HONOURABLE MENTION: Stéphane Roy's Avec le temps…
Time passing like a quiet caravan, this perpetual flow that does not know the human being inhabited by his consciousness of the past-present-future, a movement that nothing can derail or slow down and that flows inexorably through infinite small slices of "present": this is the background on which our existences unfold. Music, like any art of time, unfolds in this dimension, but at the same time it gives it a human face to the point of creating an experiential time where sometimes the temporal flow "remembers," "anticipates," is precipitous and elusive, sometimes frozen and almost immobile, or else it contracts, dilates, and wraps around itself under the effect of an endless loop.
Avec le temps... is a multichannel acousmatic project (5.1) that includes nine miniatures with their own temporal identity. These miniatures can be presented in variable geometry and assembled in a different order for each concert to highlight new dynamic relationships between them. Three miniatures have been selected in this version, each testifying to temporal experiences. I leave it to the listener to determine the temporality of these different moments. But beyond the temporal thematic, there is the music which dominates the time lived by its phonographies, its settings in space, its silences carrying meaning, its lyricism and its fury.
« Sound-footprints » recur at various moments throughout the acousmatic suite as well as a leitmotiv formed by an iteration in echo, which can be regular, in contraction or in dilation, and which symbolizes the experiential time.
The work was composed in my studio in Montreal and received research and creation funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.
—Stéphane Roy
Stéphane Roy is an acousmatic composer. His art esthetics allow him—after experimentations with sound materials—to extract expressive properties and give these works teleological motion. Roy’s 2003 book on the analysis of electroacoustic music earned him the 2003-04 Prix Opus—Book of the Year. His works have won several awards and mentions in national and international electroacoustic composition competitions. His latest album, L’inaudible, received the 2019-2020 Prix Opus—Album of the year, Electroacoustic Music. His works have been programmed and premiered throughout Europe and the Americas. Roy holds a doctorate in electroacoustic composition and a PhD in musicology, both from Université de Montréal. He has taught composition, auditory perception, and electroacoustic music analysis in various universities and music conservatories, in Québec and abroad. Stéphane Roy is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre (CMC), and his works are available on various labels, including empreintes DIGITALes. He is currently a member and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Le Vivier Group.
HONOURABLE MENTION Bekah Simms' subsume
subsume uses samplings from an eclectic group of performers to create a dense and kaleidoscopic musical texture accompanied by visuals from artist Dan Tapper. subsume is co-created with: Dan Tapper, visual artist; Leslie Newman, bass flute; Anthony Thompson, bass clarinet; Amahl Arulanandam, cello; Tim Brady, electric guitar; Christopher Gongos, French horn; David Pell, bass trombone; Branko Džinović, accordion; Phil Albert, electric bass; Rick Sacks, percussion; Alison Melville, tenor / bass recorder; Wesley Shen, shō; Lina Cao, guzheng;\ Njacko Backo, kalimba; Gurpreet Chana, tabla; Demetrios Petsalakis, lute; Paul Talbott, mixing.
Composer Bekah Simms hails from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and is currently based in Glasgow. Propelled equally by fascination with and terror of the universe, Simms filters much of her work through the personal lens of her anxiety, resulting in nervous, messy, and frequently heavy electroacoustic musical landscapes. Her recent interests in just intonation and virtual instruments have led to the creation of lush and strange harmonic environments. Simms’ music has been widely performed across North America and Europe. She has worked with some of the top Canadian and international interpreters of contemporary music. Simms has won numerous awards for her work, including the 2019 Barlow Prize and the 2023 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Her piece
metamold was nominated for the 2022 Gaudeamus Award. Simms is currently Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, following previous academic positions at the University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario. She holds a D.M.A. and M.Mus in music composition from the University of Toronto, and a B.Mus.Ed. and B.Mus in theory and composition from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
