Composition Competition JTTP 2026

The Canadian Electroacoustic Community’s (CEC) Jeu de temps / Times Play competition showcases new electroacoustic works by young and emerging composers and sound artists from or living in Canada.

Alex Brisson (ca)

Program
A a Ba A ɓA Bɐ (2026) 8’
This piece was composed primarily from sound materials generated through feedback synthesis, in which the output of the synthesis acts as a causal agent upon its own source. This technique is particularly well suited to generating sound objects with rich spectra. The piece explores a direct and causal mode of writing, where impulses trigger stases, phrases, suspensions, and surprises.

The concept of feedback is also embedded in the work’s organizational structure. At first, the motifs appear singular and eclectic, but they soon begin to recur, taking on new functions, foreshadowing future sections, and returning in transformed forms. Earlier sections are reimprinted and merged to create familiar entities from the past, giving rise to an internal memory that remains in constant variation. This form of feedback, in which the beginning affects the end and the end affects the beginning, reaches an ambiguous conclusion through what we seem to have already heard.

The title alludes to traditional musical forms based on recurring structures.

Composition Competition Petites Formes 2026

The 2026 Petites Formes Acousmatic Music Composition Competition is organized as part of a cultural exchange between Taiwan, Japan, Canada, and France. It aims to promote acousmatic music and support emerging composers working in this field in Canada, Spain, France, Japan, and Taiwan.

Akousma presents the Canadian winner of the competition.
The complete list of competition winners is available here.  

Melanie Zhou (ca)

Melanie Zhou is a Canadian composer and pianist based in Montreal, currently studying composition at McGill University. Her practice explores the intersections of acoustic, electroacoustic, and hybrid sound, with timbre, gesture, and spatialization as core compositional materials.

She is particularly interested in sound perception and transformation, with a practice shaped by dialogue with performers and experimentation in rehearsal. She has studied composition with Philippe Leroux, Jean Lesage, Melissa Hui, Chris Paul Harman, Eliot Britton, and Félix Frédéric Baril. In 2026, Inter Mentes: A Lament was the winner of Category A at the international Petites Formes competition in Paris.

Program
Inter Mentes: A Lament (2025) 6’09”
This electroacoustic work is inspired by Bert Meyers’s poem Lament. Its three sections follow the poem’s stanzas and explore memory, loss, and an awareness of the passage of time.

The first section evokes the absence of someone who has passed away through low-frequency materials derived from synthesizers and transformed recordings of everyday objects. Their repetition and spatial movement suggest an inner conversation between the living and the departed.

The second section turns toward memories of childhood, its vulnerability and innocence. High-pitched gestures and crystalline, bell-like sonorities evoking moonlight create a sense of both intimacy and distance.

The final section draws inspiration from the lines: “The same clouds come and go; the same bird sings or flies.” Unstable textures and fragments of the work’s initial material gradually transform before fading away, leaving behind a few sonic traces — like a memory that endures while slowly releasing its hold.

Diego Bermudez Chamberland et Xavier Ménard (ca)

Diego Bermudez Chamberland is a Latino-Québécois sound artist whose practice lies at the intersection of composition, live musical performance, mixing, and sound design. He is currently exploring the sonic potential of ceramics through the creation of hybrid instruments and the digital processing of their timbres. His experimental projects combine acoustic and digital technologies, bringing together digital arts, experimental instrument-making, and electronic music. Committed to knowledge sharing, he also takes part in educational and outreach activities.

Xavier Ménard is a Montreal-based composer and sound artist who graduated in Digital Music from the Université de Montréal. His practice explores electrical devices such as switches and oscillators to create textures at the intersection of the organic and the industrial. His work encompasses performance, interactive installation, and the development of web-based composition tools.

Program 
Palabras pour cette DOUCE violence
Soy viento y machina (2026) 20’00”

Using handcrafted ceramic sound devices and electromechanical sound generators, the two artists present at Akousma a multichannel version of this new performance, creating a dialogue between instrumental gesture, digital sound processing, and spatialization.

The work draws on the image of the winter wind — a force at once gentle and brutal, familiar and unpredictable. It becomes a metaphor for memories that unexpectedly surface throughout our lives. The piece reflects on the very real difficulty of expressing oneself and existing within difference, and on how these experiences can sometimes compel us to become a kind of machine in order to survive.

Simon Laroche (ca)

Simon Laroche produces transdisciplinary works that comprise robotics, electronics, video, audio and performance elements. He has developed a critical and experimental approach to the hybridization of artificial, biological and social systems, questioning the impact of technology on the construction of social and psychological realities.

His current research focuses on transcopy, dissociation, and commodification. Since 2003, Simon has presented participatory pieces, performance and installation work at major festivals, biennales and museums (Ars Electronica, ISEA, Elektra/BIAN, la Villette, MACM, Némo, Wro, FILE, etc.) in Paris, London, Brussels, Budapest, Leipzig and elsewhere in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. He is co-founder of Projet EVA.
https://simonlaroche.art/

Program 
Primum Mobile (2026) 10’
Primum Mobile is a kinetic sound work composed of a set of metal reeds that vibrate according to different schemas of activation. Fixed to the ceiling and spinning rapidly above the audience, the installation generates mechanical, cyclical, and repetitive aerial and acoustic turbulence. The drone emitted by the object and its textures is reminiscent of the omnipresence of information technologies, which inspires both fascination and apprehension. The suspended structure dominates the room and seems to hover above viewers, suggesting the panoptic presence of a flying drone.

The artwork uses simple harmonic structures that evolve slowly, in a cyclical and repetitive manner, sometimes approaching noise. Being concretely spatialized by a mechanical device, the reeds produce a complex set of microtonal resonances and variations. The linear simplicity of the moving object, which transforms its area of reception into an undulating terrain that can be navigated, is reminiscent of certain types of sculpture that fully engage the space by soliciting an active and spatial reception, far from a passive and disembodied contemplation.

As part of Akousma, the work—originally conceived as an installation presented in the dark—has been specially adapted for the evening: amplified, it becomes a performance tool.

Manuella Blackburn (gb)

Manuella Blackburn is an electroacoustic music composer specializing in acousmatic music. She studied music at the University of Manchester (England, UK), completing a PhD in electroacoustic composition under the supervision of Ricardo Climent in 2010.

Her music focuses on intricate details and the careful grouping and arrangement of small sounds within clear, polished sonic environments. Her recordings of everyday objects, environments, and instruments are transformed into new works, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Manuella Blackburn’s music has been presented at numerous concerts, festivals, conferences, and exhibitions in Germany, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Korea, Costa Rica, Cuba, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, and Sweden.

Program 
List of works:
•    Home Truths (2023)  7’00
•    Microplastics (2021)  8’00
•    Landline (2018)  9’33
•    Train of thought (2025) 8’45       

Home Truths (2023)
Interruptions dominate this composition, acting as pauses, abrupt stops, moments cut short and held breaths. These moments represent the many interruptions experienced in my daily life, in work, activities and composing. Interruptions are temporal states where continuity is ceased but then resumed or returned to after the interrupting event is over. In this work, interruptions are positioned as the main event; acting as focal points and instances to explore the creative potential of these typically unwanted occurrences. There are many different types of interruptions constructed throughout the composition. These show the different outcomes between successful versus unsuccessful interruptions, those that form segues to those that forcefully threaten and break down sound’s continuous presence. This creative experimentation with many interruptions is set within the context of home life and home sounds. These sounds tell a story, imitating interruptions to flow, being in the home for extended periods and all this entails.

Microplastics (2021)
Microplastics is an acousmatic work derived solely from plastic sound sources. These sounds are predominately from waste accumulated from household use (empty milk containers, bottles, straws, lids, cling film, and wrappers). Further sources were captured at the Manchester Education Centre and Materials Recovery Facility in Sharston (England, UK), which illuminated ways in which plastics are separated and sorted by the Aladdin machine. This visit provided an eye-opening visual for the monumental scale of plastic waste, which is represented sonically half-way through the work through an unprocessed raw recording of plastic rubbish being dumped out into a colossal mountain of unbelievable proportions.

Further to these recordings and sources are sounds collected from micro-sized plastics, sourced from the south coast of England courtesy of Rob Arnold (visual artist and microplastics cleanup expert). These microplastic pieces, no larger than 5mm in diameter, are a mix of worn-down remnants of past plastic objects (lids, shards, tubing, rims and strips) and ‘nurdles’ or ‘bio-beads’ waste, which present hazardous, detrimental ecological damage to marine life and the environment. The plastics industry converts nurdles into plastic products, however the movement and transportation of these tiny pellets of plastic regularly encounter accidental spills, spreading out into water and drainage systems. Bio-beads are equally problematic, entering the sea via their use in sewage filtration systems. These minuscule plastic particles can be mistaken for food by marine life and birds in the environment. This work explores the sound world of this disastrous pollution and unfortunate particles debris that now inhabit the world in insurmountable quantities.

Landline (2018)
I have vivid memories of my landline telephone in the home I grew up in. It was an old-style shiny black rotary dial phone, with its own table, accompanied with directory and phone book, all situated in the entrance hallway. As I grew up, the home telephone changed size and shape, the rotary dial disappeared and was replaced with touch-tone buttons, and then eventually it became cordless, liberating the user from its fixed location. I realized recently that I had not used my current landline telephone in a long time. It had fallen behind some furniture and become caked in dust. When I came to use it, it felt strange and the sounds it created made me curious about this somewhat endangered household object. I became fascinated with the dial-tone sound and later discovered that landline dial-tone sounds are not the same in every country. For some of my non-British friends and family, dial-tone pitches appeared to be a type of cultural sound emblem reminding them of home. The UK’s dial-tone is a combination of sine waves mixed from 350Hz and 450Hz, while the North American is a combination of 350Hz and 440Hz. In this piece I have explored my landline telephone in all its glory and have tried to recreate and reimagine the sounds of that first home telephone I remember from when I was younger.

Train of thought (2025)
Thoughts broken into disjointed fragments. Distractions, changes of plan and multitasking chaos break the continuity of my ideas. This work is about capturing something in its complete form; a train going by, a walk outside, a musical idea and then breaking it harshly so it does not finish or follow its intended course. Incomplete trajectories and sounds, unexpectedly cut short, form a metaphor for my thinking as I become diverted in everyday life. Focused, uninterrupted thinking and creative time seem like a distant memory. Crafting interruptions shape pauses, stoppages and collisions with silence to mark out and celebrate the cutouts of sound. The piece was commissioned by the DEGEM through the Thomas-Seelig-Fixed-Media-Preis 2025

Chantal Dumas

Chantal Dumas sadly passed away in 2026. Akousma wished to honour her memory by inviting two of her close colleagues and friends, Christian Calon and Magali Babin, to perform three of her works, celebrating the richness and singularity of her sonic world.

Born in Drummondville, Quebec, Chantal Dumas was a sound artist and radio artist whose practice also encompassed installation, storytelling, and sound design. Trained in Jaques-Dalcroze eurhythmics at Université Laval and later in interactive media at UQAM, she developed an approach beginning in the 1980s in which the microphone, listening, and in situ recordings were central to her practice.

Her works explored themes such as time, space, territory, and listening, often incorporating mapping as a compositional principle. Voice, immersion, and audience participation also played an important role in her work. Her creations were broadcast by numerous international radio stations, including the BBC, ABC, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and Radio-Canada, and presented at festivals, museums, and art venues across Canada, Europe, and the United States.

A frequent collaborator with artists from dance, poetry, visual arts, and performance, Chantal Dumas received numerous distinctions, including Prix Opus awards, the Phonurgia Nova International Competition, and the Prix Bohemia Radio. A grant recipient of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and the Canada Council for the Arts, she completed residencies in New York and Paris, chaired the Phonurgia Nova jury, and was the subject of a major bilingual publication devoted to her artistic career in 2019.

Program 
Jouer avec le feu (2006) 6’05”
Spatialized by Magali Babin

Beats, breaths, crackles, impulses. So many signs of life and death, and so many sounds that emerge, propagate, and fade away. Each sound is, in some way, a fiction — a story of life and death.

Featuring elements from the free Freesound library, with particular contributions from Acutescream, Cfork, Emmanuel, Fonogeno, Greyseraphim, Jovica, Cyril Laurier, Leady, Luffy, Lunardrive, Suonho, and Victorcenusa.

S/T/W/T (2006) 10’00”
Spatialized by Magali Babin

“In a stellar swarm, the city suspended, a world reduced to its radiance and pierced by black holes from which escape the sleep of men, dreams, nightmares, insomnia, night shifts, crimes.” — Jean-Luc Nancy, The City Far Away

S/T/W/T was created in the context of the collaborative project Montreal Sound Matter, bringing together eight sound artists. The guiding principle was the use of a shared sound library made up of field recordings captured in Montreal.

“Far from the postcard image, this sonic portrait offers an abstract view of Montreal, composed of fragments that have been shaped or transformed. Through these places turned into more or less unrecognizable non-places, S/T/W/T conveys an emotional experience of the city.” — Esther Bourdages

Migration océane (remix 1997) 18’36”
Spatialized by Christian Calon

Le PARFUM DES FEMMES

The collection Le parfum des femmes, which includes Migration océane and other works, brings together stories centred on the theme of migration. Each work portrays a form of displacement involving humankind and/or nature.

The migration of the cold Atlantic waters is paralleled with the journey of a woman leaving Europe to reach the American continent.

Le parfum des femmes was awarded First Prize at the EAR’97 International Electroacoustic Music Competition of Hungarian Radio (Budapest, Hungary), as well as First Prize at the Phonurgia Nova International Radio Art Competition (France) in 1997.