SEAMUS 2008 took place in the dramatic setting of the University of Utah, surrounded by the Wasatch, Oquirrhs, and Traverse mountain ranges. Spectacular scenery outside, spectacular music inside. Thirteen concerts in three days may seem a trifle too spectacular, but there were plenty of gaps in between, filled with eating and drinking, talking and laughing; listening fatigue was very little an issue.

The setting was significant, for this year’s SEAMUS spotlighted the music and teaching career of Vladimir Ussachevsky, who taught for twenty years at the University of Utah. The first half of concert four was a rare performance of Ussachevsky’s Colloquy for symphony orchestra, tape recorder and chairs. (Yes, that would also have been delightful, but in this context “chairs” refers only to the various soloists in the orchestra.) Colloquy is a kind of Young Person’s Guide to Tape Music, with fairly ordinary orchestral licks transformed in various intriguing ways by tape manipulation. Read more »

On April 4, 2009, SFU Contemporary Arts put on a show of electroacoustic music that included a new piece by Barry Truax, Chalice Well, three pieces for flute and “tape” played by visiting flautist Mark McGregor, a live laptop piece, and several other treats by SFU faculty and students.

Prominent in many pieces were water sounds—rain, waves, miscellaneous dripping and swishing. Rain is, of course, a multitude of sounds all on its own, without even counting the processing, of which there was a certain amount. Also prominent in several pieces were the sounds of cathedral bells, both with and without their attacks, both with and without some fairly serious manipulation. There’s something very rich and mysterious about the sound of a huge bell without its attack.

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The concert on Thursday evening the 5th of March was a special one for me, its being the first time I’d heard Doug Theriault live. From the first CD of his I owned, Unidentified, I have been enormously taken by the music of this enormously talented Portlander. What’s more, the first set of the evening was a duet between Doug Theriault and Matt Hannafin, whose last couple of appearances I’ve been unfortunate to have missed. And what a lovely set it was. Anyone who’s heard either man could be forgiven for thinking them very unlikely partners, but these two are both skillful and sensitive musicians and experienced collaborators, and both qualities were much in evidence that evening, with Hannafin coaxing some harsh beauties from his drums to match Theriault’s electronics and equally Theriault producing some soft and gentle sounds to match Hannafin’s delicate drumming. Read more »

I have attended a lot of exhilarating concerts in Portland, and the exceptional concert on Monday, February 23, was no exception. Four extraordinary musicians from Europe played in three sets, very different from each other but all concerned with pushing acoustic instruments to their limits–to beyond their limits. (To making a mockery of the idea that there are any limits.)

Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke (as The International Nothing) played five short composed pieces from recent years and months (a couple of them so new that they didn’t even have names yet). A clarinet can play a variety of wild and extravagant noises. Two adds the possibility of exquisite clashing of said noises. These five lovely pieces, however exploratory, were rather meditative than wild–long, soft lines that invite such close listening (at least I find it to be so) that one finds oneself hyper-aware of all sounds, inside the piece or not, to the extent that outside and inside disappear. Read more »

The five pieces on Barry Truax’s most recent CD are all from this century, 2001 through 2006. Given the similarity of dates and the thematic unity suggested by the album title, one might unwarily conclude that these five are similarly similar. They’re not. If I wanted to give someone a fair idea of Truax’s range, I could do much worse than simply hand over this CD. Read more »

Pacific Fanfare(1996)

Like all such, Pacific Fanfare is a short piece; unlike other fanfares, this one has no stirring licks by the trumpet section. Instead, there are some very nice foghorns, as befits the Pacific part of the title.

Sadly, short here means three minutes, which is not just way too short generally, but way too short for this piece, which promises many more minutes than it delivers. Oh well, it is a delightful three minutes, full not only of coastal sounds but various train and other mechanical sounds as well as some wild bells, ringing out. (Edition RZ 290405)

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(Pacific Fanfare is also available on Soundscape Vancouver: Cambridge Street Records CSR 2CD-9701 and on Islands: Cambridge Street Records CSR CD-0101.) Read more »

Truax: So here we are in the gardens of the Archevêché in Bourges, with its formal gardens and its walkways and roses.

Asymmetry: Maybe we should just talk about this, then, and forget about music for awhile….

Or perhaps this is just the place to talk about soundscape and how you got started in soundscape composition.
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Fans of KK Null and David Brown (who together are Terminal Hz) probably already have this CD. If you don’t, you should get it right away. (If you’re not a fan of KK Null or David Brown, you should get this right away, so that you can become one, too.)

Terminal Hz is five tracks of guitar and electronics. Each track follows the same basic trajectory, electronics-guitar-electronics, but the variety beyond that basic form is incredible.  Variety of sounds, to be sure, but also variety of shape. Each track (but the first of course) is a variant of the preceding, with music that’s high, hard, and bright in one track becoming low and thumping in the next, low and smooth in the next, and so on. The guitar sounds are various as well, like a shaken box of dice in one track and like a rattling bunch of keys in the next, though there the contrast between guitar and electronics is more to the point than the variety of sounds (and electronic manipulations).

The whole CD is pretty short, but Null and Brown pack so much interesting stuff into its 30+ minutes, that I can’t imagine anyone feeling cheated. Ground Fault CDs are also pretty inexpensive, so the minutes are never really an issue. Aside from that, the quality of Ground Fault CDs (musical and sonic) is so uniformly high, you will always be happy, I assure you.

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The first Portland New Music Society concert took place at Enterbeing on the 22nd of January. Featured were Christopher Penrose, Peter Karman, Michael Hallenbeck, J.P. Jenkins, and Drew Adams.

Penrose opened the show with a Cosmovox set, laptop music files controlled by two i-Phones. This was subtle and graceful music, three short “pieces” of intricately shifting layers of electronic goodness. They made a kind of piece together, too, with the music that opened the first short piece returning, somewhat transformed, in the third short piece. Or so it sounded to me. A lovely set to watch, too, as Christopher’s hands weaving the two i-Phones in the air were as graceful and subtle as the music itself–no surprise. Read more »

The clips associated with the CD reviews have all been fixed.

Occasionally, software updates will bump some of them; no one knows why. But on 26 December, 2008, they were all working.

Many links have been fixed, as well. Probably there are still some broken ones, but fewer than before.

Enjoy!