CEC 25th Anniversary Tour in St. John’s

Memorial University of Newfoundland School of Music

Thursday, 1 December – Friday, 2 December 2011

Memorial University of Newfoundland’s School of Music hosted the final event on the CEC’s three-week cross-Canada 25th Anniversary Tour. Recent works by young and emerging composers were featured in the JTTP 2011 concert on Thursday night and the Friday morning was filled up with 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. 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 before the Thursday evening concert.

Event Programme

For the final stop on the CEC’s 25th Anniversary Tour, events were held in Memorial University’s School of Music, with the concert in DF Cook Hall and the seminar in Rm. 2017.

THURSDAY, 1 December
19:30–20:00 CEC Meet & Greet
20:00–21:30 Concert: JTTP 2011 — Prize-Winning Works

FRIDAY, 2 December
09:00–09:50 Seminar: Kevin Austin — Recent Practices in EA: The CEC@25

Welcome and CEC Meet & Greet

The CEC’s 25th Anniversary Tour also provided members of the CEC Board, CEC administrators and JTTP 2011 guests with some time to meet and chat with the local communities of composers, performers and friends of electroacoustic practices across the country. It was a great opportunity to not only reconnect with old acquaintances, but also to meet and hang out with new friends! CEC Admin and Board members and JTTP guests had the chance to experience first hand the incredible diversity of electroacoustic practice all the way from Victoria to St. John’s.

At the St. Johns stop at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s School of Music, Eldad Tsabary (CEC Board), jef chippewa (CEC Admin) and JTTP guest Marc-André Perron were present.

Concert: JTTP 2011 — Prize-Winning Works

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. On our final leg of the tour in St. John’s, we were joined by Marc-André Perron.

Programme (in alphabetical order):

• David Arango-Valencia — Canción de Otraparte / « Chanson d’ailleurs » (2011 / 12:04)
• Guillaume Barrette — Parasite (2011 / 10:00)
• Guillaume Campion — Neige cendre (2011 / 11:22)
• Maxime Corbeil-Perron — Fragments (2011 / 10:00)
• Jullian Hoff — Scratch (2011 / 12:06)
• Marc-André Perron — Effervescence / Somnolence (2010 / 10:24)

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.

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.