Events + News
SUPERIMPOSER
finally ITISYSM‘s release of SUPERIMPOSER is here! Click on the image below and ENJOY! also on bandcamp The debut of Vancouver’s I THINK I SAW YOU SEE ME is a rousing, panoramic affair that bursts through the confines of its chosen format, the cassette. The quintet collectively finds the mid-point between proggy intricacy and the brazen heft of so-called math-rock, and departs from there toward uncharted destinations. Guitar asymmetry occupies the foreground for much of the album, imparting both heaviness and a restless danceability, yet there’s also a sense of volatile nuance that’s ever-present, undoubtedly due to the immersion of its membership in an eclectic array of musics—especially of the improvised variety. The electronic abstraction of experimental music veteran Giorgio Magnanensi cements this impression, providing a destabilizing force with its psychedelic trickles and neon spirals. Superimposer‘s twelve-minute final cut exemplifies the band’s singular chemistry. First, insistent interlocking guitar figures prod at a molten texture, pushing it to the point of eruption. Then, after a moment of repose, the group converges upon what initially seems like a more relaxed coda, but gradually this unravels to bring forth a turbulent climax. Tellingly, the album’s widescreen ambitions are reflected in visual counterparts that were produced for its series of titular tracks. These include collaborations with Canadian video artists from across the country: Emma Tomic, Michaela Grill, and Hadis Fard. BAND: Giorgio Magnanensi: electronics; Kenton Loewen: drums James Meger: bass; Gavin Youngash: guitar ; Cole Schmidt: guitar CREDITS: Recorded by John Raham at Afterlife Studios Mixed by James Meger; Mastered by Jesse Zubot Album art by Julia Devorak TRACKLIST: SUPERIMPOSER 1 SUPERIMPOSER 2 SUPERIMPOSER 3 . SUPERIMPOSER 4 * * * * * * * Videos by Emma Tomic, Michaela Grill, and Hadis Fard....
read moretransistor radio
transistor radio on twitch tonight for this great marathon organized by echo_lightwave_unspeakable...
read morelamenti senza parole • failure and resistance
I go back today to these lines about an old idea of failure and resistance, a paradox maybe. Tough, one I wish to hold on while living in our ever more desperate planet. While not new, Kundera’s words resonate again very strongly with me at this age and time. Maybe too many ‘drops’ have been slowly filling me up. While in a vortex of frustrations, I do not really wish to go back to another ’normal’. That normal is possibly one of the main causes of our own demise. So lamenting can be granted, but not just because of desperation. Sadness is not depression, sadness is revolt, a drastic shift, a touch, a wave… […] The only thing I deeply, avidly, wanted was a lucid, unillusioned eye. I finally found it in the art of the novel. This is why for me being a novelist was more than just working in one “literary genre” rather than another; it was an outlook, a wisdom, a position; a position that would rule out identification with any politics, any religion, any ideology, any moral doctrine, any group; a considered, stubborn, furious non-identification, conceived not as evasion or passivity but as resistance, defiance, rebellion. I wound up having some odd conversations: “Are you a Communist, Mr. Kundera?” “No, I’m a novelist.” “Are you a dissident?” “No, I’m a novelist.” “Are you on the left or the right?” “Neither. I’m a novelist.” Since early youth, I have been in love with modern art—with its painting, its music, its poetry. But modern art was marked by its “lyrical spirit,” by its illusions of progress, its ideology of the double revolution, aesthetic and political, and little by little, I took a dislike to all that. […] – from Testaments Betrayed by Milan Kundera “…doing while thinking, thinking while doing,” said and lived Franco Donatoni. I can’t even speak or write decently in my mother language anymore, let alone think … but all in all I don’t mind or care anymore. Losing contact with forms and rhetoric to favor sound thinking, or a “sounding” thought, beyond any language, is what – willingly or unwillingly – seems to be my constant behavior. Reality also seems to demonstrate that despite everything, (… all the work, all the compositions, all the performances, activities, speeches, seminars, essays, books, parties and scores) I cannot verify any effect of my work in the reality of the world. Failure seems obvious. A torn planet and a desperate humanity do not seem to receive any beneficial influence from any aesthetic or philosophical position of/on “musical discourse”. Then non-identification: aware and tenacious, not as evasion or passivity but as resistance, seems to be – with Milan Kundera – not just a choice but the real necessity for...
read morewith Josh Martin (3 excerpts)
We finally started our research and experiments with the interactive floor. After testing and experimenting for sometime with a variety of smaller settings, this is finally a prototype for a possibly larger floor and walls system that I look forward to developing with Josh Martin, and sharing it with everyone in the near future. ...
read moreVexing project
VEXATIONS for Erik Satie’s Birthday on 17th May 2021 …another reading, celebrating Erik Satie’s 155th birthday VEXATIONS for Erik Satie’s Birthday on 17th May 2020 This version of Vexations was made reading a “translation” of my piano rendition as a midi file then read again into a MaxMSP pitch tracker patch that uses an emulation of the 1972 Eminent 310 string synthesizer Part of the VEXING PROJECT https://satievexations.art/live-stream/ ...
read morefield trips
A distant collaboration with Vicky Mettler (aka Kee Avil) presented by Sawdust Collector and Barking Sphinx View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sawdust Collector (@heysawdustcollector) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sawdust Collector (@heysawdustcollector) ºººº Sawdust Collector and Barking Sphinx Performance Present ºººº FieldTrips • May 2021 Weekly Releases, Tuesdays at 9:30 pm • May 4 – 25 Video collaborations. Watch Anytime, or Many Times. ºººº May 4 ºººº TILLICUM SHANTIE Russell Wallace and Tony Wilson André Lachance bass, Kai Basanta drums, Dave Say sax, Michelle Bardach vocals, and Sam Dabrusin vocals. Shot and Edited by Jo Hirabayashi ºººº May 11 ºººº VICKY METTLER & GIORGIO MAGNANENSI Remote Collaboration VICKY’S VIDEO: Acoustic guitar by Vicky Mettler Sitka Spruce resonators, plate reverb, touch boards (plywood,Douglas Fir bark),blippoobox, Max/MSP & capacitance sensors by Giorgio Magnanensi Recording and mixing- Zachary Scholes Video production- Live in Concrete GIORGIO’S VIDEO: Sitka Spruce resonators, plate reverb, touch boards (plywood,Douglas Fir bark), blippoobox, Max/MSP & capacitance sensor by Giorgio Magnanensi Acoustic guitar by Vicky Mettler Mixing by Zachary Scholes Video Production by Giorgio Magnanensi ºººº May 18 ºººº SPELLS FOR CHINATOWN Dumb Instrument Dance with artists Justin Calvaderos, Shion Skye Carter, Marisa Gold, Ziyian Kwan, Sarah Wong Shot, Edited and Music by Jo Hirabayashi ºººº May 25 ºººº DEVOURS Album Launch Animation by Gil Goletski Projection by Chris Strickler Performance Shot and Edited by Jo Hirabayashi ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº ºººº Barking Sphinx Performance Society is grateful to work in community on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. ...
read moretesting reactive floor
Testing a prototype floor/touch board, to use with dancers in a future project I’ll expand this to a 5’x8′ floor with at least 2 piezos to drive Max/MSP, and possibly run multichannel audio out in 8 wood resonators. It should be pretty fun and engaging both to use and watch/listen. …hopefully sometime in a not too distant future : ) …with the blippoo box connected to the system Testing a larger floor: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Giorgio Magnanensi (@giominz) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Giorgio Magnanensi (@giominz) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Giorgio Magnanensi (@giominz) ...
read moreLeah and Alma’s scores
Leah Abramson and her daughter Alma (age 2), sent me these two images after they attended a recent VNM/LABORATORIO Painting Music • One-Page Score workshop. I had fun working and sonifying these great graphic scores in these last few days. Thank you Leah and Alma! Leah Abramson, Matrescence Alma Abramson Huizing, Untitled ...
read moreparallel 03
Parallel 03: Endlings (Raven Chacon and John Dieterich) + collaborators https://www.parallel03.com/ Parallel 03 brings together a new collaboration between New Mexico-based musicians Raven Chacon and John Dieterich (known together as Endlings) and six Vancouver musicians and sound artists utilizing a variety of cross-platform and anonymous methods for composition and improvisation. Composed, recorded, and arranged over four months of isolation in 2020, the eight collaborators became generators, translators, mistranslators and filters for each others’ ideas in an incalculable feedback loop of expansive processes. Featuring… Raven Chacon John Dieterich Parmela Attariwala Adrian Avendaño John Brennan Elisa Ferrari Marina Hasselberg Alanna Ho Joel Schuman (website design) PARALLEL 03 In its labyrinthine nature this magic website well represents the creative work and interaction that have been developing and growing among all the artists involved in VNM’s Parallel 3 over a few months of collective work, dialogues, creations, discoveries and exchange. Before reflecting upon a few ideas emerging from the project and this space, I wish to give a special thank you to Raven Chacon and John Dieterich for their commitment, leadership and enthusiasm, to the six Vancouver musicians who wholeheartedly embraced this creative adventure during an intense time for everyone involved bringing their full creative power and passion, to Steve Chow for the beautiful poster design and to Joel Schuman who created this wonderful website resonating with all these visions and dreams. To thank these artists means mainly and foremost to acknowledge their wonderful creative spirit, a spirit that has been nurtured by many things: abstraction, analogy, beauty, brainstorming, intuition, tension, divergent thinking, questions, improvisation, noise, anxiety, diversity, magical thinking, playfulness, ambiguity, serendipity, story telling, experiment and the power of imagination… …dispersion, infiltration, osmosis, adoption, abstraction, contagion… music here finally aspires to the dimension of scent. Musical communication only exists on a purely emotional level. Emotionality is immanent, expression is definitely linked to the instant, instant is unpredictably transcendent. The labyrinthine and multidimensional nature of this project and this space has been inspired by imagination and perplexities, meandering, translations, sonic and silent utterances while discovering the ephemeral poetry hidden everywhere, …fragments used to define an ongoing and endless process in which we wander on the verge of discovering (…or revealing) ourselves. Fragments of form: perhaps the only possible form. Here we won’t find a single, indisputable centre, here a different kind of Harmonia, questions and awe, make everything equally important and equally unimportant. Here we blur invention and imagination, while they both give themselves to our perceptions in their multi-form and magical nature, while they act with full agency and are not acted upon. Invention and imagination here are not related to expression, as their very nature is purely symbolic: like cloudiness is not just about clouds. While looking at and immersing ourselves in these clouds we open to vast horizons while resonating with creative energy and poetics of engagement. Finally, a poetic vision emerges here within qualities and behaviours essential to any practice of freedom; to any healthy relationship among people and communities and within the biosphere we live in, the magic beauty of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. ( g ) ...
read more13 attitudes
13 attitudes THINK LIKE A FOREST ACT LIKE A MEADOW This publication was put together as part of The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination’s 9th Experiment: C.R.A.S.H: A post capitalist A to Z. London June 2009. Design: Škart and Simona Staniscia Share, redistribute, recycle and...
read moreDouglas Fir Touch-Bark
Here a few clips of my new Douglas Fir Touch-Board, equipped with a piezo to drive Max MSP Jitter and a Bare Conductive Touch Board with added metal sensors (last clip at 4′:05”). I’m having a lot of fun playing wih this bark! ...
read moreAUDIOSFERA
AUDIOSFERA AUDIOSPHERE Social Experimental Audio, Pre- and Post-InternetCollective Exhibition Sound piece selected : Very Glitchy PatchMuseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía • Madrid, Spain14 October, 2020 – 11 January, 2021 /Sabatini Building, Floor 3 Curated by Francisco LópezAUDIOSPHERE Sound Experimentation 1980-2020 AUTHORS: Francisco López, Thomas Bey William Bailey, Margie Borschke, Victor Nubla, Luis Alvarado, Guy Marc Hinant, Salomé Voegelin, Caleb Kelly, Paul Hegarty, Greg Hainge, Christoph Cox, John Oswald By way of a selection of hundreds of sound works, Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020 looks to cover an historical and cultural void in terms of the recognition, exhibition and analysis of a key part of the recent changes that have taken place in the artistic conception of sound creation. In the following catalogue, the curatorial discourse that articulates the exhibition is displayed along with some texts that affect the relevance of sound art in contemporary art and, with it, in the social field. Download AUDIOSFERA Catalogue HERE ⚠Warning: this video may potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy AUDIOSPHERE exhibition press weblinks: https://www.artforum.com/preview/audiosphere-social-experimental-audio-pre-and-post-internet-disonata-art-in-sound-up-to-1980-invisible-auto-sacramental-a-sonic-representation-from-val-del-omar-83969 https://www.esmadrid.com/en/whats-on/audiosphere-reina-sofia-museum https://www.thewire.co.uk/events/audiosphere-2020-2012 https://springtribune.com/2020/10/14/new-exhibition-of-the-reina-sofia-museum/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museo_Nacional_Centro_de_Arte_Reina_Sof%C3%ADa...
read moreMarina’s 2 improv sets
A couple of improv sets by Marina Hasselberg for which I did some video enhancement: ...
read moreWHERE DOES iT GOES
Elastic Stars released neu album ‘MUZiK’ on Tuesday, August 25, 2020. Recorded, Produced, & Mixed by-the-hand-of-the-band on Analog Tape at Elastic Stars Productions in Vancouver, CANADA, without the use or help of the almighty Computer, ‘MUZiK’ was sleekly designed to satellite the band’s favourite international playlists found exclusively on the World Wide Web. So sit back and enjoy the entirety of neu album ‘MUZiK’ as though you are grooving within the cerebral algorithms of the world’s only known band with the name Elastic Stars ! Video created by Elastic Stars Productions & Mixtape Rodeo Starring : Ese Atawo, Jenn Bojm & Colin Cowan Cinematography by Colin Cowan & Tyler Mcleod Digital Animations by Giorgio Magnanensi Directed & Edited by Colin Cowan elasticstars.com https://music.apple.com/album/1527385920?app=itunes&ls=1 https://music.apple.com/album/id/1527385920 https://open.spotify.com/album/51JIg4b4pw8HEkqmXbsZKD?si=rxH8tymfQx-dNcmX5DEh6Q ...
read moreHomage to Franco
Franco Donatoni (Verona, June 9, 1927 • Milano, August 17, 2000) ARGOT • two pieces for solo violin (1979) Silvia Mandolini, Violin Recorded in Bologna • August 16, 2020 • Chiesa dei Santi Cosma e Damiano Video: Alma Napolitano & Marco Mangani My dear friend and fantastic violinist Silvia Mandolini sent me this recording today, to remember and honour Franco Donatoni in the 20th anniversary of his passing on August 17, 2000 in Milano. Silvia was supposed to play in Vancouver in March, but unfortunately we had to cancel the event in light of the current pandemic. It’s so wonderful to hear her now even if from a distance and this is such a wonderful gift, a loving performace of a virtuosic and fiery piece by Franco. Silvia played this piece for Franco at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in the early 90’s and Franco was then – as he would still be now – amazed as we are by Silvia’s beautiful playing. Franco was a wonderful composer, a generous and kind man, a friend and magnificent teacher. His music is a tresure full of vivid and fantastic sonic visions, gestures and figures that will continue to inspire and resonate in our imagination. Thank you Silvia, and thank you dear Franco for your sonic treasures and beautiful musics. In loving memory of an inspiring soul and a wonderful and humble “music writer” …as Franco would say. More on Franco and his wonderful works HERE ...
read moreil tempo dei baleni (4F)
Ten years ago I wrote this short piece as a little homage to a great man, musician and friend, Franco Donatoni. Today, almost 10 years later, I’m thinking about Franco again in the 20th anniversary of his passing. The piece was written for the mdi ensemble which performed at the Venice Biennale in September 2010 in a program dedicated to Franco who passed away twenty years ago, August 17, 2000 in Milano. I had never written a piece dedicated to Franco before as all I have been writing in the last 40 years is in some and different ways the result of what I learned studying an working with him for many years and a constant homage to his spirit and generosity. At the same time I wanted to dedicate this older note to him, to remember to others who still might not know about him and his wonderful work, what a great person and wonderful sound thinker Franco Donatoni was. In 2001 I was asked to write something about him for a concert dedicated to his music. I’d like to share that text here again as it is still something which well represent my thoughts, ideas and deep feelings for him. il tempo dei baleni (4F) il tempo dei baleni Radicalizzando: l’ascolto è attenzione, non è apprendimento; l’ascolto è testimonianza di quello che accade in quanto suono, non è conoscenza di quello che accade mediante il suono. Dunque: il suono è la presenza di un assoluto, la sua annunciazione ne costituisce la rivelazione, l’ascolto non è allora certamente l’atto col quale si giunge ad un apprendimento dicorsivo, bensì il momento nel quale la percezione media e congiunge la molteplicità nell’unità della conoscenza formale. L’ascolto è esperienza immediata nella quale la conoscenza coincide all’atto: l’ascolto è ascesi. (Franco Donatoni) Mi è stato chiesto di scrivere alcune note per questa sera dedicata alle musiche di Franco Donatoni. Nonostante la lunga frequentazione con Franco non mi ritengo tuttavia un esperto nel senso stretto del termine e non mi addentreró quindi in disquisizioni musicologiche sul significato di gesto e figura, o sulla natura dei processi trasformativi della sua musica. La conoscenza e l’apprezzamento della sua musica è cresciuto in me fin dall’inizio attraverso il piú puro dei metodi possibili: ripetuti ascolti delle sue composizioni. Questi ascolti mi hanno rivelato le cristalline strutture formali dei pannelli, la ricchezza organica delle trame trasformative e i legami piú o meno sotteranei che collegano sequenzialmente numerose composizioni fra loro. Sono ancora questi ascolti meravigliose lezioni di composizione che Franco ci ha lasciato. Non molto tempo fa a un simposio di compositori canadesi, ascoltavo le minuziose spiegazioni che venivano date per illustrare come si era voluto procedere nella strutturazione della forma e dei materiali, cosa si era voluto esprimere, quanto, perchè, etc. Tutte queste “volontá” per giustificare o dare prospettive univoche o “ragionevoli” alla propria invenzione. Ho pensato allora a Franco, a certa sua riluttanza a spiegare, a dare giustificazioni alla propria fantasia. L’invenzione, l’immaginazione non si spiegano, si donano alla percezione nella loro multiformitá, si fanno ascoltare, agiscono e non sono agite. Questo è il segreto della comunicazione musicale: essa esiste in fondo ad un livello puramente emozionale. L’emozionalitá è immanente, l’espressione è imprescindibilmente legata all’istante, l’istante è imprescindibilmente trascendente. Alcuni si chiederanno cosa ció abbia a che fare con la musica di Franco...
read moreof the now: Archipelago
Excerpts from the livestream double artist talk, presented by of-the-now: Archipelago, June 20, 2020. Conversation recorded June 19, 2020, by Jeff Morton. Erin Gee & Giorgio Magnanensi with Jeff Morton ...
read more60
Today is my 60th birthday, August 5, 2020 To celebrate I’m sharing this short paragraph which is the ending of Dino Buzzati’s first of his Sixty Stories: I sette Messageri (The Seven Messangers) and a couple of inspiring excerpts by David Dunn. […] Un’ansia inconsueta da qualche tempo si accende in me alla sera, e non è più rimpianto delle gioie lasciate, come accadeva nei primi tempi del viaggio; piuttosto è l’impazienza di conoscere le terre ignote a cui mi dirigo. Vado notando – e non l’ho confidato finora a nessuno – vado notando come di giorno in giorno, man mano che avanzo verso l’improbabile mèta, nel cielo irraggi una luce insolita quale mai mi è apparsa, neppure nei sogni; e come le piante, i monti, i fiumi che attraversiamo, sembrino fatti di una essenza diversa da quella nostrana e l’aria rechi presagi che non so dire. Una speranza nuova mi trarrà domattina ancora più avanti, verso quelle montagne inesplorate che le ombre della notte stanno occultando. Ancora una volta io leverò il campo, mentre Domenico scomparirà all’orizzonte dalla parte opposta, per recare alla città lontanissima l’inutile mio messaggio. da I Sette Messaggeri, in Sessanta Racconti di Dino Buzzati • 1958 […] An unusual anxiety has been kindling in me for some time in the evening, and is no longer regretful of the joys left, as happened in the early days of the journey; rather, it is the impatience to know the unknown lands to which I am heading. I am noticing – and I have not confided it to anyone so far – I am noticing how from day to day, as I advance towards the improbable goal, an unusual light radiates in the sky which never appeared to me, not even in dreams; and how the plants, the mountains, the rivers we cross seem to be made of an essence different from our own and the air bears omens that I cannot say. A new hope will draw me tomorrow even further ahead, towards those unexplored mountains that the shadows of the night are hiding. Once again I will raise the field, while Domenico will disappear on the horizon on the opposite side, to bring my useless message to the distant city. from The Seven Messengers, in Sixty Stories, by Dino Buzzati • 1958 ******* I wonder if music might be our way of mapping reality through metaphors of sound as if it were a parallel way of thinking to the visually dominant metaphors of our speech and written symbols. I think that most musicians can relate to the idea that music is not just something we do to amuse ourselves. It is a different way of thinking about the world, a way to remind ourselves of a prior wholeness when the mind of the forest was not something out there, separate in the world, but something of which we were an intrinsic part. I think music may be a conservation strategy for keeping something alive that we may now need to make more conscious, a way of making sense of the world from which we might refashion our relationship to nonhuman living systems. Personally I believe that we have yet to articulate the importance of music and the immense cognitive and social terrain that it addresses. The fact that we have yet...
read morefailure and resistance
failure and resistance […] The only thing I deeply, avidly, wanted was a lucid, unillusioned eye. I finally found it in the art of the novel. This is why for me being a novelist was more than just working in one “literary genre” rather than another; it was an outlook, a wisdom, a position; a position that would rule out identification with any politics, any religion, any ideology, any moral doctrine, any group; a considered, stubborn, furious non-identification, conceived not as evasion or passivity but as resistance, defiance, rebellion. I wound up having some odd conversations: “Are you a Communist, Mr. Kundera?” “No, I’m a novelist.” “Are you a dissident?” “No, I’m a novelist.” “Are you on the left or the right?” “Neither. I’m a novelist.” Since early youth, I have been in love with modern art—with its painting, its music, its poetry. But modern art was marked by its “lyrical spirit,” by its illusions of progress, its ideology of the double revolution, aesthetic and political, and little by little, I took a dislike to all that. […] (from Testaments Betrayedby Milan Kundera) “…doing while thinking, thinking while doing,” said Franco Donatoni. I can’t even speak or write decently in my mother language anymore, let alone think … but all in all I don’t mind or care anymore. Losing contact with forms and rhetoric to favor sound thinking, or a “sounding” thought, beyond any language, is what – willingly or unwillingly – seems to be my constant behavior. Reality also seems to demonstrate that despite everything, (… all the work, all the compositions, all the performances, activities, speeches, seminars, essays, books, parties and scores) I cannot verify any effect of my work in the reality of the world. Failure seems obvious. A torn planet and a desperate humanity do not seem to receive any beneficial influence from any aesthetic or philosophical position of/on “musical discourse”. Then non-identification: aware and tenacious, not as evasion or passivity but as resistance seems to be – with Milan Kundera – not just a choice but the real necessity. ...
read moreSilvia Mandolini with MAGIK
This would have been such a wonderful evening. Alas, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, it never happened… MARCH 28, 2020 at the ANNEX Experience the beautiful sounds of this international collaboration between virtuosic Italian violinist Silvia Mandolini, and magik (Kenton Loewen, drums; Marina Hasselberg, cello; Giorgio Magnanensi, diffusion and live electronics). The evening will feature two world premieres: one from Vancouver-based cellist and composer Stefan Hintersteininger, and the other from Italian composer Silvia Teatini. Hintersteininger’s new piece, Beethoven Symphony 6.2.0, reimagines Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony for violin, cello, percussion and electronics. Commissioned by Vancouver New Music as part of BTHVN 2020, this concert will present its world premiere performance, alongside works by Luciano Berio, Roberto Cima, Giorgio Magnanensi, and Silvio Palmieri, as well as the world premiere of Serena Teatini’s Pannelli Invisibili (Invisible Brushes). Program Silvio Palmieri, Tu M’ (1990) Roberto Cima, L’Angelo di Klee (2014) Serena Teatini, Pennelli Invisibili (2020) Luciano Berio, Sequenza VIII (1976) Stefan Hintersteininger, Beethoven Symphony 6.2.0 (2019) Giorgio Magnanensi, Deux Tableaux (2019) MAGIK, TDU/SIL (2020) Silivia Mandolini studied music in Montreal, and worked with the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM, Véronique Lacroix) and the Montreal Baroque Orchestra (MBO, Joël Thiffault). In 1994, she left Montreal for Italy. As an orchestral violinist, she has played under the baton of Chung, Pappano, Gergiev, Temirkanov, Janowski, Inbal, Gatti, and Oren. Together with pianist Brigitte Poulin, Mandolini gave a recital at the Biennale di Venezia in 2009 and at the Milano Musica festival in 2008. She has been a member of the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna since 2008. In 2012, together with the conductor and violinist Fabio Sperandio, she founded the Zipangu string ensemble, dedicated to the music of today. MAGIK is a new Vancouver-based project that plays within a multi-layered, live electro acoustic surround sound-space among flat audio panels of hand cut West Coast Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce and Pacific Maple. The panels serve both as wooden resonators and diffusers, becoming the medium of magik’s written and improvised soundscapes. marinahasselberg.com facebook.com/kenton.loewen...
read moreDungeon Master
Dungeon Master, recorded live at 8EAST, November 1, 2019 Dungeon Master by Shades of Scorpius JP Carter, Trumpet + FX • Lee Hutzulak, Synthesizers & Sampler Kenton Loewen, Drums & Percussion • Giorgio Magnanensi, Laptop & Piano ...
read moremixtophonics
MIXTOPHONICS come celebrate sonic imagination and lovely people! mixtophonics has returned, after 17 years in June 2018. VNM started mixtophonics in 2001 at the Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive, to offer a space to present sound and music explorations by a variety of young and upcoming artists living in Vancouver. It run for 3 years and it was a great monthly gathering fostering the beautiful energy of people enjoying playing together, reflect, provoke and meet through and within sound. John Korsrud came to me early summer 2018 as he was booking Lana Lou’s for a couple of Wednesdays to gather some local musicians and improvisers, and instigated the idea to start a new series, with the same spirit and energy, in and for a city which has yes changed a lot, but also still hosts a growing community of sound thinkers and beautiful people we like to have around, we like to meet and play with and we wish to strongly support in a cultural landscape which at times still fails to recognize the radical and revolutionary power of unorthodox creative energies. Join us to support and celebrate sonic explorations, sound thinking and the power of imagination, mixtophonics is here to stay! ...
read more59
Here is a random image search for the number of my birthday; today, my 59th birthday, August 5, 2019 http://www.fiftyninesrl.com/index_en.php https://www.magnatoneusa.com/products/master-collection/super-fifty-nine-head https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellation Beethoover Op. 59, no.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_59 59 (Fifty-Nine!) Binary Neutron Star Merger Simulations Binary Neutron Star Merger Simulations https://books.google.ca/booksid=CTWDFJmp3B0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false ...
read moreMAGIK Aug 2019
Heading to Powell River on Aug 11 to work with MAGIK and 8 cedar panels at The Art Centre ~ Powell River Public Art Gallery The Art Centre, Powell River The Art Centre, Powell River The Art Centre, Powell River...
read moresitka
I finally started working on the beautiful sitka spruce reclaimed from the mill last winter. I look forward to playing with a new set of these beautiful resonators sometime this fall and enjoying the bright resonances of this wood with my MAGIK friends and more. Here some random images: 8 large sitka spruce resonators 8 small sitka spruce resonators ...
read moreangelica festival 2019
TDU/XLAB non è una composizione musicale, un’opera d’arte, o un oggetto. TDU/XLAB è uno spazio per un pensiero sonoro: dialoghi attraverso e all’interno del suono, dell’immaginazione e del gioco. L’ensemble strumentale è guidato in un processo di co-creazione sulla base di esplorazioni di oggetti sonori (acustici e elettronici), tessiture, rumori, timbri, spazi, silenzi e risonanze. TDU/XLAB scaturisce quindi da energie individuali e collettive e offre interazioni variabili a partire da (e viaggiando attraverso) frammenti sonori, memorie, codici, gesti e figure. Simultaneità, policentricità e punti di vista sovrapposti sono gli elementi caratteristici di questo approccio. Le trame sonore non emergono semplicemente dall’accumulazione o sottrazione di un numero di eventi discreti, ma rivelano una combinazione complessa di eventi che si articolano in una scenografia immaginaria: TDU – teatro dell’udito. Grazie a Walter Zanetti, Maurizio Pisati, il Conservatorio G.B. Martini e Angelica per l’invito a tornare a Bologna per condividere e lavorare con la bellissima energia di questo ensemble. TDU / XLAB ANGELICA FESTIVAL 2019...
read moreThings Resounding Things
On October 31 I had the pleasure to visit John Brennan and his new and beautiful installation Things Resounding Things just before the November 1st opening at The Basically Good Media Lab at Emily Carr University of Arts + Design. Here are a couple of reflections instigated by John’s resounding space. Things Resounding Things is an emergent sound space for both an intimate and a collective experience within resonance. I feel deeply attracted by these kinds of spaces as I find them welcoming, activating, and bare to the point of listening and hearing. Here in fact they both seem to finally harmonize in new emergent ways of sound thinking. The emergence in this space, is rooted in an experimentalist approach in which discoveries are possible given the ability to create spaces and conditions in which things might happen, reveal themselves and be taken care of, beyond any sentimentality of expression. Emergence here is also the result of fertile environments where ideas emerge, sprout, form and transform when we can take care of ourselves as fully sentient being, constantly resonating with and within the world in its entirety, losing our grip on “wanting” as if we had the right to access and possess everything at any time. Though I’m not talking here about a pantheistic tension, but about a reconnected awareness of both our limitations and potentials when fully embodied human beings: personae. John Brennan’s work offer us the wonderful gift of wandering in this kind of space while resounding within it: a sound theatre devoid of any performative gesture reclaiming the mythological spirit of sonus, where music becomes “ the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound ” [1] [1] Edgard Varése, 1966 ...
read more
58
Here is a random image search for the number of my birthday; today, my 58th birthday, August 5, 2018 Brahms op 58 58 Gin Cerium Chopin Sonata op 58 John Cage, Fifty-Eight Messier 58 SHURE SM58 ...
read moreMAGIK
Marina Hasselberg, cello • Giorgio Magnanensi • cedar resonators, Kenton Loewen, drums & metals Nicolas Teichrob spun spectra video https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/wp-content/uploads/WCR-@-China-Cloud.mp4...
read moreEMUSE 2018
Native Education College in partnership with Vancouver New Music, Vancouver Public Library and Warriors Against Violence presents EMUSE 2018: Aboriginal Electronic Music Festival May 16 – 19, 2018 Various times + locations (details below) Free events EMUSE IS BACK! May 16 – 19, 2018, come join us for 4 days of music, workshops, and discussions about electronic music from an Indigenous perspective. Featuring Eliot Britton, Kerey Harper, Janine Island, Sandy Scofield, Russell Wallace and more! SCHEDULE WEDNESDAY, MAY 16 7 – 8:30PM EMUSE kick off at Vancouver Public Library Alice McKay Room Central Branch (350 West Georgia St.) [map] ………………………………… THURSDAY, MAY 17 12 – 1PM Panel Discussion: The Sound of Violence With Curtis Clearsky, JB the First Lady, and Theresa Warbus Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 1PM -3PM Workshop: Audio Storytelling with DJ Kwe Workshop: Adventures in Radio Gunargie O Sullivan Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 4 – 6PM Workshop: Sound and Video Scope with Eliot Britton Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 7PM Panel discussion: Indigenous Women in Electronic Music with Sandy Scofield, Norine Braun and Gunargie O Sullivan Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch in the Inspiration Lab (350 West Georgia St., 3rd level) [map] ………………………………… FRIDAY, MAY 18 1 – 3PM Workshop: Creating Loops in Ableton with Tiffany Moses Workshop: Totally Modular Synths with Dan Kibke Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 4 – 6PM Workshop: Turning the Tables with DJ O Show Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] ………………………………… SATURDAY, MAY 19 10AM – 12PM Workshop: Ardunio to Abelton with Brady Marks Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 1 – 3PM Workshop: Kenaxis with Stefan Smulovitz Native Education College, (237 East 5th Ave) [map] 7 – 9PM Concert at VCC Free Electro Acoustic Concert with commissions from Eliot Britton, Sandy Scofield, Janine Island, Kerey Harper, and Russell Wallace. Vancouver Community College Atrium (1155 East Broadway, entrance at E 7th Ave. and Glen Dr.) [map] Check out a sampler w/artists from last year and this year for your listening enjoyment https://m.mixcloud.com/VancouverNewMusic/emuse-2018/ ...
read more
Schola Heidelberg • Ensemble Aesthesis
Hailing from the beautiful city of Heidelberg SCHOLA HEIDELBERG // ENSEMBLE AESTHESIS Friday, May 11, 2018 • 7:30 PM, BY DONATION Red Gate Revue Stage • Granville Islandhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1843394822619735/http://tsilumos.org/salt2018/https://klangforum-heidelberg.de/en/schola-heidelberghttps://www.kairos-music.com/artists/ensemble-aisthesis ...
read moreStar Systems • live @ China Cloud
Thank you Lee for the video! Star System playing the music of Sun Ra Recorded live at the China Cloud in Vancouver, Canada on March 14th, 2018. Featuring Colin Cowan (double bass, electronics, megaphone) | Daniel Gaucher (drums, electronics, arrangements) | Skye Brooks (percussion) | Tom Wherrett (electric guitar, electronics) Giorgio Magnanensi (piano, laptop) | Ted Crosby (saxophone, clarinet) | John Paton (saxophone) | Joshua Zubot (violin, electronics) | Lee Hutzulak (synthesizer) || Recorded, mixed, shot & edited by Lee Hutzulak....
read more
WCR Metro Vancouver video
A short video about WCR Installation and performances last March at UBC CIRS by Metro Vancouver ...
read more
URI RMX
URI CAINE & ENSEMBLE a Vancouver New Music production arranged & conducted by Giorgio Magnanensi featuring Uri Caine : compositions, piano || Cameron Wilson : violin || Molly MacKinnon : violin || John Kastelic : viola || Marina Hasselberg : cello || prOphecy sun : voice, theremin & electronics || Lee Hutzulak : synthesizers, electronics & auxiliary percussion || Julian La Brooy : sampler || Constantine Katsiris : laptop || Stefan Smulovitz : laptop & electronics || Giorgio Magnanensi : laptop Performed & recorded November 25, 2017 at the Roundhouse, Vancouver, Canada All cameras & microphones by Lee Hutzulak, except: wide view & stage left close-ups by Mingtao Kong, courtesy VNM & live quartet mics courtesy The Roundhouse & John Kastelic. Mix, edit & design by Lee Hutzulak at the Birdhouse in Vancouver, Canada between Dec 2017 – Jan 2018. ...
read morefigments
TGK Tony Wilson • Electric Guitar Kenton Loewen • Drums Giorgio Magnanensi • Keys & Live Electronics TKG set 1 [Download] TKG set 2 [Download] Excerpt from the live performance...
read moreWCR Installation
MARCH 4-10, 2018 WEST COAST RADIANS DOWNLOAD and FOLD your brochure Saturday night @ CIRS ...
read moreLOoW exhibition
Coming soon! sound crystals / -H A new installation/project part of Leaning Out of Windows January 25- February 8, 2018 at the ECUAD new building. Thank you to RANDY LEE CUTLER + INGRID KOENIG for inviting me to be part of this exciting research project, and to Art Olin for his elucidations and fascinating work at TRIUMF ...
read moreà nous la liberté
à nous la liberté (Live all’Auditorium di Radio Popolare) a great project by Guido Mazzon, Tony Rusconi & Walter Zanetti ...
read moreTDU / MH
some preliminary drafts/studies for a new piece for cello, cedar and maple resonators, sound objects and oscillographic videos for Marina Hasselberg. …more to come studio #1 studio #2 studio #3 studio #4 studio #5...
read moreISCM – VNM String Orchestra, VEE
ISCM 2017 • Vancouver Thank you to all the wonderful musicians and to all the composers. ISCM 2017 • Program Linda Catlin Smith, Orient Point Serena Teatini, Mi Fa Jay Schwartz, Music for Orchestra III Kotoka Suzuki, In Praise of Shadows ...
read moreThe Reorganized Organ
The Reorganized Organ mentorship project Order tickets: https://reorganized-organ.eventbrite.ca Entrance is free, but you must order a free ticket for dinner Join us for the final showcase of our current youth mentorship project, The Reorganized Organ, a collaborative instrument-building project and experiment in using electronic waste to make an orchestra of experimental musical instruments. Also: opening remarks by Garnet Hertz and Brady Marks, and performances/installations by Lee Hutzulak, Sara Gold, and Gamelan Bike Bike. ...
read moreURI RMX
URI RMX Wonderful music with a great artist and amazing Vancouver musicians! TONIGHT NOV 25 at the ROUNDHOUSE ...
read moreelektrosluch
I assembled a new great little elektrosluch by makercube, …and having fun : ) ...
read moreISCM RMX
Vancouver Electronic Ensemble ISCM RMX VEE – ISCM Remix (Performed by Vancouver Electronic Ensemble) [Download] ...
read moreShades of Scorpius v.2
Colin Cowan • Bass/FX Boxes Lee Hutzulak • Synthesizer/Sampler Kenton Loewen • Drums/Percussion Giorgio Magnanensi • Laptop/Piano Recorded live at THE LIDO • November 4, 2017 SOS | NGC:171104.2.2 by Shades of Scorpius ...
read morespun spectra at GPAG
SPUN SPECTRA Nicolas’ Teichrob’s wonderful photos at the Gibson Public Art Gallery Spun Spectra is up and glowing at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery. if rolling through the coast in October, go check out some trippy light and colours and sounds (via @giominz) of spider webs! It will expand your mind in terms of what is there that we can tune into when observant, aware and expanding our spatial and temporal scales of engagement. —///—-Opening reception is this Saturday. 2-4pm. ???????????? #spunspectra #sunshinecoast #arts #bcarts #gibsons #gpag #cedarhits #missionnaish #giorgiomagnanensi #soundsalso #photography #exhibit #audiovisualmindfeast #nattylightforlife! #backlit #fujitrans #gallery #gibsonspublicartgallery #untilOct29 A post shared by Nicolas Teichrob (@nicolasteichrob) on Oct 5, 2017 at 1:17pm PDT more spun spectra HERE ...
read moreWest Coast Radians
WEST COAST RADIANS @westcoastradians WEST COAST RADIANS Info.pdf a great logo by Max Magnanensi For a few years I have been experimenting with and building various sets of yellow cedar, red cedar, sitka spruce and maple flat audio-panels to create both instruments and audio diffusors that might engage in a more embodied form of listening and sound thinking. The LINKS below give an idea of the various explorations and implementation of these sound sculptures, and in general about the nature and spirit of these sound objects/instruments/resonators and my personal impetus behind them. You can find more informations in the West Coast Radians pagese HERE The flat audio-panels are built using large boards reclaimed from discarded piles of wood in mill operations and drifting ocean logs on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. After being sliced and smoothly shaped, they are planed and sanded to thin them down to thickness ranging between 2/16”and 1/4” and finally mounted on a stabilizer wood stand. An amplifier drives the sound into an audio transducer applied to the rear of each panel, exciting the wood boards and transforming their surface into a distributed-mode loudspeaker (DML). In this way the audio is approaching an omnidirectional presence in the way the sound from the panels is dispersed evenly in all directions. The diffused radiation patterns of all frequencies created on the panels expands the audio source. Sound then propagates through the wood in the most liberated and natural way while becoming omnidirectional in the far field. The diffused sound is stunningly beautiful and softly filtered by the smooth quality of yellow and red cedar or the brighter resonating quality of maple and sitka spruce, which adds to the uncanny character of their physical and sculptural presence. L I N K S In January 2018 I presented this project at ECUAD part of Leaning Our of Window (LOoW) In the Spring 2018 I presented an installation performance space at the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at UBC with 16 panels driven by a 16-channel system. Both an installation and a performance instrument were also made available to a variety of local sonic explorers during a three-day performance. I’m currently working with wonderful musicians and friends Marina Hasselberg (cello) and Kenton Loewen (drums) to share the MAGIK beauty of the woods through a diffused space for sound thinking and imagination. A complete list of activities, places and collaborations is at the bottom of this page. By transferring human-created audio technologies, such as custom made wood resonators, contact microphones, sensors, interactive electronics and scores from exclusive domains of high culture to outdoor public spaces, I wish to create the opportunity to redefine their purpose. In these fresh surroundings, their role shifts towards catalyzing the emergence of grassroots communities while going beyond anthropocentric perspectives. This transformative process becomes here a driving force, facilitating the formation of communities that transcend the artificial divisions between nature and culture, as well as between the ‘privileged’ and the ‘underprivileged’. This approach to sound practices not only welcomes input from a diverse range of life forms and materiality, but also places a strong emphasis on the organic evolution of public engagement through open-ended creative encounters. Within this context, music ceases to be a finished product and becomes instead an ongoing process. This process is deliberately designed to...
read moreRogue Arts Festival
Friday, August 25th 7PM Spacedock 8PM Dylan Rhymer 8:30PM Devil in the Wood Shack 9:30PM Buckman Coe Saturday, August 26th 11AM Doug Koyama/The Imprints/Spacedock *Collective Set* Noon Matthew Lovegrove 1PM Kitty & The Rooster/Steve Weave and Giorgio Magnanensi *Collective Set* 3PM The Imprints 4PM Devil in the Wood Shack/Dirty Mountain *Collective Set* 5:30PM Kitty & The Rooster 6:30PM Scenic Route to Alaska 7:35PM Dylan Rhymer 7:45PM Steve Weave and Giorgio Magnanensi 8:40PM Butler in the Hey! 9:30PM Queer as Funk Sunday, August 27th Noon Spouse 1PM Doug Koyama 2PM The Burying Ground/Butler in the Hey! *Collective Set* 3PM Dirty Mountain 4PM The Burying Ground ...
read moreasabikeshiinh
dreamcatchers […] fascism doesn’t take root on the margins of society, but always emerges from within the existing status quo. […] Alain Badiou, Metapolitics … and it seems getting worse on a speedy pace: a fast and aggressive emergence of fascistic behaviours, role-modeled by a naked leader and his entourage. But also long engrained in our broken societies, too many around the world to be suddenly surprised of such larger malaise. What to say? It also seems that communities should be reacting with convinced and massive response, as the threat is not a tiny one and not limited by geopolitical borders. It’s not unthinkable that US might quickly roll toward open and established authoritarianism. The exercise of democracy then becomes now an imperative to sustain in every single moment, as bending to fascism will only lead to catastrophe. ...
read moreBird Sounds
A very nice website The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library A.I. Experiments ...
read more
R.I.P. Gilles Tremblay
Gilles Tremblay Gilles Tremblay, composer, pianist, ondist (born 6 September 1932 in Arvida [Saguenay], QC; died 27 July 2017 in Montréal, QC). OBITUARY ...
read more57
Here is a random image search for the number of my birthday; today, my 57th birthday, August 5, 2017 (click on images for links) Biffy Clyro • 57 …and a 57″ pixel storm for the day : ) use 3D (Red & Cyan) glasses ...
read moreSpiral
SPIRAL MAGAZINE Spiral is a free publication from the Rubin Museum of Art. The first issue, available HERE and in print, accompanies the exhibition The World Is Sound, amplifying its themes and going a bit further afield. ...
read moresonic thinking
a must read: Sonic Thinking: A Media Philosophical Approach Edited by Bernd Herzogenrath Sonic Thinking (short excerpt from the Introduction) I would like to start with a set of resonances. First of all, a resonance on the word “resonance”—on the one hand it means something like “echo,” or “reverberation,” on the other hand, the word “reason” is somehow hidden in “resonance.” The French verb r.sonner makes this resonance even stronger—one might even be tempted to invent the word re[a]sonance here. Thus, a kind of knowledge is involved here. A kind of thinking— maybe not what we would call rational thinking, but a kind of thinking nonetheless. As the Polish philosopher and mathematician J.zef Ho.n.-Wronski has it, as quoted by Edgar Var.se: “Music is the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound” (Var.se 1966: 17). Music as the becoming-body of the knowledge of sound—sound thinking. Again, also this knowledge that sound is, has a highly interesting resonance in its “wordhood” in French: conna.tre—knowledge as a process of “being-born- with”—this could mean that this knowledge, this thinking, this re[a]sonance, that sound is not a knowledge about the world, coming to you only in retrospective reflection, but a thinking of and in the world, a part of the world we live in, intervening in the world directly. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his unpublished early notebooks, dating from the period of his Unfashionable Observations (1872–3), relates the true philosopher to the scientist and the artist as listener: “The concept of the philosopher . . . : he tries to let all the sounds of the world reverberate in him and to place this comprehensive sound outside himself into concepts” (19[71], 115); whereas the artist lets the tones of the world resonate within him and projects them by means of percepts and affects. So, here, sound-art practice becomes research and philosophy, and vice versa. Rainer Maria Rilke, in his 1919 essay “Primal Sound” (Urger.usch in the German original) described an experience he had as a young boy, when introduced to a phonograph for the first time, seeing how the needle produced sounds out of grooves in a wax cylinder, grooves that the recording of actual sounds had put there in the first place. Years later, while attending anatomical lectures in Paris, Rilke connected the lines of coronal suture of the human skull to his childhood observations—“I knew at once what it reminded me of: one of those unforgotten grooves, which had been scratched in a little wax cylinder by the point of a bristle!” (2001: 22). From this incident, Rilke derives the following “experimental set-up”: “The coronal suture of the skull (this would first have to be investigated) has—let us assume— a certain similarity to the closely wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. What if one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey along a tracing which was not derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally—well: to put it plainly, along the coronal suture, for example. What would happen?” (23). Rilke’s obvious answer, is, of course, noise, music—sound! Probing further, Rilke asks himself, “What variety of lines then, occurring anywhere, could one not put under the needle and try out? Is there any contour that one could not, in a sense, complete in this way and then experience it, as it makes itself felt, thus transformed, in another field of sense?” (23). In a letter, Rilke specifies this idea. Writing to Dieter Bassermann, Rilke speculates on “set[ting] to sound the countless signatures of Creation which in the skeleton,...
read more
lunaire, apparizioni
fließend (b) performed at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna Ensemble Zipangu conducted by Fabio Sperandio fließend (b) • Zipangu [Download] Ensemble Zipangu Direttore: Fabio Sperandio Violini: Alessandro Di Marco, Giacomo Scarponi, Emanuele Benfenati, Anton Berovski, Elvi Berovski, Alessandro Bonetti, David Caramia, Silvia Mandolini, Elena Maury, Cosimo Paoli Viole: Corrado Carnevali, Loris Dal Bo, Emanuela Bascetta, Nicola Calzolari Violoncelli: Mattia Cipolli, Vittorio Piombo, Roberto Cima, Chiara Tenan Contrabbasso: Gianandrea Pignoni The idea of this concert was born of desire to welcome our friend Giorgio Magnanensi, passing through the city, performing his music. To present the composer is an authoritative Giordano Montecchi, always accomplice, whom we thank. It was 1989. That year, the many (already) precarious ones who for years had taught in the Conservatory, got their tenure. So we found ourselves in Parma, Giorgio Magnanensi and myself, he was teaching Harmony and Counterpoint and I History of Music. First colleagues – just a “hello ….. hello ….” – and then, after all, friends together with the discovery of having both a double, or perhaps multiple, musical identity. There was the Magnanensi professor at the Conservatory and there was the Magnanensi who spent the summers in Siena as assistant and then friend of Franco Donatoni. And then there was the “after hours” Giorgio, for whom music meant enthusiasm, adventure, play, falling in love, furores. All translated into an irrepressible creativity pouring into the discovery, experimentation and refinement of a totally free, intuitive and anti-academic music making. Creativity without restraints, yes, but especially infectious and engaging – and this was (as is always the case) the key to everything. Because if autistic experimentalism is a form of pollution of today’s music, creative liberation, conceived as a common, joyful and shared experience, is a dimension that music always needs, like us oxygen. The basic system or device was a poor electronics, driven by inexhaustible ingeniousness, perhaps an electric guitar resting on the knees and reinvented with heterodox interventions and techniques. But, above all, an extreme, empathetic, thoughtful sensitivity for the combination of sounds among themselves and for their flourishing in an unsuspected and enchanting music: that virtue that once was called “gusto“. Among contemplation, light textures and excitements, it was a desire, a pure musical pleasure, often reached together with a small group of improvisers, mutually and intimately listening, also captured in those not only playful, but also spiritually regenerating sound games. And unforgettable. No conservatory or academy could, can or will ever teach this way of making – or rather “being” – music. And that is precisely the germ of that aesthetic subversion that most (if noticed) remove, so as not to undermine the subtly hypocritical ménage of academic avant-garde as Morton Feldman called it. But Giorgio Magnanensi did not remove it. He listened to it, indeed, and he believed it. And at some point he left, slamming the door. After years in which his hyper-reactivity to the tangles of inefficiencies, mediocrity and pettiness that the routine of the typical Italian establishment was inexorably growing: Conservatories, Publishers, Commissions, Competitions, Festival, Theaters … enough! Away! It was 1999. And Giorgio Magnanensi went to Canada to stay there. Telling what he found there would seem like an exercise in xenophilia. Let’s just say that...
read morequid at PRISMA
Quid at PRISMA Festival, June 20 2017 Here is a remix of the Aventa‘s premiere at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre: quid sustain [Download] ...
read moresajrmx
Tuesday June 6, 7pm A post shared by saj&co (@sajandco) on Jun 7, 2017 at 9:13am PDT ...
read moreraw meat & butterflies 2017
I’m very happy I’ll be working and playing with Doug Schmidt, my dear friend of our early 2000’s duo raw meat & butterflies. Doug has been away from Canada for many years now and it will be great to play together again after all this time. We will present a new set of pieces during Accordion Noir Festival 2017 in Vancouver • September 8, St. James Anglican Church . They asked us not to photograph the performances so here we are photographing the applause at the end of the set. Douglas Schmidt and Giorgio Magnanensi earned their accolades with a sterling delivery of what could be perfectly characterized as “not what people are expecting to emerge from a squeezebox”. Vancouver New Music delivers the goods! #NoirFestX A post shared by Accordion Noir Fest (@accordionnoirfest) on Sep 8, 2017 at 9:23pm PDT Meanwhile here some of Doug’s new pieces we will work on together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98dAgynWzs8 Here is a draft track for Doug: RM&B rmx 01 [Download] ...
read moregame of drones
Drone Day 2017 Tomorrow, Saturday, May 27 on Granville Island presented by Quiet City & Vancouver New Music https://twitter.com/panospria/status/865231749764141056= https://www.facebook.com/events/1301058563312372/ DRONE DAY • Flickr Page ...
read moreChambers Σflare rmx
Remix of (and video for) chambers (Michael Red & Gabriel Saloman). Based on stems from the original tracks appeared on debacle records sigma flare I & II Thank you Michael and Gabriel for sounds and inspiration. ...
read moreCTAPP
Circling Towards a Possible Present is a new media installation by Matthew Talbot-Kelly consisting of three interactive, game-engine driven and on-the-fly rendered figurative portraits. The work sits at the intersection of portraiture, film, theatre and video game traditions. It plays with and subverts the expectation of portraiture & interactive 3d games, while considering the inherent theatrical, filmic and painterly dimensions and expectations of these mediums. ...
read moresound crystals / -H
I have been working on this new installation/project as part of Leaning Out of Windows and finally I finished all the maple resonators and finalized the audio material. It will be presented January 25- February 8, 2018 at the ECUAD new building. Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW) is a four-year SSHRCC funded interdisciplinary art and science project, involving four phases between 2016 to 2020. It involves co-designing, curating, testing, and analyzing models of collaboration for art and science. Participants include Emily Carr University’s faculty, art students, visiting artists + physicists, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students working at TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science located at the University of British Columbia. In this venture we join together artists and physicists to share the quest to understand the nature of reality. Their diverse experiences, views, and interactions bring each discipline to see a new perspective on the creative process while also broadening the potential for communication between disciplines. Our aim is to transform the grammar of abstract knowledge by specifically addressing the barely discernible phenomena studied by physics through aesthetics, analogy, metaphor, and other inventive methods. maple resonator A1 maple resonator A2 maple resonator B1 maple resonator B2 maple resonator C1 maple resonator C2 yellow cedar resonator plus 6 maple resonators yellow cedar resonator plus 6 maple resonators yellow cedar resonator plus 6 maple resonators yellow cedar resonator plus 6 maple resonators yellow cedar resonator Resonances and Reveries During the time spent working on Sound Crystals / -H I have been trying to maintain an approach that, while mainly focusing on sonic imagination, would explore the possibility of dialogue, relation and transference between visceral and intellectual knowledge. This is the trait of a behavior which main goal is to attain an intense creative flow and a reinforcement of the balance between creative energy, intuition and veridical perspectival content of hearing. Approaching the dialogue with physicist Art Olin, and in general in the context of LOoW, I had the opportunity to better observe what is that I am doing when consciously activating poietic and symbolic analogies. In hearing and listening to the scientists at the TRIUMF seminar and to Art Olin’s elucidations during our conversations, I found myself asking very simple questions again and again: What is it? What am I hearing? And also: How does this hearing allow me to dialogue in the very space that is defined? What “knowledge transference” is about when inscribed in and inspired by a process of artistic transformation? These very questions are also already an inscription, a giving form: a kind of writing immanent to the act of perception itself, though here sound is no an object, “a thing”, as I don’t rely in any reification of sonic phenomena. Everything here exists instead in a constant and complex negotiation in between a perceived presence and the perceiving subject: antihydrogen and my own apprehension of the traces of its possible, revealed, yet impenetrable existence. The in between of this binary oscillation is the contingency of our temporal and cultural framework (medium) and it is here where the creation of “a” sense (meaning?) between signifier and signified may eventually happen. This in between is a fluid, shifting, morphing and never firm relational transformation, activated by and within the constant flow and emergence of symbolic and poietic reveries. Or maybe it is just the creation of an aura, a distance, or...
read moreGCK
Glossary of Common Knowledge (GCK) curatorial statement Narrated by Zdenka Badovinac, Jesús Carrillo, Bojana Piškur, Ljubljana, January 2014 Our Glossary of Common Knowledge (GCK), unlike an encyclopedia, makes no attempt to unite all the world’s knowledge in a single totalizing system or to assemble a variety of viewpoints under the roof of tolerance and inclusion. What makes the glossary different from similar efforts is that it does not make just one list of terms but is instead concerned with multiple lists. Each of its terms is always associated in different ways with terms from other lists and other contexts. Thus, families of terms are created, and these families are the core of the glossary. Every term in the GCK has its own story, and every story has a narrator, who is present alongside the term. Indeed, it is only through the presence of narrators that we can build a glossary of common knowledge. The GCK, then, represents a multitude of first-person narratives, which confront and interact with each other. The presence of narrators is something we have learned about from oral histories. The dialogical structure of oral histories and the presence of different protagonists have in fact made them one of the most important references for the Glossary of Common Knowledge. At the same time, this model, especially in the form of the interview, has been an important research tool for compiling the glossary. Although the spoken word is but one of the sources for the GCK, it is a key reference point for the entire work. And that is because we always associate a voice with presence. Our glossary seeks to redefine presence as something that is in constant tension with writing. Mladen Dolar, referring to a similar kind of presence, writes in his book A Voice and Nothing More: “The voice seems to embody a presence, a background for differential traits, a positive basis for their inherent negativity. To be sure, its positivity is extremely elusive – just the vibrations of air that vanish as soon as they are produced.” [1] While the Glossary of Common Knowledge goes beyond the metaphysics of presence, it also maintains its active position. In this sense, the GCK is a collection, not of authentic definitions, but authentic gestures – subjective positions within a world of international languages. The point is not that we believe in the factual truth of oral histories, but rather that, with the help of such narratives, we try to change the existing order of things. Here oral histories interest us not primarily as alternative forms of historicizing that are privileged over writing, but as a way to introduce multiple histories and truths, including the kind of psychological truths expressed in the imagination, symbols, and desire. Alessandro Portelli discusses all these things in his essay “What Makes Oral History Different”. Oral histories are fragmented and tied to the memory and the subjective perspective of the individual, the group, or the class. For Portelli, while orality is “saturated with writing”, the memory behind it “is not a passive depository of facts, but an active process of creation of meanings. [2] Not unlike oral history, our glossary relies on the different credibility of memory and shows more transparently the relationship between histories and their protagonists. The Glossary of Common Knowledge acknowledges the tensions between the oral and the written, between the norm and deviations...
read moreTALEA Ensemble
Talea Ensemble (US) Saturday, March 11, 2017 • 8PM Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM The Annex • 823 Seymour Street [Map] Program: Stefan Maier: territories III (2017)* Fausto Romitelli: Trash TV Trance (2002) Olga Neuwirth: spazio elastico (2005) Pierluigi Billone: Ebe und anders (2014) With: Oren Fader, electric guitar Jeffrey Means, conductor * World Premiere, commissioned by Vancouver New Music with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. Last week we were with EMUSE, Aboriginal Electronic Music Festival, with the mastery of dialogue, electronic soundscapes and knowledge transference, which beyond the apparent austerity of the term, is purely based on generous acts of sharing, curiosity and conciliation. And here we prefer to omit the suffix “re-“ as we believe this process to be just a beginning and not yet a repetition. Tonight with TALEA we encounter the mastery of deeply committed musicianship and curiosity together with an exceptional level of musical talent. TALEA’s selection of works offers anything but formalist composers and stems from a place of inquiry and provocation where sound, beyond pitch organization, become relationship, a visceral and phenomenal non-discursive place where both playing and listening are acts of seeking a singular and enigmatic presence. From the unknown of what Pierluigi Billone calls “communion” (the very act of cum-ponere), to the virtuosic beauty of both composition and de-composition in Olga Neuwirth: also a reminder of the (yet unknown) resonant erosions of Stefan Maier’s Territories III. On the other end Fausto Romitelli’s impetus, cut short by a premature passing, reveals the forging power of a brilliant and visionary sonic imagination. Psychedelic expansions and hybridizations flow and combine in his works in networks of sonic relations as poetic metaphors of profound artistic transformations. What all this might just be about is that sound (and music) here and again, is not “a thing” but an event, a special kind of occurrence. Maybe a place, a relationship, a poietic gesture in which both musical activities and compositional practices are driven not by a need of objectifying acoustic phenomena in rigid and normalized apparatuses for assertive and sentimental definitions of sound (and music) as material, but by the “veridical perspectival content”[1] of perception and hearing: a constant and complex negotiation in between the perceived object and the perceiving subject. The in between The contingency of a temporal and cultural framework (medium) Embodied forms of relationships No one here really claims to have a distinct, “real”, and privileged understanding of the world. Though the musicians become the real makers of the world, and they seem to know well that this is not time for heroic stances that only lead to catastrophic consequences and ideological fallacies. Modern masters themselves TALEA’s musicians and their (de-) composers are here not celebrated heroic figures of a distant Olympus; the muses left us long time ago. We remain here listening to mousike and cultures deeply intertwined in the lives of many people who hear and understand the mutual inspiration and influence growing in open and dialogical forms, in the poetry and beauty of our imagination. Revolution might just be a kind form of revelation, an awakening in a recursive loop of infinite and circular erosions. [1] Sounds – A Philosophical Theory, Casey O’Callaghan (2017) taleaensemble.org...
read moreOne Page Score video
One-Page Score Project with the Plastic Acid Orchestra One-Page Score Project with Plastic Acid Orchstra Conducted by Giorgio Magnanensi 28 January 2017; 8PM Pyatt Hall (843 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC) Program: Ian Goldman • The Meditative Cycle 0:00 George McCutcheon • Relative (for PAO) 4:45 Dubravko Pajalic • OPS1 10:50 Larry Popovitch • Wound 15:55 Matthew Talbot-Kelly • 3 [sounds in a paper bag (for prepared orchestra)] 21:55 Vilio Celli • Armonia 26:40 Graham Brown • Unknown But Knew 36:35 Lance Lim • Faith in the DTES 44:05 Plastic Acid Orchestra: Percussion –Katie Rife; Trumpet – Mark D’Angelo, French Horn – Holly Bryan, Trombone – Jim Hopson; Flute – Carol Dymond; Clarinet – Mike Brown; Oboe – Emma Ringrose; Violins – Elyse Jacobson, Molly MacKinnon, Meredith Bates, Zoe Robertson, Llowyn Ball; Violas – John Kastelic, Tony Kastelic, Genevieve MacKay; Cellos – Doug Gorkoff, Shin-Jung Nam; Bass – Michael Vaughan....
read moreEMUSE
EMUSE 2017 Aboriginal Electronic Music Festival Co-presented by NEC Native Education College, Warriors Against Violence Society, and Vancouver New Music March 2 – 4, 2017 Events take place at NEC Campus (237 E. 5th Avenue) and VCC Broadway Campus Atrium (1155 E. Broadway, entrance at Glen and E. 7th) Join us for three-days of FREE workshops, panel discussions and a concert! Featuring Jordan Abel, Norine Braun, Eliot Britton, Raven Chacon, Ronnie Dean Harris, Jenn If Fleur, Rachel Iwaasa, JB the First Lady, DJ O Show, Harlan Pruden, Brady Marks, Tiffany Moses, Remy Siu, Rip Sidhu, Stefan Smulovitz, Kinnie Starr, Rip Sidhu, Russell Wallace, Lorelei Williams, and more. Thursday 2 March 2017 WORKSHOPS NEC Campus, Tsimilano Room 114 (237 E. 5th Ave.) 10AM – 12PM Jenn If Fleur/Jordan Abel – Analog Sounds and Digital Stories 1PM – 3PM DJ O Show/Ronnie Harris– Turning the Tables PANEL DISCUSSION NEC Campus Fireside Lounge (237 E. 5TH Ave.) 12PM – 1PM Two Spirits, Many Songs: Norine Braun, DJ O Show, Rachel Iwaasa, Harlan Pruden Friday 3 March 2017 WORKSHOPS NEC Campus, Tsimilano Room 114 (237 E. 5th Ave.) 10AM – 12PM Kinnie Starr/ Tiffany Moses – We Got the Beat 1PM – 3PM Raven Chacon – Super Hyperdirectional PANEL DISCUSSION NEC Campus Fireside Lounge (237 E. 5TH Ave.) 12PM – 1PM Violence Against Women in Music: Ronnie Dean Harris, JB the First Lady, Lorelei Williams, Rup Sidhu Saturday 4 March 2017 WORKSHOPS NEC Campus, Tsimilano Room 114 (237 E. 5th Ave.) 11AM – 1PM Brady Marks – Ableton Live & Arduino 1:30PM – 3:30PM Stefan Smulovitz – Max Msp & Kenaxis CONCERT VCC Broadway Campus Atrium (1155 E. Broadway, enter at the corner of Glen and E. 7th) 8PM Featuring: Raven Chacon, Sandy Scofield, Eliot Britton, Russell Wallace and Remy Siu, Jordan Abel, and more… For more information please contact Russell Wallace, Cultural Coordinator at NEC 604-873-3772 ext 236 or by email at rrwallace[at]necvancouver[dot]org This festival is supported by funding from the Leon & Thea Koerner Award through the BC Arts Council. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnnaeXqcZTM...
read moreGrimes RMX
Presented at CLUSTER Festival, performed by Plumes PLUMES Upcoming Shows Mar 10 2017 Montreal, QC Rocket Science Room Mar 11 2017 Toronto, ON The Music Gallery Mar 13 2017 Windsor, ON University of Windsor Mar 16 2017 Kitchener, ON Wilfrid Laurier University Mar 17 2017 Winnipeg, MB Cluster Festival Mar 21 2017 Vancouver, BC Music on Main ...
read morelittle wheel spin and spin
from Buffy Remix Veda Hille, CBC Radio Orchestra, Alain Trudel Conductor little wheel [Download] Sometimes special songs seem to give a strong voice to the spirit of our time. This project and its making was also special in the way it manifested itself. Maybe it’s just about beauty, something we only acknowledge as an exception and not as an option. “We are helpless, we are part of, we are little wheels. One and one and one make three… giving everything they have.” (Carl Wilson) So let’s hope in a philosophy that transcends these times, one that can overcome the limitation of die Zeitgeist, as I can not reconcile myself with the idea that the spirit of our time is also our own spirit. Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Merry Christmas Jingle Bells Christ is born and the devil’s in hell hearts they shrink Pockets swell Everybody know and nobody tell Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Oh the sins of Caesar’s men cry the pious citizens who petty thieve the 5 & 10s and the big wheels turn around and around Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Blame the angels, blame the fates, Blame the Jews or your sister Kate Teach your children how to hate and the big wheels turn around and around Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Turn your back on weeds you’ve hoed silly sinful seeds you’ve sowed Add your straw to the camel’s load Pray like hell when your world explode Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Swing your girl fiddler say Later on the piper pay Do see do, swing and sway Dead will dance on judgement day Little Wheels Spin and Spin Big wheels turn around & around Little Wheel Spin and Spin with the PAO and Veda Hille last September: little wheel PAO rev [Download] from Buffy Sainte Marie’s 1966 album Little Wheel Spin and Spin: My country ‘Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying ...
read moreTDU HRO January 24
I’m happy to perform TDU HRO again this month with the Hard Rubber Orchestra during the VSO New Music Festival. ….final shots https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/wp-content/uploads/TDU-HRO-Jan-2017.mp4 and 2 sloooooow shots : ) https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/wp-content/uploads/2-shots.mp4 ...
read moreone-page score
One-Page Score Project with the Plastic Acid Orchestra FREE Workshop! Call for participants Registration Deadline: 15 January 2017 The workshop series is free, however space is extremely limited. Please email info@newmusic.org or call 604.633.0861 to register. Note: Preference will be given to those without previous composition experience, and who can attend all workshop and performance dates. Workshop dates 21 January 2017: 11AM–4PM 27 January 2017: 10AM–4PM Performance date 28 January 2017: Rehearsal 4–6PM; Performance 8PM Want to create your own graphic score, and have it played by a live orchestra? Sign up for Vancouver New Music’s free two-day workshop and performance with the Plastic Acid Orchestra! No musical background or training is necessary – just a desire to create and explore sound. Over the three days, you’ll study and experiment with graphic notation, sound, composition, gesture and figure that will be topped off with a public performance of your score. Led by composer and Vancouver New Music artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi, the workshop will focus on the use of graphic notation, where signs and symbols can be used to represent sounds, textures and various kinds of sonic events. In the first meeting on January 21 we will explore a variety of graphic notation examples and you’ll learn about ideas of orchestration and sound composition. Using graphic notation, neither composers nor performers need any prior knowledge of how to write or read traditional musical notation – in fact, if this is your first time experimenting with writing music all the better! Participants will be encouraged to engage in abstract drawings that will form the basis of your own One-Page scores that will rehearsed, interpreted and performed by the Plastic Acid Orchestra. This workshop aims to encourage everyone to reclaim the playful and engaging exercise of imagination through sonic and visual perception. Learn, explore, have fun, and enjoy a rare opportunity to experience having the sound of a large ensemble at your creative fingertips! Questions? Email info@newmusic.org or call 604.633.0861. Check last year’s One-Page Score performance HERE And some info and documentation on LABORATORIO‘s O-PS HERE ...
read morehappy new year!
Happy New Year! Buon Anno! A tutti gli amici, vicini e lontani. To all my friends, near and far away. For a fuller life, where artistic behaviours would fully restore what neither politics or religion will never achieve. Potentiality, lots of work, butterflies, work for love, work for poetry, the beauty of any language, voice, sound, person and imagination. Love to all! Giorgio ...
read moreDeforestation
The progresses of insane exploitation. And this is just a small crumble of it…...
read moreone-page score project (Vancouver)
ONE-PAGE SCORE PROJECT call for participants Here is last year’s one-page score performance One-Page Scores coming to life with @plasticacid and #giorgiomagnanensi #vancouvernewmusic – check them out this Sat. Jan. 23 at 8pm at Vancouver Community College – Glen and 7th Ave. A video posted by Vancouver New Music (@vannewmusic) on Jan 22, 2016 at 3:04pm PST ...
read moreCross-Country
On the compositional work of Heiner Goebbels more texts and information on Heiner Goebbels and his wonderful work HERE and HERE...
read moreThe Power Of Nightmares
by Adam Curtis Published 2015 Usage Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Topics war on terror, False Flag, Islam, Adam Curtis, ISIS, Neocons, Israel, 911, patriot act, terror, hoax, 911, cold war, islam, enemies, false flag, inside job, patriot act, ndaa, israel The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Details the rise of the American NEOCONS (Neo-Conservative/Israeli movement and Radical Islam, with comparisons on their origins and strong similarities. Curtis argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organized force of destruction, specifically in the form of Al-Qaeda, (& its later offshoots ISIS, Boko Haram, Free Syrian Army, etc),is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American warmongering NeoCons and their enablers. “The Power of Nightmares” Transcript ...
read morecarnival and lent
did you reset your clock? Daylight saving times… getting darker… …and scary. Watching Pence speaking right now, I can’t wait to hear Trump, …gotta go, here he is coming…. …now I can go back to read, while Santa Klaus dresses up for the occasion. […] becoming conscious of existing structures of domination always has an emancipatory effect. Becoming conscious can also transform modes of behavior implanted by authority into guiding images determine one’s own free behavior. Hegel is an excellent example of this too, which appears reactionary only to those predisposed to think so. Tradition is not the vindication of what has come down from the past but the further creation of moral and social life; it depends on being made conscious and freely carried on. What can be submitted to reflection is always limited in comparison to what is determined by previous formative influences. Blindness to the fact of human finitude is what leads one to accept the Enlightenment’s abstract motto and to disparage all authority—and it is a momentous misunderstanding when the mere recognition of this fact is taken to express a political position, a defense of the status quo. In truth, the talk about progress or revolution—or even conservation—would be mere declamation if it laid claim to an abstract, apriori saving knowledge. It may be that under revolutionary conditions the emergence of the Robespierres, the abstract moralists who want to remake the world according to their reason, will win applause. But it is just as certain that their hour is appointed. I can only consider it a fatal confusion when the dialectical character of all reflection, its relation to the pregiven, is tied to an ideal of total enlightenment. To me that seems just as mistaken as the ideal of fully rational selfclarity, of an individual who would live in full consciousness and control of his impulses and motives. […] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method p.573-574 ...
read moreWednesdays in November
Wednesdays in November Very happy to play with these great friends and musicians on November 16 at The Lido Thank you...
read moreBig Joy 2016
Dec 2-3, 2016 at The Remington 108 E Hastings St We are celebrating four years of Big Joy this December with another two days of talented artists from Vancouver and abroad! Our hope this year is to continue to present a broad spectrum of what Vancouver’s weirdo music scene has to offer, casting a wide net across many genres and styles. Check out the links, get stoked, buy tickets early and save! Tickets available at Red Cat, Audiopile & Selectors’ Records mid November or online at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2696624 starting November 1st. FRIDAY DECEMBER 2nd – Doors 8pm *Featuring Dj Pop Drones – 12:15am – Chris Cogburn Chris Cogburn (Austin / Mexico City), percussionist. Current practices concentrate on the threshold between acoustic and electronic sounds, their differing tibral qualities and their sites of resonance (speaker/drum). Since 2003, Cogburn organizes an improvised music festival – No Idea Festival. – 11:45pm – Holzkopf Holzkopf is a Western Canadian musician active since 2001. They are a decidedly non-traditional musician, using tape recorders, budget samplers, raw data sounds and mixing board feedback to craft fast paced dub and gospel influenced rhythmic collages. For Big Joy they will do a special performance: a remix of 100 cassette tapes over the course of one performance. www.soundcloud.com/holzkopf666/drama-program – 11:00pm – Hick Andrea Lukic is a Serbian born Vancouver based interdisciplinary artist, Her work focuses on surreal, fantastic, absurd, alchemical, and grotesque visions and sounds. Obsession with devils, angels, forbidden fruit, reporters, trials, and crimes, she creates surrogates of repressed memories to explore her inner space through cognitive forensics. www.vimeo.com/119519059 INTERMISSION – 10:00pm – Gran am Harsh drones, disembodied voices, oscillating feedback; using a collection of analogue devices, gran am creates improvised sound art that is motivated by themes of idealized femininity and normalized oppression. https://granam.bandcamp.com/track/anima – 9:30pm – phonal phonal is a Vancouver-based listener and soundmaker exploring drones and complex repetition. www.phonal.ca/ – 9:00pm – Today Is An Orange Day Permutations of confined gestures used to ingest food are explored. Today is an Orange Day live-processes sounds of consumption as substances are processed in the human body. The word ‘leftovers’ is defined as physical remnants, but the food objects do not function as a means to an end in this sound performance; they are used purely as sound objects. SATURDAY DEC 3rd – 6pm Doors (Early Show) *Featuring Selectors’ Dj’s www.selectorsrecords.com – 12:30am – Gordon Ashworth Gordon Ashworth (Portland) is an American experimental sound artist working with string instruments, field recordings and magnetic tape. Since 2002, he has released drone, harsh noise and folk music under the names Concern, Oscillating Innards and CAEN, and is a member of the black metal band Knelt Rote. www.soundcloud.com/gordonashworth/silhouette-excerpt – 12:00am – Joda Clément and Mathieu Ruhlmann Joda Clément and Mathieu Ruhlmann have worked together extensively since they met in 2013. Using analog and acoustic instruments, field recordings and microphones to amplify ‘objects’, their work together aims to provide a deeper perspective on hidden sounds that emerge as a result of the interaction of the musicians, audience and the listening environment. https://infrequencyeditions.bandcamp.com/track/blood-and-memory-32 INTERMISSION – 11:00pm – Fresh Water Girls Based in Winnipeg, MB Fresh Water Girls looks to create relevant sound works by mixing field recordings, tape loops, and physically produced sounds. While falling under the Musique Concrete...
read more
Mechanical Music
VNM Festival October 13-15, 2016 MECHANICAL MUSIC no logos without noise This year’s VNM Festival is about bringing the everyday and the aesthetic back together: to erase the barrier separating musical and non-musical sounds. Mechanical Music is not just about sounds with specific sets of causal relationships – all based on well-understood Newtonian mechanics of action and reaction, motion, energy, friction and damping. It is first and foremost about sound-thinking and invention, revealed through a sonic universe in which mechanical and electro-mechanical movements and sounds are vital components of the artworks. I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. – John Cage – Lecture “The Future of Music: Credo” (1937) Whereas ‘mechanical’ has been often associated with lack of expression, VNM’s 2016 Festival displays a wide and rich selection of extremely suggestive and visionary sound explorations. From various electromagnetic transductions of movement to sound (Adam Basanta, Koka Nikoladze, Tristan Perich, Sabrina Schroeder) to theatrical mechanisms and vocal ‘tics’ (Peter Hannan, Camille Hesketh) via microsound soundscapes of buzzing motors and fans (Anne-F Jacques), a hybrid pinball machine (Lucas Abela), midi piano (Jocelyn Robert), spatial whirling arrays of customized Leslie speaker cabinets (George Rahi) and the magic and visceral sounds made while weaving fabric on a loom (Kelly Ruth), Mechanical Music covers vast territories of sounds. Photoelectric, film, and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored. Whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be, in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds. – John Cage – Lecture “The Future of Music: Credo” (1937) As always, we wish to invite everyone to listen and enjoy these amazing artists and their sounds, and to share our curiosity to expand traditional conceptions of music to a broader notion of sound itself. Finally, in sharing the work of this year’s featured artists, we wish to capture the magic mechanism of imagination and invention within the playful and joyful noise of wonderful sound-thinking minds....
read moreVEE • MM
vancouver electronic ensemble • mechanical music Saturday, October 8, 2016 • 8PM Vancouver Community College Atrium 1155 East Broadway, entrance at E 7th Avenue and Glen Drive • FREE Members of VEE showcase personal projects inspired by this year’s VNM festival theme, Mechanical Music • October 13 – 15, 2016 ...
read moreVolière Électrique
Volière Électrique New Work by Terri Hron and Hildegard Westerkamp Friday, September 30, 2016; 8PM Vancouver Community College Atrium (1155 E Broadway, entrance at E 7th Ave and Glen Drive) FREE Recorder virtuoso Terri Hron returns to Vancouver to premiere a new work created in collaboration with Vancouver-based composer Hildegard Westerkamp, along with works by Hron and Robert Normandeau, and Hron and Monty Adkins. Volière Électrique brings flying creatures together in a performance centred around recorded, processed and augmented recorder: La Huppe (Terri Hron/Robert Normandeau) tells the story of The Conference of the Birds. In their new work, Beads of Time Sounding* the recordings that Hron and Hildegard Westerkamp use feature a dawn chorus in the Osnabrück countryside. For the final piece, the five parts of Lepidoptera (Monty Adkins/Terri Hron) are each named for a different family of flying insects. Listen to excerpts of Lepidoptera and La Huppe here. Program Terri Hron/Robert Normandeau La Huppe 10’ Terri Hron/Hildegard Westerkamp Beads of Time Sounding* 30’ Monty Adkins/Terri Hron Lepidoptera 40’ Zygoptera, Lepidoptera, Saturniid, Anisoptera, Ephemeroptera Terri Hron, recorders and electronics *World Premiere ...
read morePAO & Veda Hille
Plastic Acid Orchestra with Veda Hille and Friends Presented by Plastic Acid Orchestra and Vancouver New Music The Vancouver Playhouse 600 Hamilton Street at Dunsmuir Saturday, September 10, 2016 • 8:00 pm Join Veda Hille in this rare concert as she performs with a full symphony orchestra a visionary programme of reimagined Buffy Sainte Marie songs and original pieces inspired by Emily Carr. Conduction by the extraordinary Giorgio Magnanensi and featuring a premiere new work by Martin Reisle and Elliot Vaughan. With the work and inspiration of three iconoclastic Canadian artists (Emily Carr, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Veda Hille), the wonderful and passionate Plastic Acid Orchestra performing visionary orchestrations by Giorgio Magnanensi and Ford Pier and a new work by Martin Reisle with Elliot Vaughan, this concert is unfolding in an ever changing and kaleidoscopic sonic and poetic world. A prelude to the upcoming celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Confederation, this is also a resounding reminder that the power of imagination is a real force and that creativity, poetry and music can be real agents of change. The orchestrations of Buffy Remix and of Veda Hille’s Here is a Picture present various sonic and formal qualities emerging from both a visceral and poetic response to all these beautiful songs. Like in the colors and gestures of Emily Carr’s paintings, my work aspires to be speechless, not eloquent, without the urgency of communicating anything. If it expresses anything at all, that is pure character – essence more than intentionality. It manifests potential energy more than activity, relying on its own bare existence. The orchestrations are dedicated to Veda Hille who shares with Buffy Saint-Marie and Emily Carr wonderful creative energy, love for poetry, sound and imagination. Tonight’s concert is also an homage to this spirit, homage to great artists never given enough credit, whose art and activism will be always inspiring. Thank you to Bryan Deans for vision, passion and love and to all the fantastic musicians of the Plastic Acid Orchestra and to everyone who supported us and worked hard to make all this happen again. (Giorgio Magnanensi) Facebook event...
read moreDestroy Vancouver XVIII
DESTROY VANCOUVER XVIII Co-presented with Vancouver New Music THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 8 | DOORS 〓 8.30PM-2AM CONCERT 〓 9PM ADMISSION: $15 advance $20 door BUY TICKETS (Advance tickets will be available till Wednesday Sep 7, 11:59pm) fb event page Featuring: ■ Adriana Lopez ■ Christina Kubisch ■ Friends+War ■ Katharina Ernst ■ hazy ■ minimal violence Selectors’ Record Dj Visuals by Emily Thacker DV is an experimental music and sound art series curated by John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari. Coalescing around improvised forms of music and sound art, DV combines a broad range of experimental music genres and sound art aesthetics and brings together international improvisers with local and national sound artists and avant-garde musicians. ARTIST TALK | Christina Kubisch Wednesday September 7 2016 at 7pm Free Admission ELECTRICAL WALKS | Christina Kubisch Friday September 8 2016 (times tba) fb event page — ADRIANA LOPEZ Bogotá born, Barcelona-based Adriana Lopez is one of techno’s most prominent female artists. She has been involved in the techno music scene since the late 1990s. She was a resident DJ at Bogotá’s CBC Club (2000) and played in several cities across Columbia before moving to Spain in 2002. She launched her label, Grey Report in 2013 and has also released music on respected imprints, notably on Modularz, Semantica and Pole Group. Using a combination of vinyl and CDJ’s, Adriana’s sets explore a wide range of powerful, hypnotic and driving techno. “Over the past few years Adriana Lopez has become one of the defining acts of the Spanish techno scene. Having developed her skills as a DJ back in Colombia where she was raised, Lopez took influence from the early Detroit & UK techno scenes, moving to Spain in 2002 where her work began to make a significant impression. Over 10 years on from her relocation, Lopez is one of Barcelona’s most acclaimed artists, not least for her skills as a DJ but also as a producer and curator of her label, Grey Report. Founded as a platform for her own smoke-laced warehouse jams, Grey Report has grown to feature collaborations with some of Lopez’s closest affiliates, including NX1 and Developer.” ~ Stray Landings, 2015. soundcloud.com/adrianalopez CHRISTINA KUBISCH Christina Kubisch was born in Bremen, Germany and studied painting, music and electronics in Hamburg, Graz, Zürich and Milano, where she graduated. Her works take a variety of forms, ranging from performances, concerts and video (in the seventies), to sound installations, sound sculptures and experimentation with ultraviolet light. Her sound compositions are primarily electroacoustic, though she has written for ensembles as well. Since 2003 she performs again and to collaborate with various musicians and dancers. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, such as the Award of the German Industrial Association (BDI) 1998, composition grant of the city of Berlin 2000, Carl Djerassi Honorary Fellowship, USA 2000, artist-in-residence IASPIS, Stockholm 2002, Honorary prize of the German Sound Art Prize 2008, City sound artist Bonn, 2013. Since 1974 she has had solo exhibitions in Europe, USA, Australia, Japan and South America. She has participated in numerous international festivals and group exhibitions including: Pro Musica Nova, Bremen 1976 and 1980, Für Augen und Ohren, Berlin 1980, Biennale of Venice 1980 and 1982, documenta 8, Kassel 1987, Ars Electronica, Linz 1987 and 2010, Steirischer Herbst,...
read more56
Here is a random image search for the number of my birthday; today, my 56th birthday, August 5, 2016 (click on the images for links) and HERE is the font of the number 56 in the thumbnail of this page...
read more
soundgarden/2
Roberts Creek, July 22-23 SOUNDGARDEN 2 info sonification of #9761: 9761 loop [Download] here some images from last year’s soundgarden and some comments “Quite simply, the soundgarden was magical. Giorgio and Nic animated a familiar moon-kissed forest stream nook into a hallucinatory theatre of perception. Carefully choreographed, immersive, interactive, contemplative, and generous, the work playfully encouraged us to unexpected places. What more can one ask of a work of art?” – Matthew Talbot-Kelly “The Spun Spectra show was a memorable experience. It was very unique to enter a familiar forest at night, and see it totally transformed with the different visual and sonic effects. It made you experience the forest in a totally different way.” – Nathan Loewen “I loved the smell of the cedar and other wood, the music echoing the feel and sound of the forest and stream, and the imagery based on spider-web prisms. Thank you for allowing us access to your land for our visual and auditory delight!” – Janice Williams “Spun spectra was an incredible example of the beauty of light we rarely see. A visual feast for the brain. It opened my eyes to the refracted light available to us all the time thanks to these amazing orb weaving spiders. I see web rainbows everywhere now.” – Mark Goerzen “Spun spectra blew my mind. Images, sound scapes, projections that took my brain to a completely unexpected zone. Surprises and challenges around every corner. This show absolutely NEEDS to be seen. I fully expect to never see anything like it ever again. ” – Athan Merrick “The show shifted how I felt at the moment, as if to suddenly find yourself immersed in a book you can taste: the dark and natural environment, enhanced by Giorgio’s psychedelic soundscape, and of course the glowing mystery and magic of Nic’s colourful spiderweb images. There was clearly a sense of disbelief and discovery among viewers: both the wonder, and in a strange way the weakness, of the spiderweb images is the surprise that they’re not altered, that they’re actual images of spiderwebs, merely taken from a perspective, and in a light, often overlooked. ” – Jason Mannings “My wife and I attended an event by Giorgio Magnanensi with Nicolas Teichrob called Sound Garden this past weekend and would like to extend our appreciation for this taking place. As Sunshine Coast residents and professional artists it was most inspiring to be taken away from the Bricks and Mortar approach to art expression and be transported into a wonderfully selected and orchestrated location where the experience of the musical and visual art was seamlessly intertwined with the amazing canvas that nature provided. The benefits to the Sunshine Coast for this type of weekend event are varied and many, but for us specifically, it is assurance that interesting contemporary expression of the arts is being demonstrated at a very high level. This event breathes life into all aspects of creative expressions on the Sunshine Coast, promotes exploration, demonstrates positive creative leadership and fosters better understanding of why we live and culturally develop here on the West Coast. Sound Garden also has the cool factor that will be talked about off the coast and around the world…in fact, we were just sharing the experience along with pictures with family and friends in Europe, and this makes us look like we live in...
read moreVNM 2016-17
VANCOUVER NEW MUSIC 2016-17 CONCERT SERIES AND FESTIVAL CONCERT SERIES SUBSCRIPTIONS AND FESTIVAL PASSES NOW AVAILABLE FESTIVAL VNM 2016 Festival • Mechanical Music 13 – 15 October 2016; 8PM each night Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM each night The Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) The 2016 Festival will present a varied selection of musicians and sound artists who have been focusing their efforts on developing both mechanical and algorithmic systems to generate sound works, compositions and installations. Featured performers include Canadian artists Adam Basanta, Peter Hannan and Camille Hesketh, Anne-Françoise Jacques, George Rahi, Jocelyn Robert, Kelly Ruth, and international artists Lucas Abela (Australia), Tristan Perich(NYC), Sabrina Schroeder (Canada/UK) and Koka Nikoladze (Norway). CONCERT SERIES Andrea Young: EXO/ENDO (Canada/US) 19 November 2016; 8PM Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM The Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) Andrea Young’s current work focuses on the dynamic relationship between voice and technology, where the act of utterance is the modulation between responding, self-monitoring and listening. With her ensemble EXO/ENDO, she will performs work by Ulrich Krieger, Erin Gee and John Mutter. andrea-young.ca Nordic Voices (Norway) 18 February 2017; 8PM Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM The Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) Nordic Voices is a six-member a cappella group from Norway, who are steadily gaining international recognition and acclaim. This ethereal sounding ensemble returns to Vancouver with a new program of contemporary vocal works by leading Norwegian composers. nordicvoices.no Talea Ensemble (NY) 11 March 2017; 8PM Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM The Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) Making its Vancouver debut, Talea Ensemble will present mainstay composers from its repertoire: Pierluigi Billone, Clemens Gadenstätter, and Olga Neuwirth, alongside a world premiere by young Canadian composer, Stefan Meyer. The centerpiece of the program is Billone’s Ebe und Anders, scored for solo trumpet and trombone with ensemble. taleaensemble.org Mantra Percussion (NY) 8 April 2017; 8PM Free pre-show chat at 7:15PM The Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) After wowing Vancouver audiences with their performance of Michael Gordan’s Timber in 2013, VNM is thrilled to welcome Mantra Percussion back to Vancouver. Mantra will premiere new works by Canadian Paul Dolden (commissioned by VNM) and Tristan Perich, that were written especially for the ensemble. mantrapercussion.org COMMUNITY EVENTS Soundwalks 25 September + 2 October 2016; 2–3:30PM 2 + 9 April, 2017; 2–3:30PM Various outdoor locations TBA FREE VNM will again offer four Soundwalks in collaboration with the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective. On September 25, 2016 join Roxanne Nesbitt for Automation: Trains and Blades, a soundwalk inspired by this year’s festival theme, Mechanical Music. On October 2, 2016 join us for a special Culture Days soundwalk. Terri Hron and Hildegard Westerkamp (Montreal/Vancouver) New Work – world premiere 30 September 2016 Vancouver Community College Atrium (1155 East Broadway) FREE Recorder virtuoso Terri Hron returns to Vancouver to premiere a new work created in collaboration with Vancouver-based composer Hildegard Westerkamp. Vancouver Electronic Ensemble (VEE) Various dates and venues TBA FREE VEE will offer up free performances throughout the year, including a concert event at VCC in conjunction with VNM’s 2016 Festival, Mechanical Music. One-Page Score Project with the Plastic Acid Orchestra (PAO) and VEE Date and Venue TBA FREE Last year’s workshop was so much fun, we’re doing it again! Giorgio Magnanensi and PAO will work with a small group of participants from a range of musical, and non-musical backgrounds who will create their own one-page graphic scores. These will be workshopped and performed live by the...
read morethe iron works • June 29, 5pm
The Iron Works, June 29, 2016 • 5pm Vancouver International Jazz...
read more
a musical engagement
A nice article by Ian McLatchie in the new issue of Coast Life included with this week’s edition of the Coast Reporter. You can read it below or open the PDF...
read morepropeller trinity
Another great work by Koka Nikoladze Check his other work on his website. Koka will be performing in Vancouver in October, at the 2016 VNM...
read moreintonarumori
a performance with a set of replica of Luigi Russolo‘s Intonarumori in occasion of MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture February 20 – June 12, 2016 at the Vancouver Art Gallery And HERE you can find more link about Russolo and all. Performers/Intonarumoristi ; ) Kedrick James, Jules Lavern, Giorgio Magnanensi, Mariah Mennie, George Rahi Thank you to Martin Gottfrit who curated the Intonarumori Series at the VAG and invited us to play. Intonarumori Take 1 [Download] Intonarumori Take 2 [Download] Intonarumori playground (for an upcoming performance at the VAG) A post shared by Ben Wylie (@yallreadyknowutitdo) on Mar 7, 2016 at 5:24pm PST and here a great book by Luciano Chessa if you want to read more about Luigi Russolo and Futurism ...
read more