Sandeep Bhagwati will be speak at the Canadian New Music Forum – a major network organisation of the Canadian New Music Network (CNMN) at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver). Speakers will include Canadian and international music luminaries, composers, curators, musicians.
Web Links:
Canadian New Music Network (CNMN)
matralab composers Sandeep Bhagwati and Navid Navab will be part of the Circle of Night project at the Western Front in Vancouver. There will be all-night performances including many other artists and musicians, such as Hildegard Westerkamp, Coat Cooke, Mei Fan, Cheryl l’Hirondelle and many others.
Each will present one of his own works and together they will use the Native Alien software system to create improvised duos between the computer and some of the performers.
Web Links:
The Western Front
Adam Basanta will be travelling to New York City for the performance of “Ixos“, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Montreal and NYC-based artists, in which Adam will be performing live sounds and supplying interactive light design.
Ixos is a concert organized by clarinetist and multi-media artist Krista Martynes. The performance (approximately 55′ in duration) will incorporate movement direction by choreographer Kristin Hatleberg, sound art and light design by Adam Basanta and dance by Ms. Hatleberg and Janet Aisawa.
Ixos is a cyclical production, inspired loosely by bird songs (Ixos is a type of song bird) wherein the four artists envelope the improv-generated compositions of Giacinto Scelsi with their own sound and movement improvisation, including intensification of simple timbres and rhythmic exchanges.
“Ixos” will be performed at the CRS (123 4th Ave, 2nd FL, New York) on January 14th, at 8pm. Tickets are $15.
Adam Basanta is a masters student at matralab.
Devora Neumark’s latest writing has just been published:
“Once a Russian, Always a Jew: (Auto)biographical Storytelling and the Legacy of Dislocation”
Storytelling, Self, Society
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2012
ABSTRACT
Culled in part from nearly 20 hours of audio recordings of the author’s father’s experiences with displacement prior to, during, and after World War II, this paper explores some conditions that make it possible for people to feel at home in the aftermath of forced dislocation and the ways in which storytelling can help break the subsequent cycle of violence that can emerge from such an experience. The author’s father’s story is interspersed with her own narrative voice as well as a theoretical exploration of what is at stake for the storyteller and for those who bear witness to the stories told of experience at the nexus between memory and history.
Devora Neumark is a PhD student at matralab.
Wu Wei will be collaborating on the Native Alien project with Sandeep Bhagwati.
Please come to the research presentation on Dec 19th from 5-7pm (17-19h) in the matrabox (EV 4.502). At this presentation, Wu Wei will also perform Sandeep Bhagwati’s interactive score “Transience” together with Cléo Palacio-Quintin (flute), Elin Soderstrom (viola da gamba) and Michal Seta (guitar). Please RSVP at the address below.
NATIVE ALIEN is a long term research-creation project – the search for a software that can play in a musically inspiring way with a human music performer-improviser. We are developing this project in close dialogue with a research group on machine improvisation at the IRCAM Centre Pompidou in Paris (Gerard Assayag / Benjamin Levy). Over the past two years, the Native Alien team (Sandeep Bhagwati / Navid Navab) have developed advanced compositional, comprovisational and sonic software architectures that now are being tried, modified and improved upon in close practical collaboration with outstanding solo performers from many different music making traditions around the world. The end product, we hope, will be an immersive environment for live-composition, as well as a musically empathic software that can play in any style, with any adventurous musician.
Wu Wei is considered to be the world’s leading avant-garde sheng soloist – the sheng is a 4000-year old Chinese instrument, a mouth-organ. Taking Chinese art music as his point of departure, he approaches many other traditions with extraordinary musical creativity and vitality: for many years already, he has been a star in contemporary western art music, in improvised music, in jazz, in minimalist music, and other styles. While he performs on a conventional modern sheng with 37 pipes, he has decisively expanded the technical and sonic possibilities of his instrument. He has won many prestigious national and international competitions, awards and prizes both for traditional Chinese music and for his trans- and cross-traditional projects. He has worked with Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, and has performed than 140 world premières of contemporary compositions – among them 10 concertos for Sheng and orchestra – written for him by composers such as John Cage, Unsuk Chin, Toshio Hosokawa, Tan Dun, Guo Wenjing, Qu Xiaosong, and Sandeep Bhagwati. He has collaborated with dance companies all over the world, played with Atlas Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, Nieuw Ensemble, and many more, has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra etc., often at seminal festivals: Berliner Festspiele, Munich Biennale, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Warsaw Autumn, Suntory Summer Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, Holland Festival, Shanghai Electronic Music Festival, Musiques Marseille, San Francisco Art Festival etc. As a composer he has received numerous commissions, and has wowed audiences at jazz festivals worldwide, playing with the likes of Peter Kowald, Gunter Baby Sommer, Michael Riessler, Howard Levy, Ross Daly, Ferenc Snetberger, Tony Buck, Carlo Rizzo, Ramesh Shotham, Lequan Ninh, Pavel Fajt, Franz Hautzinger, Carl Ludwig Huebsch, Carl Stone, etc. His music has been released on numerous CDs.
Dans le cadre du projet d’échanges croisés TRANSAT Contamine entre le Québec et la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, qui explorent les nouvelles formes de performance technologique, deux artistes de la Société des arts technologiques [SAT], réaliseront simultanément, samedi 3 décembre à 15 h, heure de Montréal et 21 h, heure montoise, une performance en téléprésence entre Montréal et Mons (Belgique) avec deux créatrices belges soutenues par Transcultures, Centre interdisciplinaire des cultures numériques et sonores.
Entrée gratuite de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique.
Michal Seta (compositeur et programmeur-chercheur à la SAT) et Laurence Moletta (compositrice et chanteuse -Transcultures) seront à Mons cette semaine, accueillis en résidence par l’Institut de recherche en art technologique, Numédiart et Transcultures.
Valérie Cordy (metteur en scène et artiste du réseau – Transcultures) et Alexandre Quessy, (directeur du développement logiciel [SAT] – images et textes réseau à Montréal) travailleront avec eux via le logiciel libre de téléprésence Scenic, développé par la SAT.
Cette performance de téléprésence intitulée Soupe transatlantique 2 .0 est la quatrième et dernière phase live du processus de recherche et de création TRANSAT Contamine, entamé en 2010, qui donnera lieu a une publication commune réalisée par la SAT et Transcultures au printemps 2012.
Pour information : http://www.sat.qc.ca/post.php?post_id=2243
Michal Seta is a research associate at matralab.
Witchcraft revisits the history of witchcraft trials in Joanna Baillie’s homeland, Scotland, through a conventicle of destitute female characters seeking power, love, and retribution in an elusive and illusory dark devil. The play explores mass hysteria and paranoia in witches and their accusers, in women and men, and examines how individuals struggle to navigate and negotiate in a culture of fear. The play is an important artistic and historical precursor for other dramatic representations of witchcraft, such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
The play is an important artistic and historical precursor for other dramatic representations of witchcraft, such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Co-directors Louis Patrick Leroux and Christina Iovita’s staging brings Baillie’s drama into the contemporary register, layering live performance with video projection and other multimedia elements as one way to negotiate the temporal and aesthetic distance of the play.
As an artist-in-residence, Louis Patrick Leroux utilized matralab’s facilities over the past two years to realize the film aspects play.
When: Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 8 p.m.
Thursday, December 1, 8 p.m.
Friday, December 2, 8 p.m.
Saturday, December 3, 2 and 8 p.m.
Sunday, December 4, 2 p.m.
Where: D.B. Clarke Theatre, Henry F. Hall Building (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.), Sir George Williams Campus
Tickets, $10 regular admission, $5 for students and seniors, are available in person only at the D.B. Clarke Theatre, the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall and at the door. No reservations.
Louis Patrick Leroux is an artist-in-residence at matralab.
Matralab is proud to welcome musician Rohan de Saram to Montreal to work on the Native Alien project with Sandeep Bhagwati.
Rohan will be working at the matralab/box (EV4.520 and 502) from November 18 to the 25th with the matralab team – Navid Navab and Julian Stein. You are welcome to attend a special research presentation on November 25th at noon in the box (EV4.502).
NATIVE ALIEN is a long term research-creation project – the search for a software that can play in a musically inspiring way with a human music performer-improviser. We are developing this project in close dialogue with a research group on machine improvisation at the IRCAM Centre Pompidou in Paris (Gerard Assayag / Benjamin Levy). Over the past two years, the Native Alien team (Sandeep Bhagwati / Navid Navab) have developed advanced compositional, comprovisational and sonic software architectures that now are being tried, modified and improved upon in close practical collaboration with outstanding solo performers from many different music making traditions around the world. The end product, we hope, will be an immersive environment for live-composition, as well as a musically empathic software that can play in any style, with any adventurous musician.
Rohan de Saram is an artist-in-residence at matralab.
Adam Basanta has been commissioned a new electroacoustic piece by Codes d’accès – a Montreal based new music society – for their 2011-2012 season. The work – entitled “three myths of liberalism” – will incorporate a loose narrative structure examining several tenants of classical Liberal ideology. It will be premiered at Usine C, Montreal, on April 5 and 6, 2012.
Adam Basanta is a masters student at matralab.
Adam Basanta has been selected as a finalist in the Sound in Space Electroacoustic Music Interpretation Competition, taking place November 17-20 in Boston, MA. As a finalist, Adam will participate in sound diffusion workshops, festival concerts, and a spatialization competition utilizing Harvard’s 32-speaker “Hydra” speaker orchestra. His participation is made possible through financial support by the Goethe-Institut, Boston.
For more information, visit http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/bos/kue/aoi/enindex.htm
Adam Basanta is a masters student at matralab.