Ljudbio TIO

Slottsbiografen söndag 8 december 2024 kl 18.00 – 20.00

Internationell elektroakustisk festival

Tio kompositörer från världens (nästan) alla hörn. Fyra högtalare med finaste musiken. Dessutom för första – och enda – gången LIVE framträdande! Konserten avslutas med en 20 minuters ljud- och videoperformance med Momilani Ramstrum från San Diego.

Varmt välkommen att öppna nya sinnen i decembermörkret.

Med stöd från Uppsala kommuns kulturnämnd.

Program

• Infinite Mass Lars Bröndum 9’06”
• eTu{d,b}e de Labo #1 Kasey Pocius 5’56”
• Umbrae Ewa Trebacz 11’30”
• Utresa Paulina Sundin 6‘59”
• If I Could Fly Anna Rubin & Momilani Ramstrum 10’14”
• Sticky Situation Dominic Purdie 6’41”

Paus

• Shards of Sappho Anna Rubin 8’45”
• Mother’s War Girilal Baars 7’08”
• animal_farm Alexis Blais 10’18”
• Ljudet i lunden II Thommy Wahlström 12’00”

Live

• LIVE Momilani Ramstrum

eTu{d,b}e de Labo #1

by Kasey Pocius

eTu{d,b}e de Labo #1 is the first in a series of fixed media works, exploring the possibilities of the eTube outside of the real-time context. The source material consists of improvisations of Tommy Davis on eTube with the SpireMuse software. The entirety of these improvisations is presented as a kaleidoscopic montage at the beginning of the piece, which is then used to feed the processing which slowly builds before eventually overtaking the acoustic sound of the tube, leaving nothing but a digital trace of the initial improvisation… Thank you to Tommy Davis, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Philippe Macnab-Séguin, Yulin Yan & Nicola Giannini

Kasey Pocius, originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a gender-fluid intermedia artist based in Montreal. With classical training in viola and piano, they explore multimedia, creating mixed-media performances and live electronics. Pocius specializes in multichannel spatialization and improvisation, holding a BFA from Concordia and an MA from McGill. An associate researcher at the GRMS, CIRMMT and IDMIL, their art bridges fixed and live electronic media, with works programmed at numerous international festivals across Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia including ICMC, BEAST, Burning Man and others.

Umbrae (2023)

by Ewa Trebacz

Umbrae (Shadows) is a reflection on the fragmented nature of human memory. I’ve played a perilous game of moving a magnifying glass through my personal latent sound-space. I found it filled with glitches of corroded memories, inaccessible to another human being. A half- forgotten poem escaping translation from the language of my childhood; a disembodied scrap of a musical phrase erroneously preserved by my violinist muscle memory. The composition process and the structure of the piece reflected the nature of such experience. Fragmented scraps of sounds were brought together in paradoxical ways, along with semi-musical phrases being interrupted halfway through their development. Such fragmentation was achieved through a decomposition and asynchronous processing of various parts of the ambisonic sound-field. By applying small variations to different parts of the sound-field, it was possible to achieve a “shattered glass” effect - dense yet fragmented textures, chaotically distributed in the space. The piece was realised with the use of the Ambisonic Toolkit (ATK) software package, and mixed at the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), University of Washington in Seattle, USA.

Ewa Trębacz (pronounced “Eva Trembatch”) is a Polish American composer residing in Seattle. Collaboration, understood as an exchange of creativity, is essential to her work. Exploring the unique interaction between the human subjects and their environment, she often uses space as a catalyst for improvisation, working through Ambisonic recordings in acoustically impelling spaces, striving to create an illusory continuum between real and synthetic spaces. A native of Kraków, Poland, she studied composition under Bogusław Schaeffer at the Academy of Music in Kraków. Her works have been performed and broadcast worldwide, and have been featured in music magazines such as Organised Sound, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and others. In 2009, her work “things lost things invisible” for ambisonic space and orchestra was recognised as work recommended by the 56th UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.

Utresa

av Paulina Sundin

I verket Utresa använder jag mig av en harmonik baserad på ett inspelat ljud som inte har ett harmoniskt spektrum, utan ett s.k. inharmoniskt spektrum. Utifrån en analys av ljudets deltoner har jag skapat skalor och samklangsintervaller som tar fasta på konsonans och dissonans utifrån ett psykoakustiskt perspektiv, en konstnärlig vidareutveckling av bl.a. W. A. Sethares forskning inom området. Skalorna och samklangsintervallen/ ackorden som används är helt unika för just det här verket och skapar en harmonik som känns bekant men ändå inte. Alla ljud som används i verket har bearbetats, d.v.s. filtrerats, transponerats eller syntetiserats, för att passa till just denna harmonik. Atmosfären och storformen på Utresa är baserat på en tolkning av textilkonstnärinnan Britt-Marie Hanssons textil med samma namn och verket uruppfördes på Textilmuseet i Borås 2003 som en del av projektet Öronblick.

Paulina Sundins musik har framförts över hela världen, på konserter och i radio och hennes musik utmärks av hennes arbete med en definierad harmonik, en harmonik bortom den traditionella, tempererade skalan och baserad på de inre akustiska egenskaper som finns i olika vardagliga objekt. Hon utforskar förhållandet mellan olika ljudspektra och skalor, både i sin elektroakustiska musik och i instrumentala verk. Paulina Sundin är med sitt konstnärliga forskningsarbete banbrytande och för sin doktorsavhandling ”Re-inventing Harmony in Electroacoustic Music” tilldelades hon av universitetet i Huddersfield priset ”Vice-chancellor’s Award for an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis” i november 2010.

If I Could Fly (2023)

by Momilani Ramstrum & Anna Rubin

This piece is a bicoastal collaboration between the composers in which they shared recordings, processed audio, audio mixes and numerous delightful conversations about environmental acoustics, aesthetics and the relationship between composed music and the perception of sounds of the natural world. The processed singing originated in Momilani’s layered vocal improvs using Pure Data and a MIDI glove in real time. Many of the environmental recordings were done by Anna near her home in Maryland featuring the sounds of walking, bugs and birds, streams, outdoor construction, cars and planes, lawn mowers and leaf blowers. Momilani recorded double stops on her cello and the movements of dried tropical fruit seeds. Synthesized sounds were created in C sound and other software. While the piece was conceived as a perception of natural versus artificial soundscapes, it evolved into an encounter with the internal and external experiences of urban environments.

Sticky Situation

by Dominic Purdie

This work is an acousmatic piece that was made mostly using stick snapping sounds as well as a variety of other sounds. Taking inspiration from Iain Armstrong’s ‘Matchine’, the piece features a range of gestural and textural based content exploring the psychoacoustic effects of blending sounds recorded at close proximity to those recorded at a further perspective. The sounds were mostly processed using IRCAM’s concatenative real-time synthesis system CataRT to create various different sonic gestures and textures using the dry source material. The piece aims to use a dynamic spectromorphology to create a development of energy over time, moving between sustained textural soundscapes and moments that feature intense high energy.

Born in London in 1997, Dominic’s interest in music came through learning the piano, listening to bands with ambient electronic elements, and then later, rave music such as Drum & Bass and Techno. Dominic studied pioneers of the genre such as Dennis Smalley and Pierre Schaffer, as well as contemporary composers such as Manuella Blackburn and Iain Armstrong. He found that a piece by Iain Armstrong titled “Matchine”, a piece that features ultra-close perspective recordings of matchsticks and other high fidelity sounds in combination with dense textural soundscapes, sparked his interest in particular.

… paus (1978) …

Shards of Sappho (2010 rev 2024)

by Anna Rubin

Sappho, the Greek poet, lived around the time of Socrates and was regarded as one of the greatest poets by her peers and later critics. She was also reputed to have invented the Mixolydian scale and lyre. Despite the little of her work that remains to us, she has been a source of much inspiration and speculation. Shards of Sappho is my second sonic meditation on her work. In this quadrophonic piece, I weave together readings of some of my favourite fragments in both Greek and English by Classics scholar Dr. Lillian Doherty along with readers Laura Grothaus, Abigail Under and Christina Martin. Plucked lyre-like sounds play Invented ‘parabolic’ scales which divide the octave in non-traditional intervals. My thanks to physicist Sam Hedemann who worked these out. I employed the C-sound pluck instrument, other FM instruments as well as other processing software for the voice. The earlier version of this piece is recorded on the Everglade Record label.

Permission to use excerpts from Margaret Reynolds, The Sappho Companion, 2000, Palgrave Macmillan.

Anna Rubin’s music is propelled by her love of the speaking and singing voice as well as environmental and political issues. She has composed for a variety of musical genres including chamber, choral, wind and orchestral ensembles as well as electronic music for stage, video and dance. Composing for baroque and Korean instruments has also been one of her interests. Recent commissions include works for the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona (2019, 2021, 2025) and a 2023 commission for the German choral ensemble Kammerchor Westfalen. Her works are recorded on the Neuma, Albany, Sony and SEAMUS labels. Her work has been performed internationally and she is the recipient of awards from the NY Foundations for the Arts, the National Orchestral Foundation and the New York, Ohio and Maryland State Arts Councils. Residencies includes Brahmshaus (Baden Baden), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, WNYC Radio and Brooklyn College Computer Music Center.

Mother’s War (2018)

av Girilal Baars

Mother’s War är baserad på tonsättarens mors fragmentariska minnen och berättelser från 2:a världskriget i Nederländerna. Alla ljud är strängar eller röst, med undantag för en fältinspelning från Haarlem där modern tillbringade kriget. Rösterna spelades in med en mikrofon av samma konstruktion som användes under kriget. Musikens klaustrofobiska och frusna tillstånd är ett försök att närma sig hur det måste upplevas att tvingas tillbringa en stor del av sin barndom i ett krig.

*Girilal Baars är tonsättare, vokalist, musiker och ljudkonstnär baserad i Uppsala. Han komponerar och framför musik som ofta utgår från hans erfarenheter av vokala folkmusik traditioner och nutida konstmusik. Noderna i hans skapande spänner från strikt notation till fri improvisation, rent akustisk till elektronisk musik och från traditionell sång till specialiserade röst tekniker. http://www.girilal.org *

animal_farm (2022)

by Alexis Blais

During the composition of animal_farm, I had the desire to explore time scales still non-existent in my music by manipulating preparatory montages and derivations thereof in increasing density in order to transform and develop the materials of the piece. The latter also reveals the imperfection of human gestures through the incorporation of MIDI performances during the editing phase. The esotericism of his approach sows ruptures and surprises, like so many false leads in his labyrinthism.

Alexis Blais (born in 1998, he/him) is an electroacoustic music composer based in Montreal. His research focuses on the continuum uniting the language of instrumental and electroacoustic music. Classical pianist by training, his acousmatic works are part of a plastic and textural research of concrete materials against a background of modal harmonies. Alexis Blais also works in theater and dance, in addition to teaching sound design at the National Circus School in Montreal and at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. His piece SKAND is finalist of the 2023 Luigi Russolo award. His works have been performed in England, Europe, Brazil, Japan and Canada.

Ljudet i lunden II (2024)

av Thommy Wahlström

*Thommy Wahlström, Uppsala, Tonsättare och musiker. http://www.thommywahlstrom.se *

LIVE

Momilani Ramstrum


Momilani Ramstrum, Ph.D. is a composer, singer, visual artist, PD programmer, and interface designer. She creates collaborative and interactive multi-media works with a focus on interchanges with the natural world. As a vocal improviser she performs with live electronics using a MIDI glove that she designed and created. She holds a patent for her MIDI glove which controls the computer in real-time. She also improvises using voice interacting with her visual art. Her visual art is created in textural layers with bold colors, influenced by musical improvisation; the interplay of lines creating dissonance and resolving into consonance. Digital images of these paintings and sculptures are mapped onto 3D shapes and respond in real-time to the music. She has performed and given presentations at seminars, festivals and conferences throughout the USA, Singapore, and Japan. She authored a DVD-ROM entitled “From Kafka to K….” documenting and analyzing Manoury’s electronic opera K… published by IRCAM. She wrote a chapter in Simoni’s Analyzing Electroacoustic Music published by Routledge. Wave Media LLC has published her 7 music theory textbooks with interactive website drills and tournaments that enhance student learning based on gaming theory rather than traditional academic models. Dr. Ramstrum is Professor Emeritus of Music and directs a choir, arranges music, sings, and plays guitar and recorders in early music ensembles.