Deep Wireless 2002: A Celebration of Radio Art

Artist Biographies

Wende Bartley is a composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music using her widely varied skills in state-of-the-art digital audio technologies to design innovative musical and sonic textures from original sound sources. Her works include electroacoustic and instrumental concert music, music-theater and opera, as well as music for dance, radio drama, independent film and video.

Bartley has been investigating sound images important in the collective stories of women developing new timbral textures while giving voice to women's cultural experience. Her more recent work has concerned itself with explorations of voice as sacred communicator, creating a field of sonic energy through the connection of breath and voice, awakening the forces of internal healing held within the body through sound vibration.

She has received numerous commissions and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Laidlaw Foundation. Her works have been performed and broadcast throughout Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Her works are released on empreintes DIGITALes, Artifact, and Hornblower Recordings.

Jonty Harrison studied with Bernard Rands at the University of York, graduating with a DPhil in Composition in 1980. In 1980 he joined the Music Department of The University of Birmingham, where he is now Reader in Composition and Electroacoustic Music, as well as Director of BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) and the Electroacoustic Music Studios. He has played an active role in musical life, making conducting appearances with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (most notably conducting Stockhausen’s Momente in Birmingham, Huddersfield and London), the University New Music Ensemble and the University Orchestra (most recently in Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and Vic Hoyland’s Vixen). He has been a Board member of Sonic Arts Network for many years (and Chair between 1993 and 1996). He has also been on the Council and Executive Committee of the Society for the Promotion of New Music and was a member of the Music Advisory Panel of The Arts Council of Great Britain.

As a composer he has received several Prizes and Mentions in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards, two Distinctions and two Mentions in the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), First Prize in the Musica Nova competition (Prague), a Lloyds Bank National Composers‚ Award, a PRS Prize for Electroacoustic Composition, an Arts Council Composition Bursary and research grants from the Leverhulme Trust and from the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

Commissions have come from many leading performers and studios, including two each from the Groupe de recherches musicales (Ina-GRM, Paris) and the Institut international de musique électroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB formerly the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges), the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), MAFILM/Magyar Rádió (Budapest), IRCAM/Ensemble InterContemporain (Paris), the BBC, Birmingham City Council, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Fine Arts Brass Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble, Singcircle, John Harle, Beverly Davison, Harry Sparnaay, and Jos Zwaanenburg. Despite renouncing instrumental composition in 1992, he wrote Abstracts, a work for 8-channel tape and large orchestra, and in 1998 he has recently completed a work for dance.

His music is performed and broadcast worldwide, and several works are available on empreintes DIGITALes, SAN/NMC, Cultures électroniques/Mnémosyne Musique Média, and CDCM/Centaur.

Bernard Parmegiani was born in Paris in 1927. In 1959 he met Pierre Schaeffer and discovered musique concrète, which led him to compose a repertoire of works that began with Violostries (1963). His music places a strong emphasis on sounds produced by matter and sounds recorded from nature which are used as models. The concept of metamorphosis–which characterises many of Parmegiani’s works–is expressed by his use of such elements as the ephemeral, the fleeting, the motions of air, the transparency or non-transparency of the space in which he arrays different levels of depth, the repetitive, and the Œmirror-effect. Parmegiani’s interest in the image has also inspired a number of visual experiments which transpose ideas he originally developed in the domain of sound.

Several works appear on CD and he has been awarded with numerous commissions and prizes, including the Prix Ars Electronica in 1993.

David Perlman was born in Johannesburg and grew up in society sans TV where radio ruled. He has lived in Toronto’s downtown west since 1975. Founder and co-publisher of the Kensington Market Drum, he is also editor of Wholenote Magazine. David is married with four children and many radios compete in his house.

Chris Twomey is a music journalist, broadcaster, and DJ. He is a graduate of the Radio and Television Arts program at Ryerson, and was a Music Director and Assistant Program Director at their student station CKLN. Later he was a programmer for University Of Toronto's CIUT and on-line stations "Virtually Canadian" and "1Groove.com." Twomey has written about music for many newspapers and magazines, and was one of the contributors to Art Metropole's anthology Sound By Artists. Among his many highlights as a DJ was the first performance of the Drone Mix at the record-setting concert atop the CN Tower by the British rock band Spiritualized in 1997.

Darren Copeland is an electroacoustic composer who has created work for a variety of media including radio. Darren has received degrees in electroacoustic composition from Simon Fraser University and the University of Birmingham (U.K.). His concert works have recieved mentions and appeared on CD releases including his solo CD Rendu Visible on the empreintes DIGITALes label. His collaborations in theatre have influenced a number of personal projects that blur distinctions between theatre and sound art, particularly his radio drama productions for CBC. In addition to composing, he has written articles about listening and environmental sounds, is president of the board of the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE), and is Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art.

Lynda Hill is the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct Canada who last month staged the Buncha Young Artists Festival here at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. Over the years she has developed and directed numerous productions of new work across Canada as a freelance artist, as the Associate Director for Nightwood Theatre and Co-Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre Projects. Lynda Hill participated in the very first Sound Travels performance in Toronto with her installation Dark Forest at the Music Gallery.

Kristiana Clemens has worked as a host, producer, technician and D.J. in community radio for ten years. She is currently the audio production co-ordinator at CKLN 88.1 FM.

Don Zentner is the host of the "Oblio" radio show on CIUT 89.5 FM (Friday 6 am - 9 am). The "Oblio" has a musical format so open that it hurts. For each week Don provides listeners not only with a great mix of music, but his regular features: an Injection of Antiquated European Culture at 7:15, News of the Weird at 8, Turn Up the Valium at 8:15, and your CT for an FM at 8:30.

Artwork: Prashant Miranda