Machine Symphony is a celebration of machines. All sounds are derived from recordings of steam engines and other assorted machinery. The sounds were processed to create drones and rhythmic ostinatos. These elements in turn are arranged similar to an “orchestra” of different instruments, resulting in a “symphony” of sounds.

double exposure forms part of a series of works entitled bruit (noise). It was composed in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham (UK), and the composer’s home studio. The first performance was given at the festival L’espace du son 2001 as part of an electroacoustic concert interpreted by the composer.

Premiere

• October 3, 2001, L’Espace du son 2001: Rue Schaeffer et Rue Schafer, Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium)

A short sequence of vistas taken from Close in Distant Cold Light — an eight-channel ‘acousmatic documentary’ that explores the perceptions and imaginings of northern regions of Canada as told by persons geographically or culturally distant from ‘north.’ The material explores themes including frozen states, rapid change, the aurora borealis, and expanse.

The title refers to something in which all the pieces fit together and work, maybe something metallic and shiny, with ratios and moving forces — an abstract construction that creates an expressive structure. Time spans are articulated by slowly changing timbres that swirl and move through space, punctuated by metallic plucking sounds.

Octet with Puzzle creates a brief moment of incomprehension in which something is incompletely described. Here is a puzzle that cannot be solved because the accompanying diagram is omitted. The octet consists of eight layers traversing the same 44 computer-generated pitches but with different durations and timbres.

This radiophonic electro-clip about recording and remembering was part of the much longer collaborative project Ways of Hearing (cec.concordia.ca/Radio/Long/Prior.html) produced by David Prior and Dugal McKinnon. This clip was realized with the support of Violet and Clarence Belbin, Ida and Stanley Belbin, and Mary and Terry Chuprun.

The title derives from John Ashbery’s lines: “Like a wave breaking upon a rock, giving up / Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.”

This image seems to describe the sound-objects in WaveBreak. Each event evolves continuously toward the next, the outcome uncertain until the event has passed.

Atmospheres of strong density are created in this piece, exploiting the idea of “non-evolutive mobility,” as well as that one of temporal statism. Formally speaking, it is divided in two macrosections.

Estatismo was realized in 1989 in the now defunct LME (Laboratorio de Música Experimental, Escuela de Artes, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) using a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer.

Composition

• 1989, Laboratorio de Música Experimental (LME) — Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba (Argentina)

SC was produced with the objective of making the most out of the marvelous SuperCollider software, whose initials provide the name for the piece. This is my second work produced completely with SuperCollider on a Power Macintosh 8600 / 200 in the LEIM of the National University of Córdoba.

This is an excerpt of the “minimal musique concrète” soundtrack for the experimental documentary film by Wolfgang Lehmann and Florian Krautkraemer (full duration 62 minutes). All sound material is originally recorded at this mysterious place in France, where one of the deepest sources on earth comes out of the rock.

Balloon is about the first realization of loss, the fragility of things and time’s unstoppable movement to tomorrow.

Most of Balloon was created from the sounds of the object itself: rubbed, inflated, deflated, etc. This excerpt is also derived from a surreptitious recording of the composer’s sons at age 3.

Strange Birds. The sounds are 100% retro double-modulator FM. The dozen-odd FM parameters are controlled by 0% retro simplicial interpolation, so the birds fly or rather chirp through a space with far less than a dozen dimensions.

Mon Dieu is one movement from a suite called C’est la vie. In this work I wanted to explore religion and spirituality through a pseudo-Jungian analysis of my past. Being Australian creates strange connections between religion and sport! Acknowledgement: The piece uses Jean Piché’s Cecilia FOF vocal synthesis instrument and Cybil score generation programs.

X-Ray Spex is a tongue-in-cheek, radiophonic glance at communication theory, technology and human perception. Thanks to Heather Bean, Pete McCrackin and Mike Liam “Po-ki” Doran, wherever you are.

Based on the passage “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), samples of thunder, string harmonics, pizzicati, crystal glasses, wind chimes, bowed crotales and vibraphone, are orchestrated to depict the interplay of light colours, reflections, and intensities. Premiered during the 31st Festival Synthèse Bourges 2001.

Premiere

• June 2001, Synthèse 2001: Concert, Bourges (Cher, France)

Mirror of Time has two parts. The second part rhythmically is the retrograde of the first. All voices are playing a steady rhythm throughout the piece, based on prime numbers.

A Choir of Voices? A Flocking of Birds? An Immense Gong? Nô? This piece was created with signal processing transformation of the source sounds of a penny whistle and voice of Philip Murphy speaking words from Composition (words on my website).

Alarm Calls is Sophia’s first electroacoustic piece and represents the ‘canary in the coal mine.’ A simple piece, it asks humans to watch where they step and heed environmental warnings, slow down, and realize all of nature is connected.

The title is from a poem by Fernando Pessoa. “Bright bugle of morning on the outer edge / Of the horizon’s cold half circle, / Tenuous distant bugle like hazy flags / Unfurled beyond where colours are visible…” The work was created in my home studio in Winnipeg.

Section 14 of the 24 part work Rhythmiconic Sections inspired by Theremin’s rhythmicon. A keyboard sounded any combination of the first sixteen tones of the harmonic series. For each beat of the fundamental the second harmonic beat twice, the third three times, etc., linking rhythm and harmonics. Realized with Kyma.

This movement was composed around samples of two horses breathing, two contrasting water samples (harmonised with the sound of an accordion), a funfair and an expansive open air scene near my home. This movement is formed around two attack gestures and is otherwise very slow moving, light and reflective. Resonating with the overall title of the work, Becalmed is an escape away from the rapid flow of information in my previous electroacoustic work.

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Various shapes and masses of different metals were recorded as they radiated summer heat into a block of frozen carbon dioxide. Studio transformations of the sound objects began at the Sheffield University Sound Studios with “Synopsis.” The original samples were made by Shea Goodwin, Scott Looney and myself.

Irrashaimase is an interior monologue or meditation on sounds of urban Japan: robotic, repetitive, and chaotic, but also — to my ears — elegant, delicate and musical. Its construction parallels the way our imaginations reshape and elaborate memories, often making of them much more — but sometimes much less — than the experiences that created them. I recorded most of the materials for this piece in Japan in 1990, on an analog ‘Walkman.’ During subsequent trips to Japan, in 2000 and ’02, I returned to many of the original locations, and noted that most of my chosen materials were effectively long-term ‘soundmarks’ for those locations, not the transitory phenomena I had expected. Through that knowledge, I came to realise that the piece is as much a sonic, cultural portrait of a place as it is a mnemonic of personal experience.

Irrashaimase is the 1st in a series of works concerned with the interplay between memory and imagination where the pieces merge soundscape, radiophonic, and acousmatic elements into abstracted musical portraits of times and places.

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Irrashaimase was realized in 2000 in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham (UK) and the composer’s studio in Nova Scotia (Canada), and premiered on February 6, 2000 during the “Aural Kinetics” concert series produced by BEAST at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham. The work has also been presented in BEAST: De Natura Sonorum (Birmingham) in 2004, and in other events in Canada. The composer acknowledges financial support from the Nova Scotia Arts Council during the creation of this work.

Composition

• 2000, Electroacoustic Music Studios — University of Birmingham, Birmingham (England, UK)
• 2000, Personal studio, Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada)

Premiere

• February 6, 2000, Aural Kinetics: Concert, Foyle Studio — Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (England, UK)

Submarine is an investigation into human emotion and is motivated by the Kursk submarine disaster. It explores the dichotomy produced through media presentation and my own introspective view of the intense suffering that must have occurred. Submarine is not about national politics, only people. Full program notes available by email.

les ponts de l’espace I consists of six short movements which originally served as a series of brief electroacoustic interventions between acoustic chamber works on a festival concert program. Each movement of les ponts de l’espace I is a miniature study of two compositional processes or strategies: each movement explores the spatial movement of sounds in predefined geometrical shapes and trajectories and is, in addition, a study in the combination and integration of natural environmental recordings with contrasting sound materials transformed and generated by various processes in the electroacoustic studio. A collection of sounds were captured from an invented instrument (Primordium) built by Tom Nunn and installed at Concordia University (Montréal) and consisting of a large, hollow wall panel adorned with various metal jangles, strings, protrusions and membranes. These sound materials, in addition to some synthesized granular synthesis textures, are arranged in such as fashion as to set up a variety of sonic relationships with an unprocessed recording of the sounds of a wintry urban street, sometimes as a parallel stream of activity, sometimes fused with the sounds of the environment that they have entered.

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les ponts de l’espace I was realized in 2001 at the composer’s studio and premiered on February 7, 2001 during the rESOund Festival of Contemporary Music at the Winspear Centre in Edmonton (Canada). The piece was commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Composition

• 2001, Personal studio, Calgary (Alberta, Canada)

Premiere

• February 7, 2001, rESOund Festival of Contemporary Music, Edmonton (Alberta, Canada)

Balloons are playful. Sometimes they cry out until they explode. When they are blue and broken they go to the divine garage. Thanks to Coryn, Susan and Lucy for advice and inspiration. Composed between November 1999 and March 2001 in West Yorkshire (UK).

To Rita Lebrun Trudel, in memoriam

Memory of the body / sunlight which drenches my hands / melancholy / the attentive ear / my eyes / wary of the sleeping water / my feet on the warpath…

In memory of Rita Lebrun Trudel. With thanks to Nicolas Trudel (double bass).

Still Life with Castanets was composed using a single short recording, made by the composer, of the sounds of castanets. The piece was realized at the North Carolina State University Computer Music Studio (USA).

Massif, for double bass soloist and a multichannel orchestra of recorded basses, was created collaboratively by Richard Zvonar and Robert Black during a Media Arts recording residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts in 1993. It was premiered at Banff in 1995, at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC).