This selection of performer/composers from the ninth annual AKOUSMA—the annual Montréal-based festival dedicated to electroacoustic music—included Nicolas Bernier, Richard Chartier, Jean Francois Laporte, Martin Tétreault, and Louis Dufort. The performers used dozens of loudspeakers hung in a ring surrounding the listeners, manipulating the pieces in real-time. 

Nicolas Bernier’s music ranges from musique concrète to live electronics, to post-rock to noise improv, and features electronic music made from objects of the past, such as typewriters and tuning forks. Richard Chartier’s work has been called both “microsound” and neo-modernist, with a minimalist approach to sound, silence, focus, and perception. Jean-François Laporte works closely with the raw materials of sound, from the everyday environment to traditional and invented instruments that produce unconventional sounds. Martin Tétreault is an internationally known Montréal DJ and improviser who explores the intrinsic sounds of the turntable and needles, as well as prepared surfaces (with thanks to John Cage), and small electronic instruments. Montréal composer Louis Dufort developed his style through electroacoustic music, and then turned his attention to mixed music and multimedia art, and has worked with a wide range of organizations.

PROGRAM

Louis Dufort - Étude no.1 for the EMPAC Lobby Gilles Gobeil - Des temps oubliés Seth Nehil - Collide Adam Basanta - instant gris Adam Basanta - is not a / a / is not Olivia Block - Dissolution Louis Dufort - Étude no.2 for the EMPAC Lobby Please note: Evelyn’s Cafe will not be open for service prior to this performance.

An intensely intimate and confrontational performance by Pharmakon, a death industrial music project from Margaret Chardiet. Chardiet describes her drive to make noise music as a kind of exorcism, making it possible to express her “deep-seated need/drive/urge/possession to reach other people and make them FEEL something [specifically] in uncomfortable/confrontational ways.” In addition to being one of the few females working in a male dominated noise scene, Chardiet stands out for her meticulous rigor and attention to form, with every performed element methodically planned out in advance for maximum emotional impact.

Brooklyn-based artists Michael Bell Smith, Sara Magenheimer, and Ben Vida were in residence to produce a new video for their commissioned performance Bloopers #1. Using EMPAC’s Black-magic 4K camera, they filmed multiple house-hold objects, as well as actors, on a custom-built rotating platform embedded into a vinyl green screen. Close-ups, wide angles, and tracking shots were then edited in post-production onto multiple backgrounds to create the effect of stock footage in the style of commercials and television shows. The video was incorporated into a live multimedia performance presented later at EMPAC. With the question “Why do we hate some objects and love others?” as its starting point, Bloopers #1 used set pieces, dance-pop, cinematic cliché, and live performance to playfully tease the boundaries of language, crowds, and the nature of things that draw them.

Centered around two pianists and percussionists, Yarn/Wire uses a combination of thundering rhythms, unconventional sounds, and precision execution. The ensemble has quickly become a key player in the American new music scene, driven by their adventurous programming and dedication to performing music from young composers. Returning to EMPAC, this performance included two movements of Davið Brynjar Franzson’s the Negotiation of Context (recorded and produced at EMPAC and released by WERGO), as well as a series of shorter new works by Thomas Meadowcroft, Ann Cleare, and Øyvind Torvund.

Yarn/Wire frequently presents US premieres by leading international composers, in addition to premieres of music written specifically for the ensemble, and maintains an active performing and teaching schedule at festivals, chamber music series, and universities across the country.

Yarn/Wire:

Laura Barger, piano

Ning Yu, piano

Ian Antonio, percussion

Russell Greenberg, percussion

Program

Davið Brynjar Franzson - the Negotiation of Context (C)

Ann Cleare - I should live in wires for leaving you behind

Thomas Meadowcroft - Walkman Antiquarian

~Interval~

Davið Brynjar Franzson - the Negotiation of Context (B)

Øyvind Torvund - Untitled School

Mick Barr presented a solo performance of his electric guitar works. A guitarist of the highest technical caliber, Barr makes music that exists somewhere between progressive black metal, hardcore, and avant-jazz. Alternating between witheringly complex and gutturally primal, Barr is at the center of the extreme sound scene with works of unrivaled experimental improvisation.

Noted for his relentless speed and agility on guitar, and avant-garde compositions, Barr has been an active musician for almost 20 years and has released over 50 recordings. He is most known in the experimental and metal worlds for his work with the technical duos Orthrelm and Crom Tech, the progressive black metal band Krallice, and for his two solo projects, Octis and Ocrilim. He has released records with notable labels such as Tzadik, Ipecac, Profound Lore, Hydrahead, and Kill Rock Stars.

The Mivos Quartet, one of the most sought-after string quartets in the international new music scene, will be in residence at EMPAC to develop and perform a new work by American composer Eric Wubbels. Titled being time, the piece is an audio variation on the psychological experience of time. Extending nearly an hour, it moves from sections of extreme slowness and static sustains to high-energy plateaus of dense, saturated sound textures. In the final sequence, quadraphonic electronic sound pushes the performance into an altogether new dimension, creating vivid psychoacoustic illusions by using extremely high sine waves. Mivos Quartet: Olivia De Prato, violin Joshua Modney, violin Victor Lowrie, viola Mariel Roberts, cello

VIDEO

In this work-in-progress installation, sound artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon investigated how one’s perception of sound can be changed as he or she moves through space. Using an interconnected series of listening rooms, each built with a variety of materials (stone, metal, wood, cloth, etc.), Gordon created a perpetually shifting audio experience from diffused sound projected from a ring of loudspeakers. As listeners moved through the space, they were made aware of the parameters of the room and how they can actually control what they are hearing by altering their movement. 

Gordon is a visual and sound artist who integrates audio technologies into sculptural forms to question relationships of affect to an environment. She has had solo shows at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2014), Pro Arts Gallery (2013, Oakland), Eli Ridgway Gallery (2012, San Francisco), and Queens Nails (2009, San Francisco). She is also a member of the music and performance collective, 0th. 

Electronic musician Laurel Halo performed new works that fused techno and dance-driven sounds with a heavy dose of synths and samples. Halo’s diverse output incorporates danceable rhythms, meditative aural washes, and pensive vocals into a singular, pulsing whole. Built around a slightly off-kilter sense of time and forward-looking production techniques, her music coheres around themes of physical process and virtual violence. 

Laurel Halo is a producer and live electronic musician from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Influenced by her Midwestern roots, Halo’s music speaks to new club ecologies explored through abstract rhythms, chaotic ambience, and moody jazz elements. She has released two full-length albums on the London-based electronic label Hyperdub Records.

Bloopers #1 is the newest iteration of the performance-driven collaboration by artists Michael Bell-Smith, Sara Magenheimer, and Ben Vida. Using the language of “breakdowns,” or comedic outtakes, the artists blend props, video, and electronic music to play with the social power of different kinds of media.

Presenting a joyously subversive take on popular culture and the social connections produced through sound and music, Bloopers #1 takes the question “Why do we hate some objects and love others?” as its starting point, and uses set pieces, dance-pop, cinematic cliché, and live performance to playfully tease the boundaries of language, crowds, and the nature of things that draw them.

Michael Bell-Smith in an artist and musician based in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited and screened in museums and galleries internationally, including MoMA PS1, NY; Museum of The Moving Image, NY; SFMOMA, San Francisco; the 2008 Liverpool Biennial, UK; the 5th Seoul International Media Biennale; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, ES; The New Museum, NY; Hirshhorn Museum, DC; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; MoMA, NY; and Tate Liverpool, UK. His work has been featured in Art Forum, Art in America, and the New York Times. As a member of the punk band Professor Murder, he has performed music across the US and Europe.

Sara Magenheimer lives and works in Brooklyn. Language, music/sound, and objects comprise a large part of her video-based practice. From 2004-2010 Magenheimer formed two bands, Flying, and WOOM, touring extensively and releasing five records. She received her BA from Tufts University, her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and her MFA from Bard College. Magenheimer has screened video work and performed at CANADA Gallery, the Berkeley Art Museum, MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and ISSUE Project Room, among others. 

Ben Vida is a Brooklyn-based artist and composer. He has been an active member of the international experimental music community for the past 17 years with a long list of collaborations, bands, and releases to his credit. In the mid 1990s he co-founded the group Town and Country and has worked as a solo artist under his own name and as Bird Show, with releases on such labels as PAN, Alku, Thrill Jockey, Drag City, Amish, Bottrop-Boy, Hapna, and Kranky. He has presented his work in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Recent activities include performances at The Kitchen, NYC with David Behrman, and the debut of the Tyondai Braxton/Ben Vida Duo at the Sacrum Profamun festival in Krakow, as well as solo performances at Electrónica en Abril festival in Madrid and Akousma Festival in Montreal. His exhibition, Slipping Control, was presented at Audio Visual Arts in Manhattan, NY in spring 2013. He was a 2013 artist-in-residence at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn and at the Clocktower in Manhattan.