Hans Tutschku, Remembering Japan – part 1

8 channel electroacoustic composition  

Duration: 9:48 min

 

“This is the first part of a series of compositions. In 2014 I spent three months in Japan, researching musical rituals, improvising with local musicians and recording countless sounds in temples, gardens, streets and nature. I'm aiming to create a sonic voyage by revisiting those recordings and by bringing spatially and temporally unrelated sonic scenes into the same room. The work is clearly based on Japanese culture while reflecting at the same time my own compositional preoccupations: polyphony, density, space and memory as structuring and formal principles.”

 

Hans Tutschku was born in Weimar in 1966. Some of his first experiences with electronic music came with the “Ensemble for Intuitive Music Weimar” of which he has been a member since 1982. He studied electronic music composition at the Dresden College of Music and, starting in 1989, participated in several of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s concert cycles to learn the art of sound direction. He continued his studies in sonology and electroacoustic composition at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague (1991/92), followed by a year’s study at IRCAM in Paris (1994). In 1996 he participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough.

Hans Tutschku has taught electroacoustic composition as a guest professor in Weimar (1995/96); electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris (1997–2001); and at the conservatory of Montbéliard (2001–2004). In May 2003 he completed a doctorate (PhD) with Professor Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, and during the spring term of 2003 was the “Edgard Varèse Guest Professor” at the Technical University of Berlin. Since 2004, he is the Fanny P. Mason Professor of Music at Harvard University, where he teaches composition and works as director of the electroacoustic studios.

Besides his regular courses at the university, he is regularly teaching international workshops for musicians and non-musicians on aspects of art appreciation, listening, creativity, composition, improvisation, live-electronics and sound spatialization.

Hans Tutschku is the winner of many international composition competitions, including: Bourges, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Hanns Eisler Prize, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Noroit, and Prix Musica Nova. In 2005 he received the culture prize of the city of Weimar. He held a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for 2013, and a stipend from the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission for 2014. In 2015 he received a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation. In 2017, his composition Remembering Japan won the first prize at the composition competition Klang!, as well as the first prize at the CIME ICEM competition; and he was awarded the ZKM Giga-Hertz production prize for ‚pressure-divided’.

 

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Clemens von Reusner, Definierte Lastbedingung

Definierte Lastbedingung (Defined Load Condition) is based upon the sound of electromagnetic fields generated by electrical equipment. Numerous recordings of electromagnetic fields were made at the Institute for Electrical Machines, Traction and Drives (IMAB) of the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, with a special microphone.

The recorded material has hardly any of what is otherwise typical for “musical“ sound. There is no spatial depth, nor any dynamics. In their identity as noise, the sounds are static, although they are internally mobile. They usually seem awkward, even hermetic such as the familiar humming of the mains. “Definierte Lastbedingung” (a technical term when testing electrical machines) works with these sounds using the resources of the electronic studio, in which they are examined in their structure and designed anew.

Spatialization: ambisonic 3rd order.

Definierte Lastbedingung featured as the German contribution to the World Music Days for New Music in Vancouver in 2017 and was nominated for the Prix Phonurgia in France in 2017.

 

Clemens von Reusner (b. 1957) is a composer and sound artist based in Germany, whose work is focused on electroacoustic music. He studied musicology and music-education – drums with Abbey Rader and Peter Giger. At the end of the 1980s development of the music software KANDINSKY MUSIC PAINTER.

Clemens von Reusner is a member of the German Composers' Society (Deutscher Komponistenverband, DKV), the German Society for New Music (Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, GNM) and of the German Society For Electroacoustic Music (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik, DEGEM). He also worked as a curator and served as a jury member at international electroacoustic festivals.

He has been commissioned to compose works for radio and his compositions have received numerous international broadcasts and performances in Americas, Asia, Europe. Invitations to ISCM World New Music Days 2011, Zagreb , Croatia, and ISCM World New Music Days 2017, Vancouver, Canada.

www.cvr-net.de

 

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Brona Martin, NightEscape

“NightEscape is the first in a series of works that will explore the soundscape that surrounds Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida where I have attended residencies with composers Jonty Harrison and Natasha Barrett. NightEscape explores a night-time soundscape using a field recording as the source material. Crickets dominate this field recording. I find the sound of crickets extremely relaxing and calming and their presence reinforces the fact that I am somewhere else, exploring and travelling because their sound to me is somehow exotic. I have restricted myself to using one night-time recording, which facilitates the exploration of this recording in detail. NightEscape was composed using a ring of 8 loudspeakers. The piece offers the listener time to immerse themselves in a meditative and calming soundscape, taking time out of busy schedules to pause, reflect and escape.”

This piece was composed at EMS, Stockholm, March 2018.

 

Brona Martin is an Electroacoustic composer and sound artist from Banagher, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Brona's research interests include narrative in Electroacoustic music, soundscape composition, acoustic communication and spatialisation. Her research explores metaphorical and real-world representations of diverse soundworlds, images and experiences, where the aim is to reveal particular sonic characters that are not normally the focus of listening. Brona's portfolio of works explore the layers and textures of sounds that contribute to the overall sonic-makeup of specific places both real and imaginary. Through listening, recording, analysing and processing, the layers of a soundworld are studied in great detail. Processing of these materials reveals the sonic qualities and the internal behaviour of specific sounds.

Brona's artistic portfolio offers an in depth and alternative listening perspective and experience where the complexity of everyday sounds are examined and rearranged into a new context. References are also made to the design of the acoustic environment where noise pollution often masks the more pleasant sounds of the natural environment.

Her acousmatic works composed in stereo, 5.1 and 8-channel have included the creative exploration of soundscapes from Ireland, Manchester, East Coast Australia, Spain and Germany. Her works have been performed internationally at EMS, ACMC, ICMC, NYCEMF, ISSTA, ZKM, BEAST, Balance/Unbalance, SSSP, iFIMPaC, Sonorities and MANTIS. Have a listen to some of her work here.

Brona is currently a Teaching Fellow in Composition at the University of Southampton.

 

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Erik Nyström, Textonics

‘Textonics’ is a word invented to allude to two defining aspects of texture in this work. The first is a reference to textons – micro-spatial constituents of texture – here shaped by irregular, incomplete fragments of synthesised sound. The second is tectonics – textures coagulate into dense masses like a ‘geomorphology’, and are layered vertically in the frequency spectrum, and distributed horizontally as overlapping fields. In this work, the two domains reflect a continuum between technology and nature, creating a material embodiment of information, in which no essences, basic elements, or purities exist. Unpolished, exposed, technological glitches are reframed as possibly physical, chemical, or biological, when the momentum of the music proposes a context of forces – an acousmatic place of digital, ‘postnatural physics’.

The piece was composed on the Game of Life 192 loudspeaker Wave Field Synthesis system in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 2017. This version is an eight-channel adaptation of the original WFS version.

 

Erik Nyström’s output includes live computer music, electroacoustic works, and sound installations. Most of his work is created for multichannel systems, and explores sound synthesis, spatial texture and algorithmic systems. He is currently Lecturer in Music at City, University of London, and was previously a Leverhulme Fellow at BEAST, Birmingham. He performs worldwide and his music has been published by empreintes DIGITALes.

 

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Annie Mahtani, Inversions – For Néle

Inversions began as a live improvisatory piece to be performed alongside Néle Azevedo’s Minimum Monument project in Birmingham 2014. Minimum Monument is an open-air exhibition displaying 5000 figures made of ice inverting the official canons of the monument as, in Azevedo’s words: “in the place of the hero, the anonym; in the place of the solidity of the stone, the ephemeral ice; in the place of the monumental scale, the minimum scale of the perishable bodies. Thousands of small sculptures of ice are placed in public space. The memory is inscribed in the photographic image and shared by everyone. It is no longer reserved to great heroes nor to great monuments. It loses its static condition to gain fluidity in the urban displacement and in the change of state of the water. It concentrates small sculptures of small men, the common men.”

The sound material was recorded during the exhibition’s two week creation period; an intensive production line of delicate sculpting, chiselling and freezing. The fragility of the solitary figures transform into a majestic army as the microscopic sounds of each sculpture multiply in their thousands.

 

Annie Mahtani is an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and living in Birmingham, UK. After completing her doctoral studies in composition in 2008 she has worked as a freelance composer, performer, curator and educator.

Her work encompasses electronic music composition from acousmatic music to free improvisation. As a collaborator, Annie has worked extensively with dance, theatre and on site-specific installations. With a strong interest in field recording, Annie’s work often explores the inherent sonic nature and identity of environmental sound, amplifying sonic characteristics that are not normally audible to the naked ear. Her music explores abstract and recognisable sound worlds and all the spaces in between. With a preoccupation with space, Annie works extensively with multichannel audio both in concert pieces and in live performance.

Annie is a Lecturer in Music at The University of Birmingham. She is co-director of SOUNDkitchen, a Birmingham based collective of curators, producers and performers of live electronic music and sound art.

 

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Jorge Gregorio García Moncada, Hüzün

“The word Hüzün, according to the turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is ‘meant to convey a feeling of deep spiritual loss. To the Sufis, hüzün is the spiritual anguish we feel because we cannot be close enough to Allah. […] We begin to understand hüzün as, not the melancholy of a solitary person, but the black mood shared by millions of people together […], of an entire city, of Istanbul’. The soundscape material presented in the piece was taken during the 2013 political turmoil I was able to witness during a shot term visit in the city.”

 

Jorge Gregorio García Moncada, PhD, is a full time faculty member of the Music Department at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, focused in a diversity of teaching and research activities in the fields of music composition and theory. He is founder and director of the BLAST system – Bogotá, Los Andes Sound Theatre, a multichannel sound diffusion system for performance of electroacoustic and mixed media musical works. He is director of the SPECTRA international electroacoustic music festival, based in Bogotá and hosted by BLAST.

 

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Savannah Agger

Savannah Agger (*1971) is a composer and performer from Sweden, living in Berlin. Her work includes music for rock bands, jazz, orchestra, choir, chamber ensembles and primarily multichannel tape pieces, mixed music and interactive electronics. She has written concert pieces, as well as music for several theatre, new circus and contemporary dance performances.

www.savannahagger.com