A concert series with 8-channels of sound.

Feb 12-14, 1999

Music Gallery, Toronto

Q: What shall we dream of when virtual reality renders everything visible?

A: We'll dream of being blind.

Darren Copeland's seventy-minute work about blindness, Life Unseen, is entirely a journey for the ear. This work kicked-off Sound Travels, the electroacoustic music festival produced by Copeland and New Adventures in Sound. Copeland - with help from writer/actress Alex Bulmer, who has experienced a gradual journey into legal blindness - guides us through rich stories and soundscapes which illuminate the topic of blindness and, more importantly, take our ears on a trip. The material consists of interviews, documentary-type recording, soundscape exploration, and some more mysterious, emotive textures.

Although the text is at times difficult to discern, Copeland's strategy is graceful: in exploring the world of the blind, he reintroduces his audience to listening. Text such as, "There's always sound there," and "...listening to know what's around me," poetically points to the ever rich and changing sounds present in the piece, and in turn, in one's life. These sounds range from cane-tapping through a crowded store, to bells, machines, planes, rain. Throughout: water, a symbol of the organic, and also a tool for structure, momentum, and psychological contour within the piece. The composer has not, you see, simply used one type of water, he has used quiet drizzles, rushing streams, pounding rain, and massive falls, and each time water appears the energy and psychology is very different.

Blindness is a fascinating subject to explore with the medium of electroacoustics, and although I could have handled an even deeper exploration of the psychophysical and metaphysical implications of the blind experience, Copeland's mastery of sound and his ability to craft it to tell a story - and excite the ears - is a welcome gift. The work sustains itself through seventy minutes; its huge palette of wonderfully recorded and composed sounds made Life Unseen a strong beginning to a great weekend of music.

So that was Friday at Toronto's Sound Travels, the recent festival produced by Copeland's New Adventures in Sound. He mounted similar shows in Vancouver and Montreal, and provided residencies for several composers. Those featured on the concerts were given the opportunity to use the Canadian-made DM1616 Audio Box, a programmable mixing matrix designed for multi-speaker presentation - this gives the audience an experience more engaging than does a stereo presentation, and is one way to draw some kind of live electroacoustic audience. The technique, and much of the material chosen, was a real treat to listen to.

Saturday's concert began with a piece called Crickpet by Yves Gigon, a Montrealer and Concordia student. Although the piece is intriguing in its premise - it allows the original sonic material to determine its form - it did not strike me as strongly as some of the other work on the program. Its spectral range is somewhat limited, and its dynamics are rather unvaried - also, I tend to find electroacoustic music containing a lot of long tones and drones a little conservative. The piece was well produced, but I would have liked more sonic complexity.

La Robe Nue by Jacques Tremblay, on the other hand, was a thoroughly enjoyable piece of music. I'm looking at my notes - the onomatopoeic words I chose are indicative of Tremblay's evocative sounds: buzz, whir, chirp, creek. And wonderful organic noise: water, birds, a horse, wings, and something like dolphin clicks! La Robe Nue is an excellent example of spectral, dynamic, and spatial variety. Tremblay has a sensitive ear for sound - his timbres run the entire range between breathlessly high, and viscerally low frequencies, and his sense of pace and placement is subtle and graceful. Like much Québecois work, this has a strong sense of causation and momentum: one thing leads to another. Tremblay's sonic world is so rich that I wonder why he occasionally includes such dramatically out-of-place timbres such as synthesized strings and bells. These sounds are rare, but detract from an otherwise wonderful piece.

The first half of Toronto composer Randall Smith's The Unmoved Centre left me kind of, well, unmoved. Some sounds are a little too commonplace - little mystery. Also there is little timbral variety, and some sounds could be more complex. There is little silence or dynamic range. Also, there is a strong sense of glissando and chromatic harmony, which I find quite uninteresting in a medium where timbral exploration is what really thrills me. Approximately half-way through, however, the character of the piece changes and some very fascinating music is created. After this point there is much more spectral subtlety, and sensitive dynamic range, including silence. The sound events become more discrete and less reliant on pitched material, although a chromatic cluster of some synthetic timbre does intrude. In the end then, some really rewarding sounds came out of Smith's effort.

Christian Bouchard's unfinished work Sirènes was a really strong work. Bouchard is studying under the excellent composer Yves Daoust, which seems appropriate given his attention to detail. This piece is full of dramatic and tantalizing timbre. Changes from dense to sparse, from loud to soft, from broad-band to pitched. Growling grinding, beeping and buzzing...and silence. A strong sense of space. I look forward to hearing the finished work.

Bruits was the title of Saturday's closing piece, a very strong recent work by the above mentioned Yves Daoust. Listening to the work is almost like becoming an omniscient character with faulty ears, let loose on the city! Daoust uses mostly urban aural scenes as source material: car alarms, street scenes, children playing, crowds cheering etc. Most of this material is chopped up crassly by some kind of gate or crude granular tool. The effect is dramatic: hard gating like this really sounds like some kind of violence enacted on the material. Of course, the result is not only the literal disintegration of the old sound, but the synthesis of a new from the parts of the old. The composer evokes a certain pointillism in this piece too, by placing the grains of sound strategically in the eight-speaker grid rather than using conventional panning techniques. Wonderful textures, rich timbres, and at one magical point the Daoust classic: a distant piano melody. The gating effect is so evocative and emotive that short portions of ungated material become important periods of aural relief and significant compositional landmarks - larger windows in time. Bruits is another successful work by a favourite of mine, Yves Daoust.

Sunday night was solid too. Ned Bouhalassa's Andante in C was as dark and mysterious as it was well-crafted. Again a piece with a strong sense of causation from gesture to gesture, and well-produced, rich material. Most of the sound is concrète, though a synth chord seemed out of place near the end. In general a very good work though. Industrial hums, machines clunking, rhythmic envelopes, 60Hz humming...and ducks and dripping water! Extremely varied but cohesive spectral content, good dynamic range, and most important: unusual and bold material. I love work that isn't afraid to be a little dramatic. But Andante in C isn't over-the-top, it resonates with a dark urban aesthetic.

The Answer Which the Court Gives by Chris Rolfe was disappointing, considering he's the designer of the software used for the eight-channel diffusion system. A section of near-realistic cymbal crescendi and other percussion instruments seems out of place after a long time spent on highly processed material (overly sweet drones and harmonic resonance). And even more glaringly in conflict is a later section with chromatic MIDI-orchestrated synthetic sounds. Seemed like three different pieces, none of which had the complexity to move or interest me. Rolfe is to thank, however, for his contributions to audio in terms of software design.

Pendlerdrøm (commuterdream) is inspired by the notion of a commuter traveling home from the Central Train Station in Copenhagen. Barry Truax's new work is sensitive, well-produced, and unusual: a real gem. The piece begins like a soundscape composition, inviting us to listen the various qualities of a crowded transit centre. Before too long however, the piece evolves into a non-linear exploration of the sound materials. This section consists of granular time-stretching and various processing to evoke the hidden qualities of sound, and to transport the listener into a more dream-like space and time. Soon, transparent soundscape returns and we are able to reflect on the relations between these different sound worlds. Shortly another processed section begins, this time more lovely than the last. Truax's restraint is to be commended in this piece, especially when his famous granular techniques tend to lend themselves so well to grand and dense textures; Pendlerdrøm is subtle and elegant. There is a melancholic melodic motive, created with a resonator I think: the kind of subtle touch that makes the piece. A certain cinematic quality pervades the work, and an excellent - perhaps the most effective in the festival - use of the eight-channel system. The nature of the material - moving vehicles and large spaces - lends itself perfectly to the spatialization process. Altogether a beautiful journey from real to psychologized space and back.

Ken Newby's Seasonal Round was very good. Spoken word written and read by Robert Anthony was unusual and well performed. The voice even seemed minutely time-stretched because of elongated consonants, however the effect was subtle (and very powerful for so being) and might have simply been spoken that way. The result is an eerie, almost sinister character - very dark and interesting. Unfortunately the text was only partly intelligible. Evocative sounds of rain, jungle noises, a cuckoo clock, frogs chirping, flute, singing, and even an orchestra tuning! An intriguing piece of work.

The closing piece on Sunday's bill was a remix by Matt Rogalsky of Martin Bartlett's Pulse Studies, a process piece originally composed in 1976 using analogue synthesizers. The piece is reminiscent of pattern music of Steve Reich, John Adams, and others. Bartlett apparently thought of the work as incidental music, rather than that which should be directly attended to in a concert setting. He was right. Even edited to half its original forty-minute length, and processed in various ways by Rogalsky, the piece is not exciting. It was pleasant, relaxing, and sometimes interesting in its polyrhythms, but there are many Bartlett pieces which I find totally magical and would have much rather heard on the multi-speaker system.

Well, I'm over my word count, but I still have two things to address: there were a couple of performance installations around Sound Travels that need to be mentioned. During the afternoons, Lynda Hill's Dark Forest was available for public attendance. The Music Gallery floor was cleared of chairs for this installation, which consisted of a large area covered with beautiful dry autumn leaves. The perimetre of this space was designated by a rectangle of text, painted on the floor. The text consisted of excerpts from descriptions of violence against women. Also around the perimetre hung several high-powered flashlights, dangling from the ceiling, and put into motion at various points. Inside the performance space was dancer Viv Moore, dressed in a nightgown and jacket. Finally, the installation included a rich soundscape diffused to the many speakers surrounding the space. The sounds consisted of a constant wailing texture like processed bird calls, as well as occasional events such as footsteps and text. The image of the flashlights swinging and illuminating various portions of text, the smell of the leaves, and the austere soundscape made for a potent, almost filmic, scene. Moore's movement was very slow, patient, and not overly dramatic - this is important because the piece was already almost too intense in its content to endure for long, but rich enough in imagery to make it an interesting experience. I would be curioue to see what Hill could achieve given a theatrical setting, rather than an ongoing installation/performance. It seems like the evocative elements could be pushed quite far into an interesting drama.

The other installation was called Bells and Whistles, created by Mark Brownell and Leslie Ashton. It was a kind of interactive puppet show with sound and buttons to push. You go through a number of steps, are asked questions, handed props, and shown varying scenes of puppetry. Whether talking about sex or politics the 'Mega Kiosk' was a goofy exercise good for a few laughs, but irritating as hell if you were there every night! If you're like me and you get angry every time you see a commercial for Royal Canadian Air Farce, Bells and Whistles might not suit your sense of humour. However, the interactive initiative is appreciated, and I think people basically got a kick out of the experience.

Sound Travels was a welcome journey for the ear. Thanks to Darren Copeland for organizing the thing, and thanks to the composers, artists, technicians, and programmers for their hard work and innovation. The idea of live electroacoustic music is a great one, and this eight-speaker system is one way of developing it. I hope we can look forward to further such explorations, and also work for live instrument and tape, theatre, visuals, and interactive systems. Electroacoustic music is my favorite kind when it's well done, and Sound Travels was an example of the art form at its best.

Josh Thorpe is a composer, interdisciplinary artist, and writer living in Toronto.