Akousma Festival
20th edition : October 16 > 18, 2024 / Montreal
We look forward to seeing you for the 2024 edition of the Akousma festival, October 16 > 18.
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TICKETS
USINE C
TICKET FOR 1 CONCERT (October 16, 17 or 18)
- In advance 27,00 $ regular / 18,00$ students* (until opening night)
- Regular 30,00 $
- Students* 25,00 $
PASSPORT 3 NIGHTS (October 16 > 18)
- In advance 55,00 regular / 40,00$ students* (until opening night)
- Regular 60,00 $
- Students* 45,00 $
*Member of Codes d’accès get the sudent price.
October 16, 2024
Day 1 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Get your tickets
2024 JTTP composition contest
The Canadian Electroacoustic Community’s Jeu de temps /Times Play competition highlights new electroacoustic works produced by young or emerging composers and sound artists from or living in Canada.
Mikael Meunier-Bisson (ca)
Mikael Meunier-Bisson is a Montréal-based experimental and electroacoustic music composer. Around 2020, his compositional focus shifted to explore the realms of ambient and textural music. This self-taught practice quickly became more intricate in recent years as he flirted with acousmatic techniques. His current work aims to transcend the “locality” of ambient music by engaging with the “global,” to explore tonality in an abstract way, and ultimately reach emotional resonance through combinations of methods that may still be unfamiliar to us. Since 2023, he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Musiques Numériques at Université de Montréal. His work ‘musicfriend’ was composed under the teaching of Martin Bédard in the winter of 2024.
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Program
musicfriend (2024) 8’00”
Arising as the outcome of frank encounters between several frames, musicfriend is the culmination of many reorganizations. Infused with a suggestive and strongly accentuated materiality, the rhetoric of this project is strewn with doubts, trials and errors, in a continual vacillation between the referential, the dreamlike and the playful.
Credit : Aidan Potter
Vivian Li (cn/ca)
Vivian Li is a Tiohtià:ke /Montreal based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sound and music. Driven by a fascination with the therapeutic and time binding properties of sound, her music combines hypnotic melodies, soothing synth ambiences, autobiographical field-recordings and soft noises to explore moments of introspection and intimacy.
She has performed and presented work at venues and festivals nationally and internationally, such as MUTEK (Montreal), Pique (Ottawa), Sound Art Lab (Struer), Inkonst (Malmö), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), perte de signal (Montreal), Kwia (Berlin), Fondation Phi x Nuit Blanche (Montreal), Hectolitre (Brussels) and Karachi Biennale .
Since 2021, Vivian hosts a monthly radio show - Lo Signal - on Montreal's community radio station CKUT 90.3fm. This two-hour slot serves as a sonic playground where she shares her ambient scraps, field recordings, drones, experimental edits, and audio diary.
Linktree | ︎
Program
Memory Playback (2024) 7’00”
This piece explores the potential of sound to preserve and resurrect memories. Profoundly autobiographical, most recordings originate from the composer’s personal journey. Within this auditory landscape, fragments of intimacy and souvenirs resurface, in a distorted, almost distant manner, teetering on the brink of utter disintegration. As these bits and pieces of the past overlap on each other, they create new imageries and feelings, transcending to “hyper memories” (Maria Chávez, 2020).
Prizewinner of the Concours de Composition Acousmatique petites formes 2024.
Credit : Aidan McMahon
Byron Westbrook (us)
First emerging from within New York’s experimental music scene over the last decade and a half and now based in Los Angeles, Byron Westbrook has woven intricate tapestries of sonority that bridge the worlds of sound art, installation, avant-garde electronic music and synthesis. Westbrook creates sculptural and immersive compositions, with highly acclaimed full-lengths on imprints like Root Strata, Hands In The Dark, Umor Rex, and Ash International, and presentations at the Walker Art Center, ICA London, MOCA Los Angeles, MoMA PS1, MaerzMusik and Rewire Festivals among others. His newest release Translucents was published by Shelter Press in 2024.
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Program
Translucents (Remix) (2024) 20’00’’
Inspired by the color panels of abstract painter Blinky Palermo, Translucents explores the concept of "audio after-image". The work presents a series of audio scenes, with the intention of imprinting on the listener's mind in order to influence the way each consecutive scene appears. It is a play with memory, with presence, and with time. It experiments with a dynamic between perceiving presence in the space where one is listening vs the perception of an external space or place. Translucents is presented here in a "Remix" form that differs from its published release, exclusively for Akousma.
Credit : Élise Durant
October 16, 2024
Day 1 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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Pierce Warnecke (us/fr)
Pierce Warnecke is a multidisciplinary digital artist at the intersection of experimental music, digital arts and video art. He has presented his work in the form of performances, concerts and installations at Rewire, GRM, ZKM, ManiFeste (IRCAM), Mutek, CTM, Elektra, KW Institut, Nemo, Sonic Acts, Martin Gropius Bau, MAC Montreal, Gray Area, LEV Festival, Semibreve, SXSW, etc.
Pierce collaborates often and has worked with Frank Bretschneider, Matthew Biederman, Myriam Bleau, Keith Fullerton Whitman and more. His music has been published on raster (DE), Room40 (AU) and Contour Editions (US). He is represented by Disk Agency in Berlin.
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Program
Sonopeutic Smooth Sailing (2024) 21’34”
Sonopeutic Smooth Sailing, released on raster, is a meditation on semi-serious self-help through concrète dream/mare-scapes of chaotic and unpredictable sound experiments. For Akousma, a condensed multichannel reworking of the album is proposed here.
The music here is highly processed, with the intent of starting from simple well known electronic sounds (808/909 drums, simple modular synth and basic generative max patches), but performed, edited, cut-up and processed as much as possible to propose a music that would hopefully throw a wrench in any AI audio dataset that it might have the misfortune of falling into.
This album should be listened to as though it were part of a failed self-help program that could have allowed you, the listener, to train yourself on developing patience and attention through the power of extreme sound.
Credit : Pierce Warnecke
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek (fr/ca)
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek is a composer and sound artist living in Montreal. She is interested to the study of how instrumental, electroacoustic and computational-thinking approaches interact in music. Her favourite themes are micro-organisms and abstract-concrete landscapes. She’s been active for composing electroacoustic/mixte pieces and performing live electronic music. She performs regularly with Ensemble ILÉA and the duo blablaTrains as a Theremin player.
Her recordings have been released by Kohlenstoff Records and Empreintes DIGITALes, and her scores by Babel Scores and Editions Henri Lemoine.
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Program
Mare Buchlae (2023) 11’53”
The opening piece in the 'Radiolaria' cycle takes us from the human world to the world of underwater organisms. The piece features all the sound families that represent the plankton-inhabiting species that will be explored individually later on in the cycle. My objective was to recreate an underwater world using only sound synthesis, moving from ocean field recordings to a waterscape consisting entirely of sounds from the Buchla 200 modular synthesizer.
Credit : André Parmentier
Estelle Schorpp (fr/ca)
Estelle Schorpp is a French-born and Montreal-based sound artist, composer and researcher active in the field of experimental music and sound ecology.
She uses the tools and methods of research-creation to set up projects that take a critical and creative look at our relationship with the sonic environment. Integrating concepts from disciplines such as sound ecology, sound studies, media theory, history of science, acoustics and psychoacoustics, her polymorphous approach combines performance, sound installation and algorithmic composition, as well as academic communication and the writing of articles.
Her ever-changing and immersive sonic landscapes, characterized by their ambiguous shimmering sounds and the use of field recordings, seek both a physical and intellectual experience where listening is central.
Since 2022, she teaches at the Music Faculty of Université de Montréal (CA).
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Program
A Conversation Between a Partially Educated Parrot and a Machine (2023) 20’00
Through the use of both original and digitalized birds recordings archives from the 1930’s, this performance explores the historical and sonic relationships between birds, humans and sound reproduction technologies.
In the late 19th century, Eldridge Johnson, head of Victor Records, said about the phonograph that it « sounded much like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head” (Johnson, quoted in William Kenney’s Recorded Music in American Life). This is the same phonograph that Ludwig Koch used in 1889 to make the first recording of a bird in a zoo in Frankfurt. My aim was to unfold this comparison between an ill behaved bird and a sound reproduction technology to tell a story where music is made together by historical and recent audio technologies, birds, and the humans that listen to them.
In A conversation between a partially educated parrot and a machine, I take turns interacting with iPads and a gramophone equipped with sensors. On the one hand, this emblematic historical audio technology reads the original shellac disks by Ludwig Koch in the 1930’s, on the other hand it becomes a physical interface sending data to live algorithmic processes. The performance emphasizes on a dynamic back and forth between several kind of discourses (documentary, fictional, musical), technologies (computer and gramophone), and sounds (sounds of birds’ songs and sound reproduction artefacts).
Crédit : Andrea Avezzù
October 17, 2024
Day 2 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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Frédéric Janelle (ca)
Frédéric was born in Sherbrooke in 1981. He moved to the Montreal area in 1999 to study computer-assisted musical composition. He then began a career as a sound engineer and studied electroacoustic composition at the Montreal Conservatory of Music from 2006 to 2009. Frédéric draws his inspiration from technology and his visions of the future.
Program
L’Oracle (2024) 8’41”
The Visions of the Oracle.
Credit : Frédéric Janelle
Monique Jean (ca)
Be it electroacoustic music, mixed music, sound installations or improvisations, the music of Monique Jean is engaging a present that happens now. She focuses on the tensions, fractures, and shocks of sound materials to transmute reality into poetry. She works on sound materials as if they were complex organisms animated by forces that keep them in constant evolution.
Since 2012, in search of a harsh, raw sound, she has been integrating analogue and no-input elements to her set-up as sources of instability and unpredictability.
Her works have been selected by several competitions and performed and broadcast in several national and international concerts and festivals, including Multiphonies (Paris, France), Akousma (Montréal), Sonorities (Belfast, Northern Ireland), NYCEMF (New York, USA), The San Francisco Tape Music Festival (USA), Ai-maako (Santiago, Chile), and Elektra (Montréal). In 2012, she was invited for a residency at Fondation Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide (Italy).
electrocd
Program
Tumultes 15’ (2024)
Despite the barriers, walls, censorship and other verticalities that cut the horizon of everyday life, persist in remaining attentive by trying to find a way to you - here or elsewhere, near or far.
Inspired by the works of Adania Shibli (Un détail mineur) and Antoine Wauters (Mahmoud ou la montée des eaux).
Produced with the support of the Research and Exploration program of PRIM and the CAC.
Credit : Monique Bertrand
Horacio Vaggione (ar/fr)
Horacio Vaggione (Argentina, 1943), has lived in Paris since 1978. Composition studies at the National University of Cordoba, then doctorate in musicology at the University of Paris VIII. Studied computer music at the University of Illinois (1966). Co-founder of the Center for Experimental Music at the University of Cordoba (1965-68), member of the electronic music group ALEA of Madrid (1969-73), he worked in France at IRCAM, at INA- GRM, at GMEB. Resident in Berlin (DAAD, 1987-1988). Between 1989 and 2012 he was full professor (composition and research) at the University of Paris VIII, where he is currently professor emeritus.
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Program *
Gymell I (2003) 9’20 followed by Gymell III (2024) 16’00
We can think of the active (corpuscular) principle of these Gymel by drawing inspiration from the words of Bachelard (1932): “The corpuscle has no more reality than the composition which makes it appear”.
And again: “Suffice it to say that the existence of the corpuscle has a root in all space.”
This explains not only the unreality of the corpuscle —if it is not inhabited by the composition— but also the reality of the space where it appears as continuity.
As for the works: Gymel I was produced in 2003 at the CICM studio, University of Paris VIII. It subsequently spawned several avatars, includingGymel III, created recently, in 2024, at the ICST (University of the Arts) of Zurich.
The two Gymel gathered here are Canadian premieres.
* For reasons beyond our control, the works will be spatialized by the composer and artistic director of the festival, Louis Dufort. The festival team wishes Mr. Vaggione a speedy recovery. 🫶
Credit : N. Azounoff (GRM)
October 17, 2024
Day 2 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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Florence-Delphine Roux (ca)
Florence-Delphine Roux is a digital and sound artist originally from Quebec City and based in Tiohtà:ke/Montreal. Her work explores the intersection of art, science, and technology, with a focus on the medium of radio. Her creations take the form of listening experiences, immersive sound installations, performances, video art, and radio works.
Driven by a sound-based practice, largely sourced from material stored from outdoor recordings, Florence-Delphine Roux's work is significantly based on the possibility of playing with textures that are not perceptible to the eye, particularly electromagnetic fields, thus contributing to a disruption of reality.
With a desire to develop a practice of fiction, the artist also invests in the field of radio production, with the ambition of creating a « cinema for the ear».
Text by Frédéric Bonnet
Website | Linktree
Program
Cime (2024) 11’00
Cime proposes a disruptive ascent into the soundscape of one of Quebec's most mysterious peaks, Mont-Saint-Hilaire. Embedded in the collective imagination of the residents of Montérégie, this mountain has inspired numerous legends, with myths that endure, fueled by new beliefs related to the paranormal. The artist will navigate between capturing ambisonic soundscapes, natural very low-frequency radio signals, and analog and granular synthesis.
This work draws from phonographic archives created as part of a performative research project on extrasensory literacy and disruptive listening of the Gault Nature Reserve.
Credit : Alexis Bellavanc
Shane Turner (ca)
Shane Turner is a composer who is drawn to the mutable boundaries and properties of acousmatic music as a way of expressing experiences omitted by essentialism. Their music encompasses solo fixed works, audio for installations, popular forms in soundtracks, as well as group performances with live electronics and synthesis. Shane's works have been released on the Panospria Label under NoType, by the CEC, and performed at various festivals, including Mutek. They studied electroacoustic music composition at Concordia University.
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Program
rumors, approximated (2024) 10’00
rumors, approximated is an exploration of synthesis, vocals (Simone Pitot/Delorca) and a model combining the two.
Charting sensory discord: the constant dissolution and resynthesis of the senses experienced while moving between conflicting sensory regimes over the course of a particularly dynamic year. Complete information ecosystems, fed by private algorithms that reflected and molded their permissible sensoriums, ran headlong into collision while cultural schisms arose over the basis of old and nascent forms of expression.
Credit : Roxane De Konink
Manja Ristić (hr)
Manja Ristić, born in Belgrade in 1979, is a violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator, and researcher. She graduated from the Belgrade Academy of Music (2001), then awarded at the Royal College of Music, London, with PGDip Solo/Ensemble Recitalist (2004). As a classical solo and chamber musician, as well as a composer and an improv musician She has performed all across Europe and in the US, involving collaborations with established conductors, performers, multimedia artists, poets, and theatre/film directors. Ristić’s sound-related research besides contemporary performance in the field of instrumental electro–acoustics, is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to sound and field recording as well as experimental radio arts.
The winner of several distinctive awards for solo and chamber classical music, laureate of the Academy Charles Cros Sélection Musiques Expérimentales 2024, holds an honorable mention from the Phonurgia Nova Awards, and a Golden Award for the extended media from the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia. She is a founding member of CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.
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Program
ghosts (2024) 20’
How do we approach the landscape of severe devastation and a dense history of warfare?
In the work ghosts I am using obsolete instruments – a modular synthesizer EMS Synthi 100, a discarded wheelchair wheel salvaged from the Adriatic Sea, and the piano fallen in disuse which belonged to the Austrian conceptualist, filmmaker, improviser, photographer, environmentalist, and writer – Karl Katzinger aka John Tylo (October 1953 – April 2021).
Next to these elements of the past and their voices rediscovered, I am incorporating live processing of hydrophone and field recordings, found objects, and electromagnetic fields, from several locations, appropriating them through the discourse of critical tourism and a culture of memory – more specifically through listening to the inherent memories of environmental devastation and warfare – in the South Adriatic, on the Atlantic coast, and the Czech-Austrian borderlands former Iron Curtain belt, including region of former Mauthausen–Gusen working camps.
Credit : Milica Cvetković
October 18, 2024
Day 3 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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Marie Anne (ca)
Marie Anne Bérard (she/her) is a Montreal-based composer and keyboardist. Her practice focuses on electroacoustic and audiovisual performances, sound installation and the use of sound journaling as a compositional method. She is also interested in the mediation of electroacoustic music. With financial support from the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique(OICRM) and the Observatoire des médiations culturelles (OMEC), she is currently working on a master's degree in sound creation at the Université de Montréal. Her performance Éphémérides (2021) was awarded the Martin-Gotfrit-Martin-Bartlett prize in the Jeu de temps/Times play (JTTP) competition.
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Programme
Solace (2023) 20’00”
Solace: a term signifying a source of comfort and calmness, the action of moving towards this state.
This live performance of ambient music attempts to find a path to solace, both for the musician and the audience. The person on stage wishes to show the countless sounds of her inner world by recreating personal soundscapes and melodies.
This piece was composed to be performed at a retirement home in Montreal, to introduce its residents to electroacoustic concert music.
Credit : Augustin Houle-Forest
Atte Elias Kantonen (fi)
A Helsinki-based sound designer and composer, Atte Elias Kantonen works in the fields of experimental music and performing arts.
Within his practice, Kantonen explores the potential of elastic synthesis and extremely processed sound as vessels for abstract, phantasmagorical storytelling. Building emotionally sonorous dioramas, he creates compositions where the serene and the discordant constantly fold in on each other. He has released on labels such as SODA GONG, kappa, SUPERPANG, among others.
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Program
a path with a name [a reimagined reprise] (2024) 18’00
a path with a name (a reimagined reprise) is a composition based on the sounding storylines from the album "a path with a name" (SODA GONG, 2023). The composition continues on the album's quest: drawing paths that zig-zags through digital herbage, synthetic pools of dew and clouds of sonic mist.
Credit : Dominika Goralska
Ludwig Berger (de)
Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist, musician and curator. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. He holds degrees in electroacoustic composition, as well as musicology, art history and literature. As a researcher and educator at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, he studied the sonic dimension of alpine glaciers and water infrastructure. His work has been presented at GRM Paris, Ars Electronica and the Venice Biennale. He recently moved to Montreal after living in Zurich and Milan.
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Program
Garden of Ediacara (2024) 20’00
The musical eco-fiction Garden Ediacara unfolds a speculative ecosystem through synthesized vocals, physical modeling instruments and microscopic field recordings. Infused with storytelling techniques from sci-fi and fantasy, Ludwig Berger intertwines melodic songwriting with electroacoustic sound design. The project alludes to the geological period of Ediacara 600 million years ago —a peaceful underwater ecosystem inhabited by soft-bodied creatures without eyes and bones, which were completely wiped out through the appearance of a new species. Garden of Ediacara (released as album on -OUS) celebrates both the pleasures of biodiversity as well as mourning its inevitable loss.
Credit : Johannes Berger
October 18, 2024
Day 3 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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Julien Racine (ca)
Montréal composer, sound engineer and producer Julien Racine, or simply Racine, has published five albums, the most recent of which, Boue, was released in March 2024 through Czech label Gin & Platonic. Quelque chose tombe, released on Danse noire back in 2020, was widely praised by international media, giving him the opportunity to tour Europe in the spring of 2020, then later that year at MUTEK Montréal. Throughout his career, Racine also composed music and soundscapes for several films shown in numerous cinemas, festivals and galleries. He is also one-half of duo Corporation alongside Keru Not Ever, with whom he hosts the radio show Scene on the HKCR platform; the duo also released Graffito on Czech label Genot Centre.
Website| Linktree
Program
Hamelin (2023-2024) 20’00
In the village of Hamelin, a mysterious flute player weaves through the unfortunate tumult of daily misery, wrought by the bubonic plague. His music rids the desperate village of its pests. However, the villagers, refusing to reward him, the flute player played again. This time, it was not the rats but all the village children who followed him out of the walls, disappearing forever.
In this futuristic-medieval piece, Racine creates an anachronistic sound world blending electroacoustic, noise, and film music. The piece began to take shape in 2023 and has been evolving ever since.
Credit : Étienne Lacelle
Olivier Alary (fr/ca)
Olivier Alary, born in France and based in Montreal, is a versatile composer known for his expansive repertoire spanning albums, film scores, dance music, and art installations. Trained in architecture, sound arts, and instrumental composition, Olivier blends acoustic and electronic elements to explore the limits between experimental, popular, and contemporary music. Influenced by noise, baroque, and post-minimalist genres, his compositions intricately weave together diverse sonic landscapes. Throughout the years, he collaborated notably with Björk, Nick Knight, Cat Power and Doug Aitken. He has released music on labels like Rephlex, Fatcat Records, 130701, and LINE. Additionally, he has also composed music for over fifty films, earning numerous awards at prestigious film festivals such as Venice, Sundance, and Cannes.
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Program
Présences imaginées (2024) 15’10
What will be left of our time after we're gone? An artificial entity attempts to remember our existence.
Présences imaginées is the first work in a series of compositions that seek to capture the sonic footprint of our contemporary civilization, as it might be perceived and reconstructed by an intelligent machine. The entirety of the sonic and musical material in this piece was generated by an artificial neural network, then composed as a classic acousmatic work, with minimal sound processing to preserve the unique quality of the generated sounds.
Felisha Ledesma (us/se)
Felisha Ledesma is a sound artist and musician currently based in Malmö, Sweden. A distinctly warm and organic palette permeates Ledesma’s work, each moment slowly unfolding into an intimate aural experience. Inspirations from the everyday are distilled into sonic memories that invite a meditative and deep listening.
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Program
Uppender (2024) / 20’00
Uppender was commissioned for Ina GRM Focus in 2024. Uppender was created utilizing an updated multichannel version of the AMQR, a software synthesizer created in collaboration with Ess Mattisson.
Credit : André Middleton
Electrochoc
The Electrochoc concert series, presented jointly by the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and Akousma ,
is a series of concert-discussions that introduces audiences to different aspects of electroacoustic music. The concerts also showcase the talent and creativity of the students invited by Martin Bédard and Louis Dufort (the series’ two artistic directors) from their composition classes.
September 26th 2024
ELECTROCHOC NO. 1
Bénédicte + gonima
7:30pm Conference / 8pm ConcertEn codiffusion avec le Conservatoire de musique de Montréal
4750, Av. Henri-Juilien
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Bénédicte(Maxime Gordon)
Maxime Gordon is a Montreal-based music producer and sound artist. She has been releasing and writing experimental electronic music as Bénédicte since the mid 2010s.
Her music combines soaring synths, distorted field-recordings and glittering vocal samples to explore moments of introspection and feeling. She has performed and presented work at venues and festivals across North America and Europe such as MUTEK (Montreal), Akousma (Montreal), Pique (Ottawa), the Spatial Sound Institute (Budapest), MONOM (Berlin), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), and Glory Affairs x Punctum (Prague).
Her most recent album is the 5 track EP “When It Binds” that came out on NYC-based record label Blueberry Records in 2021. She is currently writing a new album and hosting soundwalks around Montreal.
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Program
Untitled (2024) 9’26
Creation
Halves, Shoals (2023) 15’50
Bénédicte
Photo : Sean Vadaru
Photo : Sean Vadaru
gonima (Evan Magoni)
gonima is an alias of Evan Magoni (he/him), a Montreal-based audiovisual artist exploring glitch aesthetics, complex rhythms, bright melodies, and ambient atmospheres. He employs pointillist audio editing, live playing, and generative musical processes to create detailed digital textures, ethereal tonality, and collage-like musical arrangements with an emotive core.
The gonima project started in 2011 in Philadelphia. Releases have found homes on Satellite Era in Chicago; Sunset Waves in Austin, Texas; Bullflat3.8 in Kyoto, Japan; Montreal labels ygrade and Ancient Robot; and in Munich, Germany on Slam City Jams.
Musical interests: deep listening, melodic tension and release, glitch sound design, drones, syncopation, gestural movement, sound collage.
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Program
Immaterial, Unbounded (2024) 10’
Creation
Homeostasis (2023) 15’40
An extension of Homeostasis, a piece composed for Akousma in 2023, this suite explores themes of transcendence. Field recordings and atonal flourishes resonate into warm ambience and melody through the use of vocoders and reverberation, creating high-definition synthetic spaces. Sharp fragments of the material world fuse with dreamlike, ethereal tonalities in slow waves.
gonima
November 7th 2024
Soundwich XIX
7:30pm Conference / 8pm ConcertIn collaboration with the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal
4750, Av. Henri-Juilien
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Jules Bastin-Fontaine
Jules Bastin-Fontaine (born in 2000) is a composer and tuba player from Quebec City, now based in Montreal. He earned his master's degree with distinction in instrumental composition in 2024 from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, studying under Maxime McKinley. He is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in electroacoustic composition at the same institution with Louis Dufort, as well as a professional development internship with Maxime McKinley and Ofer Pelz.His music has received several prizes, including the "Relève VVA 2019" award from E27 Musiques nouvelles for his piece Trio in homage to Bruckner, and three awards from the "SOCAN Foundation Young Composers’ Competitions." At the 2020 virtual Orford Academy, his work L’heure joyeuse won the award allowing it to be performed during the "Génération 2020" concert tour. His piece Compositio acousmatique I won second prize at the JTTP 2023 competition.
His works have been performed by various ensembles, including the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+), Ensemble Paramirabo, Ensemble MusiquAvenir, the Orchestre symphonique du Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (OSCMM) conducted by Tania Miller, and the Orchestre de la francophonie conducted by Simon Rivard. In 2024, he participated in a creation residency with composer Lily Koslo at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Program
Composition acousmatique III
Composed at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal between November 2023 and October 2024, Composition acousmatique III is an octophonic piece that presents various sound spaces as places for counterpoints of synthetic material.
Audréanne Filion
Audréanne Filion is a cellist, composer, and improviser based in Montreal. Her work primarily focuses on creation, contemporary, and experimental music. She has premiered several works by her colleagues in the Canadian scene, including pieces by Sarah Davachi, Takuto Fukuda, Keiko Devaux, Geneviève Ackerman, Jean Décarie, Simon Martin, Mike Maevsky, Yulin Yan, and many others.Audréanne is a member of Ensemble Tesse, Ensemble Éclat, Quatuor Mémoire, and the duo Filion/Bourgault, and she also collaborates as a freelancer with various chamber ensembles such as Projection Libérantes, No Hay Banda, SuperMusique, and Novarumori. She has a solo performance project that combines cello improvisation, electronic composition, and real-time processing, exploring styles that range from instrumental and electronic to ambient, noise, classical, and experimental.
Her exploration includes microtonality and sound phenomena such as beats, distortion, feedback, and the blending of acoustic and electronic sounds. Her music has been featured at events like OK LÀ, Totem Électrique XV, Interzone Editions, EAF, the 6th edition of the ViU concert, Midfield 02, the 2022 Masse concert of Codes d’accès, and at the Jardins de Métis in Rimouski in 2022.
Active in the experimental pop scene, Audréanne performs with various groups, including Everly Lux and Xela Edna, and frequently collaborates with electronic musicians such as YlangYlang, Jessica Moss, Kid Koala, Erika Angell, and Myriam Bleau. Her musical activities have taken her to Canada, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Germany. Trained at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Audréanne holds a bachelor’s degree and an artist diploma in cello performance, as well as a bachelor’s degree in electroacoustic composition.
Program
Live pour violoncelle et électroniques
This performance explores the intersection between contemporary cello techniques and immersive electronic textures. By combining dissonant melodies and the raw, grainy sounds of the cello with live electronics and controlled feedback, a soundscape emerges where beats, noise, and microtones evoke states of wandering and tension. The performance navigates between moments of abrasive intensity and meditative calm, addressing themes of duality, saturation, and fragile balance.
Gabriel Geneau
Gabriel Geneau is a versatile artist who broadens the horizons of artistic expression through modern tools. By exploring the myriad possibilities of the synergy between music and visuals, he creates aesthetic and impactful works that invite the audience on a captivating sensory journey. His creations provide an experience where the senses intertwine and blend.
Always attentive to push the boundaries of his creativity, Gabriel Geneau passionately explores new avenues, embracing innovation and diversity in his creative process. He integrates technology while remaining true to the very essence of artistic expression.
Program
Ecdysis
Ecdysis unfolds as a captivating short film of experimental dance, exploring the nuanced journey of liberation. The film captures the subtle yet powerful struggle of a protagonist, ultimately leading to a moment of profound release. The fluid connections between a soundtrack that lingers in the realm of hypersensitivity, symbolic imagery, and dynamic lighting design enhance the overall sensory experience, immersing the audience in the ebb and flow of the protagonist's transformative struggle.
Hans Martin
Hans Martin holds a master's degree in composition from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. During his studies, he worked with Jimmie LeBlanc, Klaus Lang, Serge Provost, and Michel Tétreault. Composing instrumental, electroacoustic, and mixed works, he focuses on the experience of sound as an acoustic phenomenon. His research is influenced by musical forms stemming from the algorithmic tradition from the Middle Ages to the present.
Martin's works have been performed by various ensembles, including the SMCQ Ensemble, the Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+), the Orchestre de la Francophonie, the Hanatsu Miroir ensemble, Ensemble AKA, and students from Klangforum Wien (PPCM), as well as several student groups such as the symphony orchestra, string orchestra, and contemporary music ensemble of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, along with the EROC ensemble at the Université de Montréal.
In addition to his work as a composer, he has also collaborated as a writer for the journal Circuit, and has worked as a sound designer with director Simon Boudreault and students from the Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Montréal, as well as with director Charles Voyer and the independent theater scene.
Program
Songe de Scipion
The "Dream of Scipio," a famous passage from Cicero's work De Republica, presents a fictional dialogue between Scipio Aemilianus, a Roman general, and his deceased grandfather, Scipio Africanus. In this conversation, the ancestor describes the cosmic structure of the universe and reveals the immortal nature of the soul to his descendant.
Several authors, including Macrobius, Boethius, and Petrarch, have commented on this Dream of Scipio, which is regarded as a sort of counterpart to Plato's "Myth of Er" described in Book X of The Republic. More broadly, the Pythagorean idea of the harmony of the spheres, which underpins these ancient texts, has left a lasting impact on musical, cosmological, and mathematical thought throughout Western history.
Inspired by these ideas, my piece consists of nine sections, each symbolically representing a planet of the solar system as described by Cicero. Each section lasts one minute, following a general movement from the terrestrial to the celestial.
I would like to express my gratitude to Jérémie de Pierre for his contribution of recorder sounds used in this piece.
December 12th 2024
ELECTROCHOC NO. 2
Charles Quevillon + Sawtooth
7:30pm Concert / talk after the concertIn collaboration with the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal
4750, Av. Henri-Juilien
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Charles Quevillon (ca)
Charles Quevillon is a Canadian composer, residing in Finland. A graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, he worked for 12 years with choreographer Tedd Robinson on 27 projects, presented at major festivals. His multidisciplinary approach has led him to collaborate with ensembles such as Defunensemble (FI) and Sound Initiative (FR), Kollektiv Totem (CH), as well as with visual artist Maija Tammi. Currently pursuing a doctorate at the Sibelius Academy, his research focuses on the symbolic use of electronic technologies in music.Website | ︎
Sawtooth Duo (Sarah Albu + Matti Pulkki)
Sawtooth is an eclectic voice-accordion duo exploring connections between folk music, classical music and contemporary repertoire. With a passion for experimental textures, interdisciplinary collaboration and deep connection to narrative, Sawtooth seeks out obscure song repertoire, adapts chamber pieces written for other instruments and develops new works in collaboration with composers.
Sarah Albu is a singer, composer and performance-maker specializing in new/experimental music, 20th century repertoire and free improvisation. Montreal-based Sarah is a founding member of the experimental voice collective Phth and frequently collaborates with artists working in video, installation, contemporary dance, textiles and digital media.
Accordionist Matti Pulkki is an active and enthusiastic performer of contemporary and experimental repertoire. Often performing with different chamber groups and ensembles, Pulkki seeks to explore and extend the technical and acoustic possibilities of his instrument in the music written in our time.
Website
Program
Loudspeaker Baptism (2024) 62'00"
Chamber opera in 4 acts for soprano, accordion, Genelec 8020D, puppeteer and electronics.
Delivery — Memories — Suffering — Sublimation
Loudspeaker Baptism aims to crack open the mundane perception of a loudspeaker as a mere commodity and activate its latent archetypal and mystical meanings. Through a playful yet earnest approach, this opera connects the consumerist and technological framework of a loudspeaker with religious and spiritual symbolism. For instance, Act I: Delivery is inspired by the modern baptism of technological objects: the “unboxing” YouTube videos. Thus, this opera asks, how to meaningfully integrate a loudspeaker, with its whole “soul” and darker facets, into human spiritual life.
News
Akousma’s latest updates
Project Call
Akousma and Ubisoft Montreal are pleased to host Composite #41, the 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗢𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟱, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 evening at Ubisoft.
🕒 Tuesday, October 15 at 5:30pm
📍 Location: Ubisoft Montréal, 5480 Rue Saint-Dominique
🔗 https://compositemtl.ca/prochain-composite/
COMPOSITE is a quarterly networking event dedicated to digital creativity.
📣 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 (ART, RESEARCH, INDUSTRY OR SOCIAL INNOVATION) by filling out this form 👉 https://form.jotform.com/242266355498265 for a chance to be selected for a 6-minute Keynote presentation at this COMPOSITE event on Tuesday, October 15, 2024.
Projects are selected by the COMPOSITE committee and the organizers, based on the quality of the project and the innovation of its approach to digital technology. Priority is given to emerging players and a diversified representation of project leaders.
𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗘 𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗦
📣 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲𝘀
COMPOSITE minutes introduce the evening: 6 to 10 digital players each have one minute to present a short project, make an important announcement for the digital creative sector, or share a project that has inspired them.
If you would like to take part in the Composite minutes, please fill in this form 👉https://form.jotform.com/242265760596263.
You can register until 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟲, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰, 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁.
Support us
Since its founding in Montreal in 1991, AKOUSMA has presented more than 350 concerts of immersive digital music, mixed music, visual music and other acousmatic art forms, mainly through the ‘Rien à voir’ series (15 editions between 1997 and 2004) and its AKOUSMA festival (17th edition in October 2021).
During this period, more than fifty new works were commissioned from local artists. It certainly helped to expand the field of possibilities in terms of sound art, and has reached thousands of listeners.
Your donation will allow new initiatives in creation and distribution of immersive digital music.
Charitable registration number: 88699 9242 RR0001
About
Scroll down for more on the many faces of Akousma
History, mission and aknowledgementsAwards ︎Major events
The organization ︎ The team
︎︎︎
History, mission, and
acknowledgements
Akousma
(formally Réseaux des arts médiatiques) is a concert production company that showcases
works by electroacoustic artists and collectives in Montréal. These works are
presented via an immersive sound system, and they take several forms:
acousmatic (tape music), mixed (tape and instruments), live (live electronics),
video music, or music integrated into other art forms such as dance,
performance, or installation.Composers Jean-François Denis, Gilles Gobeil, and Robert Normandeau founded Akousma in Montréal in 1991. They shared the role of artistic director for 17 years, until 2008 when they passed the baton to Nicolas Bernier for the 2008–2009 and 2010–2011 seasons. That same season, Réjean Beaucage took on the role of director general, with support from Louis Dufort as artistic director for the 2011–2012 season onward.
Akousma would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and Canadian Heritage for their support for its operation. Akousma also receives valuable support from the Socan Foundation for its activities. Le Vivier and the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal are important broadcasting partners.
Awards
PRIX OPUS 2001-2002: “Presenter of the year”
PRIX OPUS 2003-2004: "Concert of the year - New/electroacoustic music": Rien à voir (14) — Luigi Ceccarelli
PRIX OPUS 2004-2005: "Concert of the year - New/electroacoustic music": Akousma 1 — Theresa Transistor
PRIX OPUS 2005-2006 "Concert of the year - New/electroacoustic music": Akousma 2 — Pierre Alexandre Tremblay: Alter ego
PRIX OPUS 2009-2010: “Concert of the year - New/electroacoustic music“
PRIX OPUS 2011-2012 "Concert of the year - New/electroacoustic music": Akousma 8 - Soirée «sens_action»: France Jobin
PRIX OPUS 2016-2017 "Artistic director of the year": Louis Dufort
Major events
November 1991 : Réseaux des arts médiatiques (Akousma) produces its first concert, Top secret – hommage à Francis Dhomont ;
May to october 1992 : Montréal’s 350ᵗʰ anniversary event at the Planétarium de Montréal ;
May 1992 : Inaugural concert at the Place des Arts’ 5ᵉ salle ;
February 1996 : L’orchestre de haut-parleurs at the Musiques-échange Québec-Belgique festival ;
1996/1997 : Réseaux presents its first regular season with the Rien à voir series ;
2003 : Launch of the iConcerts, virtual concerts commissioned by Réseaux and presented via its website ;
2004 : Pulsar, a series of acousmatic concerts at the (former) Montréal Planetarium ;
2005 : Akousma, a series of concerts dedicated to all forms of electronic music ;
2007 : Le Vivier group is created with Réseaux as a founding member ;
2008 : New artistic director Nicolas Bernier takes the helm; a three-year strategic plan is developed ;
2011 : Akousma gets a new artistic director, Louis Dufort; the festival moves its main concert series to Usine C and also celebrates its 20th birthday !
︎︎︎ Download the special report on Réseaux’s first 20 years in PDF
2011 : The first concerts outside Quebec are held: one in Ottawa, where Akousma features at the Electric Fields festival by Artengine, and the other in New York, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy ;
2012 : Francis Dhomont gives a concert at the CIRMMT to celebrate 20 years of Réseaux. We also say happy 30th birthday to Annette Vande Gorne’s organization Musique & Recherches, the Belgian inspiration for Réseaux; and the students from CEGEP Saint-Laurent present two pieces marking the 50th anniversary of the “Concert collectif” given by GRM members in Paris, June 1962 ;
2013 : Akousma’s tenth edition!
2021 : Akousma celebrates its 30th birthday in October with a fully local edition! (Because this pandemic isn’t over yet...)