder-USA/TVNZ) with Lachlan Anderson, and Avatar 2 (forthcoming). Michael Norris is a composer, software developer and music theorist. He teaches composition at NZSM, is editor of Wai-te-ata Music Press, and directs Stroma New Music Ensemble. In 2020 for the third year in a row he was awarded the SOUNZ Contemporary Award at the APRA Silver Scrolls for Mātauranga (Rerenga). His suite of real-time audio effects, ‘SoundMagic Spectral’, is widely used including by artists such as Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.