Francisco Meirino's 2009 release is all about the sounds music machines make when they're failing--minidisc players, P.A. systems, cassette recorders, and so forth. And very interesting and musical sounds they do make, to be sure. But ...
writing about music for people who like music
SEAMUS 2009
SEAMUS 2009 took place over three days in Sweetwater's new LEED certified headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Not only is it a pretty, comfortable building, not only is their warehouse just on the other side of a huge doorway in the main hall (allowing me get some new toys without having to mail-order them), not ...
Music@Taborspace
The Portland New Music Society's March concert took place at the Taborspace coffeeshop on the corner of SE 55th and SE Belmont. Featured were Matt Hannafin, Kelvin Pittman, and Doug Theriault in three solo sets and a trio. Matt opened with a monumental forty minute piece for amplified and electronically altered percussion.
Cascadia new music festival
Cascadia Composers recently hosted the National Association of Composers conference in Portland, OR, a three day festival of music and seminars that Asymmetry managed to miss entirely. But James Bash (Northwest Reverb) attended the second evening's concert. Here's his review of that for the Oregon Music News.
Oh! Space… space…
A large number of books and articles have been edited over the decades on the theme of sound space, its perception, its fixed and mobile configuration in the composition of acousmatic music, and its perception in the space of a particular environment.
In this article, I would just like to testify to my experience as a composer of acousmatic music who is fascinated by the different techniques of stereophonic and multiphonic spatialization.
Intuition and Order in Xenakis’s Orient-Occident
In the late 1950's and early 60's, Xenakis worked with GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales) in Paris to produce several pieces for electromagnetic tape, including Orient-Occident, a piece often overshadowed by works like Concrete PH and Bohor, which are rightly considered more groundbreaking pieces in Xenakis's early oeuvre, particularly Bohor, with its unique source material, ...
Addendum to Urs Leimgruber in Portland
One of the participants in this event has just sent me a link to a soundfile of the entire group improvisation directed by Urs Leimgruber. http://soundcloud.com/jonathansielaff/urs-large-ensemble-cmg Enjoy!
A music; that it might be…: remembering Barney Childs
Barney Childs died of Parkinson's disease ten years ago in Redlands, California. Although an important figure in contemporary music, Barney was in no way a self-promoter. I don't remember hearing any of his music at concerts of the Redlands New Music Society, which ...
A brace of November concerts in Portland
There were plenty of concerts in Portland in October, too, and in September and August, but Asymmetry was in Europe then, haring after festivals (nine of them) and hobnobbing with some of the greats and near greats of new music, reports on those forthcoming. And as soon as I got back to Portland, there were ...
Wounded Breath
Erdem Helvacioǧlu’s most recent album, Wounded Breath, is quite different from his earlier Altered Realities, reviewed here. Wounded Breath is entirely electroacoustic, and quite strong, various, and enjoyable electroacoustic at that. The title piece is perhaps the most “traditional” one, though with Helvacioǧlu a genuinely ...