EAR - SOUNDS ELECTRIC '05

3-Day Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music

A celebration of innovation and originality, the festival brought to Ireland leading international composers and performers in electronic and computer music, for an intense weekend of world class seminars and concerts, including a concert by the EAR Ensemble. SOUNDS ELECTRIC '05 took place at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2-4 December 2005. Many thanks to all who took part.

We have had two calls for works, both are now CLOSED. Our invitation to composers and researchers in computer music to submit papers on the subject of Csound language have was very successful and selected papers was presented in a special programme of talks.

The call for compositions was answered by over 80 composers from all over the world. The selected works were presented in two special concerts.

Full festival programme is now availible in .pdf format.

Sounds Electric '05 Festival Programme

CONCERT I - EAR Ensemble

The EAR Ensemble return for their first major concert this year with five new works specially written for the group.

The concert includes works for ensemble and live electronics by James Hearon, Fergal Dowling, Victor Lazzarini, David Stalling, Rory Walsh and Brazilian composer Elaine Thomazi Freitas. This will be an innovative programme of new compositions from Ireland, USA and Brazil.

Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, 8:00 p.m. €15, €10 (concession)

Brendan Walsh performs Elaine Thomazi Freitas's Azul Profundamente Espaço at the EAR Ensemble concert.

Keynote Speech

10:30 Richard Boulanger (Berklee College, USA) "Mainstreaming: From the Research Lab to the studio, Club, Concert Stage, TV, and Big Screen."

Music Department, NUI Maynooth, Admissioni Free.

(Richard Boulanger will also be the featured artist in the closing concert on Sunday 4th December)

Csound Seminars I

Talk

4:30 Rajmil Fischman (Keele University, UK), "Real and Virtual landscapes in Electroacoustic music"

CONCERT II - CSOUNDBITES

Music selection from submissions in response to an open call for works using the Csound language.

Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, 1:00 p.m. €8, €5 (concession)

Programme:

Jan Jacob Hofmann Horizontal and Vertical Lines

Hector Centeno-Garcia Bell

Marcelo Carneiro de Lima Fo.D.A. -Fotos De Amor

Giuseppe Torre Air in Slow Motion

Richard Bowers Reichmann Berlin

Massimo Fragalà Movimenti

Giuseppe Rapisarda Ex tubae corpore

CONCERT III - TYMPANUM - Dance and Multimedia Improvisation

This exciting encounter between different art forms in response to the use of technology in a performance environment, will bring together international artists working with various media to improvise, in an adventurous crossover between disciplines, and will create a unique and stimulating audio-visual experience. Featuring Christiane Conradt Michaela Fünfhausen, Slavek Kwi and Uwe Storch

Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, 8:00 p.m. €15, €10 (concession)

Christiane Conradt at TYMPANUM - Dance and Multimedia Improvisation

Csound Seminars II

2:30 Steven Yi (USA), "The blue Composition Environment"
3:10 Rory Walsh (Ireland), "ICE: the Integrated Csound Editor"
3:40 Adalberto Vidal (Argentina), "'Strings Formulas' and their Application in Csound Score Generation"
4:10 James Hearon (USA), "Csound in Realtime Performance using the pvs and fltk Opcodes"

Talk

5:00 John ffitch (University of Bath, UK), "On the Development of Csound 5."

Music Department, NUI Maynooth, Admission Free.

CONCERT IV - Electric Landscapes

Second concert of 'tape' music selected from our open call for works.

Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, 1:00 p.m. €8, €5 (concession)

Programme:

Jonathan Nangle my mind hovers on hummingbird wings

Frank Niehusmann Maschinenpark

Edgar Barroso TAU

Damian O'Riain Nostos Algos

Georgina Lewis Sardine Princess

Mathew Adkins Symbiont

Ricardo Climent The last castrati

Annette Vande Gorne Ce qu'a vu le vent d'Est

Neal Smith-Amies Trails in the Sky

CONCERT V - The Music of Richard Boulanger and Rajmil Fischman

Concert of interactive music by two important firgures in the international electro-acoustic music scene. Electro-acoustic composer, writer, programmer and teacher Richard Boulanger will present a number of recent and early works including a revised version of the seminal Trapped in Convertand live interactive performances using his 'Radio Baton'.

The renowned international electro-acoustic composer Rajmil Fischman will perform live diffusions of his own works from the mixing desk.

Aula Maxima, NUI Maynooth, 8:00 p.m. €15, €10 (concession)

(L to R) Dr. Richard Boulanger, John ffitch, Rajmil Fischmann (photo Jan Jacob Hofmann)

Michaela Fünfhausen

Michaela Fünfhausen, dancer and choreographer, was born in Frankfurt am Main. She received dance training at the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen and at the Hochschule for Music and Dance in Hannover.

In 1989 she became an ensemble member at the Schauspielhaus Bochum under direction of Reinhild Hoffmann, and collaborated with numerous choreographers and directors, such as Kei Takei, Gerhard Bohner, Valentin Jeker, Einar Schleef, Jürgen Gosch and Frank-Patrick Steckel.

In 1995 she established dance group 'Condanza' with singer Maria Jonas. Since 1995 she has choreographed of numerous of her own productions in Germany and abroad, funded by Land NRW, Stiftung Kunst und Kultur NRW, Fonds Darstellende Künste Bochum, Hauptstadtkultur Fond Berlin, and has performanced at the Salzburger Festspiele, the Opera Frankfurt and the Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz.

Fünfhausen received the Ellis Gregor Award by the Mary Wigman Society in 1996, and continued her studies with Trisha Brown, New York (Modern Dance Company) and Anna Halprin, California.

In 1999 she received the Artist Prize from the Berliner Akademie der Künste, who subsequently commissioned her for the project "Composers and Choreographers", in collaboration with composer Jüri Reinvere.

Christiane Conradt

Christiane Conradt was born in Thüringen, and studied Music at the Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt, the Musikhochschule Mannheim and Baden-Baden (Karlsruhe).

She gave numerous performances of contemporary music since the 1970s.

Collaborations with composers Dietrich Boekle, Matthias Spahlinger, Volker Blumenthaler.

Since 1974 she has been a member of String Trio Trilogie.

Richard Boulanger

Richard Boulanger was born in 1956 and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Music from the University of California, San Diego where he worked at the Center for Music Experiment's Computer Audio Research Lab. He has continued his computer music research at Bell Labs, CCRMA, the MIT Media Lab, Interval Research, and IBM and has worked closely for many years with Max Mathews and Barry Vercoe.

Boulanger has premiered his original interactive works at the Kennedy Center, and appeared on stage performing his Radio Baton and MIDI PowerGlove Concerto with the Krakow and Moscow Symphonies. His music is recorded on the NEUMA label.

Currently, Dr. Boulanger is a Professor of Music Synthesis at the Berklee College of Music where he has been honored with both the Faculty of the Year Award and the President'sAward.

He has published articles on computer music education and composition in all the major electronic music and music technology magazines. Most recently, Boulanger edited a definitive textbook on computer music that was published by The MIT Press entitled: The Csound Book.

Rajmil Fischman

Rajmil Fischman, Professor, obtained his BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) in 1980. During 1984-85 he studied composition with Abel Ehrlich and conducting at Tel Aviv University.

In 1985 he transferred to York University, studying composition with John Paynter and Richard Orton and obtaining his PhD in 1991.

In 1986 he joined the Composers' Desktop Project (CDP) becoming a project director in 1988. Between 1990 and 1995 he was artistic director and principal conductor of the Keele Philharmonic Society. 

In 1998 he became director of music at Keele. He is currently editorial adviser for the journal Organised Sound, published by Cambridge University Press.

He composes instrumental and electroacoustic music and his pieces are performed regularly in the UK and abroad.  In addition to composition he is also active in the areas of theory and aesthetics of electroacoustic music and in the development of compositional software tools.

Uwe Storch

Uwe Storch at TYMPANUM - Dance and Multimedia Improvisation

Slavek Kwi

Slavek Kwi was born in the Czech Republic and is now based in Ireland. He began as a visually-based artist, who became increasingly interested in sound and space. He has used natural acoustics, found sound, recorded sound and computer generated sound structures. His works are often environment specific.

In 1990, he set up Artificial Memory Trace, focusing on electro-acoustic research as "digitally frozen contemplation".

In 1991,he studied at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique, Liege and at the Centre de recherches et educations musicales de Wallonie and, from 1991-1993, at Musique et Recherches, Ohain, all in Belgium.

He has worked with autistic children and children with learning disabilities and pre-primary children. He has had numerous exhibitions and performances throughout Europe and Northern America

Elaine Thomazi Freitas

Composer Elaine Thomazi Freitas was born in Brazil in 1970. She received a Masters degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and completed a doctoral program at Columbia University, in New York, 2003.

In 2001 she worked at IRCAM, Paris, under the direction of Gerard Assayag and Andrew Gerzso. Working with Tristan Murail as an advisor during her studies in the USA, she started to focus more on computer music, computer-aided composition, and multimedia.

Her works range from the acoustic repertoire, including solo, chamber, and orchestral pieces, to pure electroacoustic music. She is a recipient of several scholarships from the Brazilian Government, as well as from Columbia University. In 2003, she was short-listed for the Prix SCRIME, composition prize, in Bordeaux, France.

Actively engaged in the musical scene in Brazil, she
developed an international carrier throughout Europe and North America after moving to NYC in 1998.

In Brazil Elaine works on a teaching program funded by FAPERJ, a governamental agency from Rio de Janeiro, to conduct a research on music and multimedia within the music department of University of Rio de Janeiro.

John ffitch

John ffitch was definitely born after WWII, in that part of the United Kingdom which is God's own county, certainly educated at an East Anglian university in the sixties, and despite his long hair and lengthening beard, and the uncertain spelling of his name, was never a hippie.

His entire professional career has been as an academic mathematician/computer scientist, and for most of that time he has been in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Bath, where he holds the Chair of Engineering, a subject about which he knows little.

His main interests have been in Relativity, Planetary Astronomy, Computer Algebra and LISP, but he has been known to dabble widely, for example in tank warfare, Latin poetry, Arabic linguistics, compilers, and company management, all with some lack of success.

Strangely enough he won the Adams Prize for Mathematics a quarter of a century ago, but not much since. Hobbies include maintaining Csound, receiving and losing e-mail, and complaining about the Web.

Selected Audio
EAR Ensemble Concert, 2 December 2005

David Stalling's En Trance for ensemble [12.5Mb]

Rory Walsh's Finite Loop for clarinet and computer [5.95Mb]

Victor Lazzarini's ...And Through the Rhythm of Moving Slowly for ensemble [10.16Mb]

Fergal Dowling's The Musicians of Bremen for double bass, cello and 'tape' [4.62Mb]

Video Highlights,
EAR Ensemble Concert, 2 December 2005

The EAR Ensemble perform Victor Lazzarini's And Through the Rhythm of Moving Slowly

This Quicktime movie shows a short selection of these works and some excerpts from the closing concert, 4 December, by Richard Boulanger, John ffitch and Rajmil Fischmann

View Concert Excerpts Quicktime Movie (15'19'') [26.38Mb]