Western Front New Music

see sound e scape

electronics/remix/octophonics/audiomobile Oct. 2-5, 8 and 10 pm
Tickets $12/10/7/5 series: $35/25

Prologue: the early days. Geeks in their caves. Synths that look like switchboards. The midnight punch card run at Bell Labs. The vault of the Western Front audio archive slowly opens to illumine shelves of reel-to-reel tapes, heavy with dust. A hand reaches in and a quick breath out disperses the particles in a thousand streams. Granular soundscape crescendos.

Re-mix. Noise. Silence. Now. Sound reaches escape velocity in four days of electronics and octophonic diffusion at the Western Front. Plug in to the current of international performers and sample the sonic Diaspora connecting continents, cathedrals, and LCD screens. Electro-pioneers Barry Truax (Vancouver) and Alcidez Lanza (Montreal) are joined by their heirs in the research studios and clubs, including New York’s Haeyoung Kim, Montreal’s Cléo Palacio-Quintin, and players on the local scene. Events include concerts and workshops for 8-channel diffusion, live electronics, and soundscape, plus a ride in the Audiomobile, a GPS controlled audio installation inside Matt Smith and Sandra Wintner’s Artist Run Limousine.

Sonic Affairs Thursday, Oct. 2 (see Under Exposure below)

Resonance
Friday, Oct. 3, 8pm $12/10
Alcides Lanza & Meg Sheppard, Barry Truax, Zoltan Pongracz, Kathy Kennedy, Eric Paul

Enter the chambers where the human voice resides as composers transform text and tone, and traverse paths from sacred to the scandalous. Barry Truax creates an inner space of vast dimensions with TEMPLE, an 8-channel composition of choral voices from the cathedral of San Bartolomeo. In ‘Sisters,’ Montreal’s Kathy Kennedy takes an evocative journey into the world of her elderly aunts, who spent their entire lives in holy orders. Also featured is ‘ekphonesis’ by Montreal’s Alcides Lanza performed by vocalist Meg Sheppard, Eric Paul’s ‘Lenny’ an octophonic composition that sources recordings of Lenny Bruce, and ‘Madrigal’ by Zoltan Pongracz from the Western Front archive.

see sound re mix I
Friday, Oct. 3, 10 pm $7/5
Bubblyfish Haeyoung Kim, Scott Morgan, Josh Stevenson

From New York, Korean born pianist, composer, and sound designer Haeyoung Kim, aka “bubblyfish,” will offer her latest flavours of audio experimentation. Haeyoung has worked in Max and C-Sound and utilized cutting edge audio technologies to develop interactive music on the web. Recently she has been experimenting with “lo-fi” 8 bit technologies, performing compositions live at art venues, clubs, and galleries. Re-mix. We blow the dust off of audio oddities from the Western Front archive, currently under restoration with the guidance of Earsay Productions. Two pieces will be brought to the surface for this concert, then re-mixed live by Vancouver’s Scott Morgan and Josh Stevenson.

see sound re mix II
Saturday, Oct. 4, 10 pm $7/5
Stefan Smulovitz, Coat Cooke & Odette Leblanc, Cléo Palacio-Quintin & Ron Samworth, and Bubblyfish a.k.a. Haeyoung Kim

Live and interactive, local and international artists come together Saturday for late night electronic trysts. Montreal improviser Cléo Palacio-Quintin, currently developing the hyper-flute with a computer interactive interface at Institute of Sonology (Netherlands), will pair up with Vancouver local Ron Samworth, a renowned improviser, composer and poet of the electric guitar. Coat Cooke and Stefan Smulovitz, members of Vancouver’s creative music scene, will present the fruit of a collaborative residency utilizing Smulovitz’s 4-speaker spatialization software with visuals by Odette Leblanc. These artists will be joined by Haeyoung Kim in a final improvisational melee.

Octophonics, 8 channel diffusion
Sunday, Oct. 5, 8pm $12/10
Barry Truax, Marc Bjorknas, Ben Wilson, Katharine Norman, Aleksandar Zecevic, Jean Routhier

Sunday will surround the listener with 8 channels of music and soundscape. Barry Truax paints an imaginary Island imbued with magic realism and natural sounds in the soundscape composition, Island. Mark Bjorknas travels to a very different island with ‘Jamaican Sound System,’ and British composer Katharine Norman takes a trip to the dentist in ‘Something Quite Atrocious.’ Composer and audio artist from the former Yugoslavia, Aleksandar Zecevic will present a new work utilizing traditional Balkan and contemporary Asian music recorded at last year’s Vancouver New Music Festival. Also featured is the sound avalanche, ‘Sediment’ by Ben Wilson, a sampling of wall-to-wall carpet chamber music by Jean Routhier, and Western Front archival documents.

Audiomobile: Artist Run Limousine Matt Smith and Sandra Wintner
Friday, Oct. 3, 7-9:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 4, 5-9:30 pm
Reserve 604-876-9343

The Artist Run Limousine departs from the Western Front to map the city with sound. Utilizing satellite-tracking technology and a surround sound system, the Audiomobile will travel through an interactive environment of GPS triggered samples and processing.

Max/MSP/Jitter Summit and Workshops
October 4 RSVP 604-876-9343
Professional Session 10 AM-12 noon $5 (includes breakfast) Workshops 1-5 PM free

Presented in collaboration with the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, artists and innovators offer workshops on their techniques and the latest developments in the field. The summit will focus on Max/MSP/Jitter, a graphically based software system used by artists working in algorithmic composition, real-time music performance, and installations. The morning session will offer networking opportunities for experienced M/M/J users. Presenters: Ben Neville (Cycling’74), Arne Eigenfeldt, Kenneth Newby, Martin Gotfrit, Aleksandra Dulic, Jacky Sawatsky (Simon Fraser University) & Western Front program artists: Haeyoung Kim, Cléo Palacio-Quintin, Ken Gregory

UNDER EXPOSURE Vancouver Art Gallery, Robson and Howe Thursdays @ 7pm Admission by donation

Sonic Affairs
October 2 Electroacoustic works by senior students & recent graduates of UBC, SFU, VCC music programs. Part of the Vancouver contemporary music community’s electronic music month.
UBC: Gordon Fitzell, Mark Hannesson
SFU: Sarah MacDougall, Elizabeth Knudson, Adis Husejnagic VCC: Malaika Killingsworth, Aaron Clark

All shows except Under Exposure @ Western Front
www.front.bc.ca
Advance Sales Tel: 604-876-9343