Two honourable mentions were given at Musicworks' 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest: the first to Roxanne Nesbitt's Soft Storms Welcomed, and the second to Jason Doell's Leaning into Softness.
Roxanne Nesbitt is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the space between sound and design. She is trained as an architect and orchestral bassist. Her research includes experimental instrument design, composition, improvisation, sound installation, and performance. Roxanne collaborates with musicians, dancers and choreographers as a performer and composer. She has premiered new compositions at the Western Front and PUSH festival in Vancouver, Array Space in Toronto, and Bauchhund in Berlin. Roxanne fronts her own band, Graftician, and is a member of the improvised duo, Why Choir, alongside Juno award winning drummer Ben Brown.
"I composed this piece for the Western Front's Octophonic: Sound Immersion concert. This is the stereo version. It is made from samples. Some that I have worked with for over 10 years, others recently acquired for a live sound track that I made for the Biting School's "Suddenly Slaughter," performed Jan. 2019. I improvised with the sounds I knew well from the sound track and then stepped away and polished it a bit."
Jason Doell is an artist based in Tkarón:to / Toronto whose primary medium is sound, with a focus on site- and context-specific works, live coding, and signal-chain manipulation. Jason’s often delicate work traces the edges of sense-making and explores the thresholds of contextual coherence, often straddling composed work, multimedia installation, and improvisation.
"Leaning into Softness is anything but. It was created in collaboration with sad(john).low (an algorithmic-composition-assistance software that I have developed), which listened to hours of .wav files, selected material from them, and ordered that material into an output which was then edited by a human. Flute recordings by Sara Constant."
