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CEC 25th Anniversary Tour in Montréal

Conservatoire de musique de Montréal

The second event of the CEC’s 25th Anniversary Tour took place in Montréal with the collaboration of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, where several JTTP participants and winners in recent years have studied with Louis Dufort and Martin Bédard (Martin also teaches at Université de Montréal, another important source of JTTP participants over the years).

Starting off the day was Kevin Austin’s seminar “Some Recent Trends and Practices in Electroacoustic Studies across Canada: The CEC at 25,” which was prepared especially for the Anniversary Tour. In the afternoon, the public was invited to attend open rehearsals of the winning works from JTTP 2011 that were performed in a multi-speaker concert in the evening. Between the rehearsals and the start of the concert, CEC members and the general public alike were also invited to come out and meet people from the CEC and JTTP in an informal Meet & Greet.

Event Programme

All events for the 2nd leg of the tour took place in the multimedia hall of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (4750, avenue Henri-Julien, 1er étage).

10:00–11:30 Seminar: Kevin Austin — Recent Practices in EA: The CEC@25
12:00–18:00 Open Rehearsals
19:00–20:30 Concert: JTTP 2011 — Prize-Winning Works

Biographies for individual participants, guests, associations and institutions can be found below.

Seminar

Kevin Austin — Some Recent Trends and Practices in Electroacoustic Studies across Canada: The CEC at 25

Everything old is new again. Kevin Austin’s presentation (at ten venues in nine cities) considered historical precedents and provided a useable map of the background and context of recent trends within the larger discipline of electroacoustics. Among the trending topics in EA these days are “live EA” and “visual music”; as discussed in the first part of the seminar, current and exploding technologies have allowed these areas of EA to develop very rapidly and proliferate widely.

With more than 40 years of history in EA, Austin looked back at the historical path and presented detailed views of some of the newer manifestations of EA. Some of the historical perspective was provided by his own experiences with live EA, which started in 1971 (MetaMusic, later CECG/GEC), and his use of visual elements as of about 1975.

Video play
Video 1 (1:37:31). Kevin Austin giving his seminar “Some Recent Trends and Practices in Electroacoustic Studies across Canada” during the second of two stops in Montréal on the CEC’s 25th Anniversary Tour. At the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal on 12 November 2011. In French. [Click image to play video]

Open Rehearsals

The afternoon rehearsals for the evening concert were open to the public. All JTTP guests were present to diffuse their own works in the Conservatoire’s multimedia hall. This was an excellent chance for the public to see how composers prepare their works for live concert diffusion on a multi-speaker system. Each composer had an hour to work with the system and develop an approach to diffusing / performing the piece that reflected and supported their own unique perspective on the nature of the work. Louis Dufort and Martin Bédard were on hand to coach and comment on the guests’ use of the system and space.

Concert: JTTP 2011 — Prize-Winning Works

Eldad Tsabary, and JTTP composers Marc-André Perron, Maxime Corbeil-Perron and David Arango Valencia
Eldad Tsabary, and JTTP composers Marc-André Perron, Maxime Corbeil-Perron and David Arango Valencia at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal during the 2nd stop on the CEC’s 25th Anniversary Tour, 12 November 2011. Photo © Yves Gigon 2011. [Click image to enlarge]

The CEC’s annual Jeu de temps / Times Play (JTTP) project is comprised of: a competition for young and emerging sound artists from (or living in) Canada, with cash and prizes awarded to the top five placing composers, as selected by an international jury; a focus issue of eContact! featuring all submissions to the project; a CD compilation (Cache) of the top works; and international radio and concert play of the top works.

Each stop on the tour featured a concert of the winning works from the 12th edition of Jeu de temps / Times Play. Those curious to know what the next generation of electroacoustic composers in Canada “sounds like” came out and joined us for performances of works by David Arango-Valencia, Guillaume Barrette, Guillaume Campion, Maxime Corbeil-Perron, Jullian Hoff and Marc-André Perron.

For each of the JTTP concerts at least one JTTP 2011 winning composer was present as an invited guest, and these guests diffused their own works as well as the works of their colleagues. All six of them were able to join us for the events held at the Conservatoire, the 2nd stop on the tour.

Programme (in alphabetical order):

Visit the JTTP 2011 page in this issue of eContact! for video montages of performances of each of the works, as well as biographies of the composers.

Conservatoire de musique de Montréal

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