When holophon.ca began talking about presenting a concert of multi-channel works, the idea of compiling an evening of alternative spaces was immediately appealing. I feel a multi-channel performance venue affords teh composer an opportunity to manipulate sound-space in a unique and versatile way.

For this concert, I wanted to bring together a collection of works that explore space through a wide range of approaches: Internal adn external, abstract and concrete. The concert opens with two very contrasting spaces, beginning with Suk-Jun Kim's completely imaginal destination in Welcome to Hasla then moving into the here adn now with Max Alexander's real-time occupation of space and sound, Decent at Arithmetic. The next three pieces all re-present real spaces in very different ways. Daniel Blinkhorn's In Situ Bacia takes the listener through a series of tropical rainforest vignettes. I wanted to include some sense of movement or travel in the concert, and David Gedosh's Train Song provides the listener with a means of transportation. The first half ends with David Berezan's Badlands, a reminiscent visitation to a place very near to “home”, both for the composer and for our prairie audience.

The second half begins with Barry Truax's Chalice Well, taking the listener deep underground through a series of wet, dripping, resonant chambers and hollow. This dense work is followed by Jeff Thompson's Glistening Waves, a more absract sonification of the sea. These pieces both explore the sounds of water in two very different ways. I chose Jeff Morton's Parliament Music to follow as it is another somewhat abstracted sonification of space using multiple performers and live electronics to voice the hubbub of our nation's capital. Ellen Moffat's Bachelor Suite and Jon Carteri's Schumann Resonances shift the focus of our concert into more intimate sounding-spaces. Moffat's work moves under the floorboards to explore the small, subtle sounds of her living room, creating a piece that anyone with upstairs neighbours can instantly identify with. Carteri, on the other hand, takes a very embodied approach with a series of short works vibrating sympathetically with the different resonances of the body's chakkra points. I hope you all enjoy this collection of sounding-spaces as much as I have enjoyed putting them together.

Concert Program

Suk-Jun Kim Welcome to Hasla! (2007)
audio

Max Alexander Decent at Arithmetic (2010)
video and audio performance

Daniel Blinkhorn In Situ Bacia (2009)
audio

David Gedosh Train Song (2008)
audio

David Berezan Badlands (2008)
audio