This week, Bird on a Wire 2 is featured in the electro:thèque. You can listen to the full album for a limited time!
I’ll also be giving a lecture about the Bird on a Wire project for the Concordia Electroacoustic Studies Students’ Association on March 6 at 5 pm! We’ll be talking about the collaborative process that led to these pieces and about the recording! Playback of examples will be in 5.1 surround!
More than a year after Amandine Pras and I recorded Bird on a Wire 2: Flocking Patterns at Salle Claude Champagne in Montreal, it’s finally here! And so beautiful too, thanks to the amazing bird-art work of Vancouver-based artist Michael Markowsky. Read more about the project here.
Buy your own copy below, or go to records page to see all my discs (and benefit from a multi-disc purchase discount!).
Bird on a Wire is flying around a bit this fall, with performances in Edmonton, Oberlin, Montreal and Banff.
A couple of the shows will be shared with Robert Normandeau, while in Montreal, I’m on the bill with Patrick Saint-Denis and Barah Héon-Morisette.
And, most importantly: the launch of the album! Bird on a Wire – Flocking Patterns (produced by Amandine Pras)
See the agenda for dates!
This fall, I’ll be working on two projects, one of them is a piece for the wonderful Andréa Tyniec. It is part of the Sharp Splinter cycle, a set of pieces revolving around my family’s archive. I call it an archive, because it’s quite a daunting collection of tapes, home movies, and thousands and thousands of letters.
This piece is dedicated to my sister and is as much about her as it is about what I see in her. It is also about writing, which is something my sister has obviously done since she was little, but that has a long history in our family.
It is no less about Andréa: I am weaving her sound, her love of music and the way she expresses that music into the fabric of the piece. It is a very inspiring and wonderful collaboration.
Apart from the sounds of Andréa’s violin, there are the voices of my family and my sister when she was a little girl, there is my sister’s voice now, and the sound of a typewriter. So far… who knows what else may be thrown into the mixing bowl…
The premiere of the first three movements will be
January 27, 7:30 pm.
Salle Claude Champage, Faculté de Musique
Université de Montreéal
(¦ep·ə’klas·tik) (geology)
Pertaining to the texture of mechanically deposited sediments consisting of detrital material from preexistent rocks.
I’ve collected seashells, sand and rocks since I was very young. For this fixed media piece, I recorded the sound these made when I “played” them. I really enjoyed working with this material in the studio: so rough and abrasive. Rocky.
This new piece for myself on basset with live electronics is the first to integrate resynthesis modules I’ve built myself. It also will (hopefully!) use the toesense sensor I’ve been helping develop at NoTAM.
The idea behind the piece comes from my desire to extend certain kinds of sounds I like to make on my instrument. I have only a limited amount of control over the range and quality of these particular sounds (multiphonics, finger taps that use only the resonance of the instrument to make their “sound”, harmonics hit by overattacking low notes), and with the electronics, I try to push that world further.
The sound world this created reminded me of imagined stories about the moon that I had as a child. And from the Apollo 11 mission:
Houston: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning there’s one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the moon because she stole the pill for immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is only standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not recorded.
Collins: Okay, we’ll keep a close eye for the bunny girl.
Listen to the exchange:
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The quindar tones that so define the sound of the exchanges between those on Earth and the Apollo astronauts also figure in the piece.
I’ll be presenting an acousmatic piece called Ptak Ohnivak at this round of Electrobuzz concerts at the Université de Montréal. It’s kind of strange to have my first presentation be in a form I have just started experimenting with, but why not? I’m also eager to hear the work of my colleagues in the electroacoustic sector. They are writing wonderful music and it will be a treat.
This piece is based on a recording I made in Thailand of the dawn chorus of birds, including one soloist who reminded me of this book (really of the picture of it) I had as a child. It’s an adaptation of Stravinsky’s Firebird story. I combined the sound of birds with matches. I’ll be posting a version in the works section soon.
With the generous support of the CIRMMT, I can continue working with Hans Wilmers at NOTAM on a pair of controllers I’ll wear on my feet. I’ve been cooking up ideas for the implementation of the controllers in real-time processing of my recorder sound and am looking forward to adding some features when I get to Oslo.
A concert of Renaissance music around the much-loved renaissance chanson Susanne un Jour. Many composers were inspired by Guéroult’s poem and Lasso’s setting of it to make their own versions.
Scona Chamber Singers
John Brough, conductor
Terri Hron, recorders
Sunday, September 19th at 3 pm
Holy Trinity Anglican Church
10037 – 84 Avenue, Edmonton
Tickets $15/$10
In July, I moved to Montreal to start my doctoral studies in composition with Philippe Leroux. I’m really looking forward to being a student again and being able to concentrate full-time on all my creative activities.
Being in Montreal also means new creative collaboration opportunities, with both those musicians who are good friends already, and all of those I have yet to meet.
Montreal has a very vibrant experimental and improvisation scene, and I’m looking forward to hearing everything that is going on.
The second wave of the Bird on a Wire project is underway. This time, the theme is “flocking patterns.” For a full description of the project and the composers involved, please look here.
The premiere of these pieces will be very exciting! Stay tuned for more information very soon.
We are lucky to be generously supported both by the Alberta Creative Development Initiative and the New Music Project Grant of the Canada Council for the Arts.
This spring, I wrote a piece for the wonderful pianist, Luciane Cardassi. It is the second piece I’ve written this year that has been inspired by my recent research into my family history.
The piece is dedicated to my grandma. It can be played with recordings of poems written by my grandfather, Jan Vladislav, between the movements. They are some of his last poems, and I chose the ones that related somehow to my grandmother. This is how we played it both at The Banff Centre, where I wrote it, and here in Montreal at the Sonnez-Ici Festival.
You can listen to a recording of it here.
Earlier this month, I spent a lovely week in Oslo, working with the technical experts at NOTAM. Hans Wilmers and I worked on creating a working connection between the “bowsense” he had designed and my computer. This involved calibration and programming, but we managed to get it up and working for a lovely intimate concert at The Sound of Mu at the end of our workshop week.
Both of us look forward to continuing our collaboration and to create a system that will be of interest to both researchers and performers.
Stay tuned for sound samples from the concert and updates on the research activities!
Click here to see the complete video of our SpaceMelt show in Banff!
Playing on Saturday at with The Improvisation Pool at Open Sound in Boston.
The Improvisation Pool:
Jorrit Dijkstra – alto sax, lyricon, synth
Terri Hron – recorders, electronics
Andrew Neumann – laptop
Esther Kurtz – oboe
James Coleman, Theremin
Saturday, September 12, at 8 PM (doors open at 7:30) suggested donation $8
A nomadic few months brings me the opportunity to play with friends I don’t see very often, but who inspire me no end. Three shows coming up:
with Transverse Doppler Effect (Adam Kinner, saxophone, Terri Hron, recorders, Ryan Butler, guitar and Mark Nelson, drums) at L’Escalier in Montreal on September 2nd.
with
