93 Fall 2005
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FEATURE ARTICLES:
Malcolm Goldstein: amid the process of discovery
by Udo Kasemets
Article Summary: Composer and pianist Udo Kasemets applies his professional knowledge and aural acuity to the recent music of composer-violinist-improviser Malcolm Goldstein, as presented at a two-evening performance event in Montreal in November, 2004, and as lately recorded on three CDs. By discussing in detail Goldstein's latest offerings as a composer, performer, and improviser, and by considering their presentation in the different aural contexts of recording and in-person performance, Kasemets provides insight into the æsthetic principles and artistic focus that have informed Goldstein's practice throughout his musicking career. The centrepiece of the Montreal concerts, a bilingual version of Goldstein¹s Regarding the Tower of Babel, is discussed in some detail. Several of Goldstein¹s solo composition-improvisations, presented live at the Montreal concerts, appear also on his CD, Hardscrabble Songs, which features one of two very different performances by the Quatuor Bozzini of his string quartet, A New Song of Many Faces for These Times. Kasemets compares the two readings of the same score. He also considers Goldstein¹s recorded collaboration with German percussionist Matthias Kaul, which displays both musicians' artistry in the most favourable light.
Eric Chenaux: eclecticism that won¹t stay parked
by Jonny Dovercourt
Article Summary: Eric Chenaux is a well-known figure in Toronto¹s experimental music scene, and is an artist who constantly reinvents himself. Since first appearing with avant-punk trio Phleg Camp in the 1980s, he has had an artistic transformation every few years. Since 2000, he has been involved with the Rat-Drifting music series and record label, making strange, free-improv-influenced music with The Reveries, The Draperies, and The Guayaveras. Lately, he has returned to folk-inspired songwriting in collaborations with Michelle McAdorey and Martin Arnold, and his new group, The Tristanos. Chenaux himself, however, sees his artistic growth as more of a process of continuation rather than transformation.
Shelley Craig: mixing sound for film
by Lisa Gasior
Article Summary: Shelley Craig is a re-recording mixer for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Her job is the final stage of film sound production, and includes some editing as well as mixing and balancing the sounds for stereo and 5.1 sound systems. The mixing studio is a theatre, equipped with a large screen and THX theatre sound, Long fades and certain types of processing must be left to the mixing stage if they are to be done with precision and accuracy.
Craig was the first woman to graduate from the Tonemeister master¹s program at McGill University and is one of only two or three female re-recording mixers in North America. Is this field not suited for women? Perhaps the idea of mastering the final mix and manning a giant mixing console is not appropriate for women‹even the language of the profession is gendered in masculine terms. Shelley Craig¹s experience in sound production is vast, having worked as a music recordist and a professor of film sound at McGill University. Her work touches the directors she works with, her students, and her own family as she mixes the soundtrack of her career with her personal life as a mother of four children.
Ondo singers of Kawachi, Japan
by Emmanuelle Loubet
Article Summary: Emmanuelle Loubet, an authority on the culture of Japan¹s Kawachi region, explores the vital musical impulse that gives rise to constant innovation in the Kawachi version of ondo, traditional epic songs performed in Japan during summer festivals of music and dance honouring the spirits of the dead. Loubet has lived for more than fifteen years in direct and constant contact with the artists and inhabitants of Kawachi. The wild vitality and independent character manifest in the Kawachi ondo is inextricably linked to the social fabric of Kawachi¹s local culture. Loubet traces the cultural, social, and political history of this music that was once described as "the most dangerous music of Japan." In doing so, she also offers enticing insights into the music itself, its peculiarities, incongruities, and mysteries.
COLUMNS:
We¹ve begun a new section of the magazine with this issue, called sonic geography, in which writers describe aspects of their local music communities. In issue 93 we have:
John Luther Adams in Alaska
Chiyoko Szlavnics in Berlin
Linda O¹keeffe in Ireland
Jenna Newman in Vancouver
Diana McIntosh in Winnipeg
Commentary: Avatar Audio and the 12-hour-and-20-minute CD by Philippe Pasquier with Marie-France Thérien
The production of the Excavation sonore CD-Audio-MP3 led the Avatar team to speculate on the present and future use of this audio medium. Until recently, one needed a computer or a dedicated MP3 player to listen to music recorded in MP3 format, but now most newer models of CD players are able to read CD-Audio-MP3s. One might think that the music industry would react to the growing popularity of this new technology by exploiting it to its advantage, but so far it has done nothing. The record industry screams "Piracy!" because of the loss of its earnings. In the debates that surround this phenomenon, it is rare that criteria other than strictly economic ones are taken into account. The impact of these new practices on audio art, music, and artists is discussed only marginally. The CD-Audio-MP3 can be understood as a pragmatic solution developed by customers to meet their needs in response to the decline of the recording industry as we know it. In the final analysis, it seems that file-sharing networks threaten neither music nor artists: they threaten only the current publishing industry.
Now Notes: Project SYMPHOSIUM: Listen!
by Udo Kasemets
Through two personal anecdotes, one of them involving an encounter with John Cage, composer-pianist Udo Kasemets illustrates the need to develop well- centred listening habits, focusing primarily on the physical substance of sounds rather than on the various extra-sonic messages the sounds might be carrying.
D.I.Y. music: Loudspeaker Arrays
by Philippe-Aubert Gauthier, with Alain Berry, and Wieslaw
Woszczyk
This article proposes approaches to sound projection using compact and economical arrays of loudspeakers placed at the front of a room.
CD CONTENTS
[1] where are we going when we¹re standing still, looking backwards?
16:48 / by/par Malcolm Goldstein
[2] approaching the wall 7:42 / by/par Malcolm Goldstein
[3] Warm Weather With Soundballs 20:11 / by/par Eric Chenaux, Marla Hlady
and/et Arraymusic
[4, 5] War Hospital 3:43; John & Michael 2:48 / re-recording mix by/mixage de réenregistrements par Shelley Craig
[6] Kawachi Audio-spectral 12:14 / by/par Emmanuelle Loubet. A sound collage including Mitsusaburo Teppo, Mitsuji Kawachiya, Fusakatsu Sakuragawa.
REVIEWS
Events:
MUTEK in Montreal
FIMAV in Victoriaville
HTMlles/MAID IN CYBERSPACE in Montreal
Evergreen Club Gamelan with the Glass Orchestra in Toronto Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in Kitchener L¹orielle fine in Toronto Colegio de Compositores in Mexico City.
The Ambient Ping in Toronto.
Recordings:
Akuvido. NebeNeiNaNnder on Staalplaat
Rob Clutton on Rat-Drifting
Kyle Gann, Sarah Cahill on Cold Blue
GOO and Formanex. on fibrr
Paul Griffiths and Frances-Marie Uitti on ECM Records Doug Haire on Bang Kung Tim
Hecker and Jazzkammer on Staalplaat Harry Partch Collection on New World Lee Ranaldo on DSA Ann Southam on Canadian Music Centre Propaganda Reworked on cocosolidciti Revista de arte sonoro from Spain Ghettoblaster Ensemble on Ssshhhhh Alexander von
Schlippenbach, Axel Dörner, Rudi Mahall, Jan Roder, Uli Jennessen. Monk¹s Casino on Intakt Veryan Weston, John Edwards, and Mark Sanders on Emanem Zanana on Deep Listening
Words:
Christof Migone - Sound Voice Perform (Critical Ear series) Pauline
Oliveros, Deep Listening A Composer¹s Sound Practice.
Music Universe, Music Mind (Revisiting the Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, New York) by Robert E. Sweet
Visions of Sound:
Scores by Anestis Logothetis, with an introduction by Gue Schmidt
