Akousma
International Festival Of Immersive Digital Music
Upcoming concerts!
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20 mars 2025
ÉLECTROCHOC No 4
Stephanie Moore
Conférence 19h30 / Concert 20hEn codiffusion avec le Conservatoire de musique de Montréal
4750, Av. Henri-Juilien
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Stephanie Moore
Composer Stephanie Moore is equally at ease in the worlds of instrumental and electroacoustic music, with a special interest in “mixed music” combining the two. Since arriving in Montreal in 2009, her creative palette has expanded to include recorded sound (instruments and everyday objects), environmental soundscape, sampled recordings and electronic sound, in addition to standard Western instruments.Previous commissions include: Ensemble Paramirabo, New Adventures in Sound Art, Cluster Festival + Plumes Ensemble, Ensemble In Extensio, Voces Boreales + Bradyworks, among others. Her music has been featured in the Sound Travels festival of New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto), and twice in both the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival (Winnipeg). Stephanie has also done composition and sound design for theatre, most notably I’m Not Here (SummerWorks Performance Festival in Toronto) and Zoom-Boom-Boom, co-created with writer Alexis Diamond and commissioned and co-produced by les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada. This latter work, a 35-minute theatrical concert introducing very young audiences to electroacoustic music, was performed at Place des Arts (Montreal), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa) and multiple times throughout the Montreal region from 2019-2023.
In recent years, Stephanie has turned her focus uniquely to electroacoustic music composition and the creation of a pop-style concept album of acousmatic music, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work with Andrew Yankiwski of Precursor Productions, mastering engineer of the album, dates back to 2017 and a Quebec-Manitoba residency grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. He has been a consultant on the album throughout the creation process and once the stereo version is finalized, they plan on creating a separate Dolby Atmos immersive audio mix of the album in summer 2025.
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Program
This concert is a preview of five acousmatic pieces comprising a pop-style concept album to be released later in 2025. Inspired in part by Bernard Parmegiani’s seminal acousmatic work De Natura Sonorum (1975) and in part by techniques translated from avant-garde cuisine, this project was created with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
1) Are You Ready? / Changing Texture and Function (16:00)
Influenced by notions of turning watermelon into tuna, sour into sweet and cheese into foam, this track features musical textures morphing from one to another (e.g. metallic into airy) and sound materials transforming function (i.e. pitch into rhythm, non-pitched into pitched) in varying layers of density. Sound sources include many non-musical instruments, some musical instruments, environmental soundscape and synthesis.
2) WaiMoRightTheforMentting / Dematerializing (6:00)
The entirety of the source material for this piece is taken from the archival recording of a reading of a chamber orchestra piece of mine from many years ago: Waiting for the Right Moment. Originally a piece commissioned for string quintet in 2008, I created a chamber orchestra arrangement of it in 2009. This recording had been in my personal archives for some years, ripe to be “dematerialized”, chopped up, manipulated into something new. I took some inspiration from avant-gardist chef Homaro Cantu’s procedure of transforming sushi into a picture of sushi printed on edible paper that tastes like sushi… I have a dream that one day, the two versions (orchestral and acousmatic) and will be performed live back-to-back.
3) Replicating (12:00)
Replicating happening as an imitation game between left and right in a stereo sound field and also as successive translations of the initial food-related sound sequence (using, for example, percussion instruments, synthesis and software instruments). Like the game of telephone, certain original features or meaning may get lost along the way and the question of how close we end up to where we started might be up to individual interpretation. In my view, we end up somewhere both very similar and very different to where we started…
A culinary example of replicating is the phenomenon of “mock desserts” in post-war Britain: e.g. apricot flan replicated using a carrot and plum filling with a mashed potato pie crust.
4) Reconfiguring (7:00)
This piece explores the tension between a continuous line and interruptions, as a soloist analog synthesizer background competes with an active fragmented foreground. This foreground consists of a panoply of short snippets from an archival recording of my chamber orchestra piece Waiting for the Right Moment, which are progressively processed and reconstituted using a heterogeneous collection of samples. Chef Homaro Cantu talks about “note-by-note” cooking, which uses pure compounds instead of composite materials and this way of repurposing and reconfiguring my orchestral material seemed analogous to it.
5) Simulating, Parts I and II (7:30)
In my work with recorded sound, I have always been drawn to what I think of as “soundalikes”: recordings of a sound that upon listening, and not knowing what the original sound source was, could easily pass for something else. For example, a piece of paper brought towards and away from an electric fan, reminiscent in timbre and pitch contour of a small aircraft. Foley design in cinema often relies on this kind of perceptual ambiguity. An illusion cake would be analogous in avant-garde cooking, for example an Adidas leather handbag made out of cake…
This piece makes use of a collection of recorded sounds that are all ambiguous to my ear - sounding both what they really are also like something else. I have montaged these sounds to tell a story, in two consecutive parts, using these imaginary sound origins.
Crédit photo : Olivia McGilchrist
Akousma Festival
21st edition : October 22 > 24, 2025 / Montreal
We look forward to seeing you for the 2025 edition of the Akousma festival, October 22 > 24.
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October 16, 2024
Day 1 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
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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.
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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.
Website | ︎ | ︎
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.
January 23rd 2024
ELECTROCHOC NO. 3
Léa Boudreau + Simon Chioini
7:30pm Conference / 8pm ConcertIn collaboration with the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal
4750, Av. Henri-Juilien
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Léa Boudreau
Léa Boudreau (b. 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal who works with electronics, sounds and places. Her work questions interspecies relationships by considering nonhuman existences (nonhuman animal life, artificial life, the non-living, etc.) as ground for reflections on hierarchies dividing our world. She works following a DIY approach (do it yourself) favouring knowledge sharing and a critique of consumerism.Site Web | ︎
Crédit photo : Dania Rioux
Simon Chioini
is an artist-researcher and composer. His research-creation work integrates sound composition with an interdisciplinary theoretical approach. He is currently a PhD student in composition and sound creation at the Université de Montréal, where his research explores the relationships between sound, the environment, and social dynamics. Inspired primarily by philosophy and anthropology, his work seeks to broaden the understanding of sound composition through ecological and relational perspectives. In the context of the current climate crisis, Chioini's practice challenges the traditional opposition between nature and culture by exploring how sound art can serve as a tool to mediate and transform these relationships. His methodology combines theoretical research with site-specific creative practices, often incorporating performative and participatory elements. Outside of academia, he pursues his electronic and experimental music projects under the name S. Chioini and with the Humidex collective.Site Web | ︎ | ︎ | ︎
Crédit : Ilyaa Ghafouri
Program
Bruit de front (premiere) 45’00
is a site-specific installation and performative work that explores and adapts to the specific location in which it is presented. It examines the material, environmental and social particularities of the place using electronic and sonic DIY devices. Amplifying and highlighting a variety of noises and sounds that are often inaudible to humans or easily unnoticed, the project highlights the unique and lively character of each place through attention to detail and active listening.
Bruit de front (premiere) 45’00
is a site-specific installation and performative work that explores and adapts to the specific location in which it is presented. It examines the material, environmental and social particularities of the place using electronic and sonic DIY devices. Amplifying and highlighting a variety of noises and sounds that are often inaudible to humans or easily unnoticed, the project highlights the unique and lively character of each place through attention to detail and active listening.
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
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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...)
Akousma@
The Akousma@ series encompasses our different partnerships, our one-off co-presented concerts, and the ad hoc programs that we put together at the invitation of other organizations.
If you can’t come to Akousma, Akousma will come to you!Akousma@Mutek — Akousma@Empac — Akousma@FMC — Akousma@Eastern Bloc —Akousma@Griffintown —
Akousma@CIRMMT —Akousma@SAT —Akousma@Suoni —Akousma@MTL-Connecte —Akousma@CMM —
March 10th 2025
Architectures sonores immatérielles et autres invisibilités résonantes
Concert 19h30Maison de la culture Marcel-Robidas, Longueuil
Production of Conseil des arts de Longueuil
Codiffusion with Le Vivier
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Martin Bédard
Martin Bédard received a prize with great distinction from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and a doctorate in electroacoustic composition from the Université de Montréal.His works have been presented at over seventy national and international events. He has been a prizewinner or finalist in fourteen international competitions. He was awarded a Prix de Distinction (award of dictinctions) at the 2010 Ars electronica competition (Linz, Austria).
In addition to his activities as a composer, he teaches auditory perception, composition and analysis of electroacoustic music at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, as well as electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal.
Cinema remains a major source of inspiration for his acousmatic pieces.
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Program
Champs de fouilles (2008) 10’40”
My piece Champs de fouilles pays tribute to the singular history and personality of the city of Québec. With this work, I wanted to further explore the cohabitation of electroacoustic media and what I call phonoculture, or the audio heritage of a specific community or area.
This piece focuses on referential sounds, sounds that can be recognized, sounds rooted in reality. I have worked on them in the studio to transcend their anecdotal nature and turn them into materials conducive to the appearance of something musical. These sounds served as symbols, metaphors, clues, which means that a narrative-based conception of the sonic phenomena underpinned my approach. Also cohabiting in this piece are non-referential sonic materials obtained by slicings or treatments meant to either shape the soundwriting into phrasing, act as signals, or play a totally abstract part.
The title Champs de fouilles alludes to the archeological digs that were under way in the city while I was making the piece.
Honey (Architectures from silence no.1) 17’26”
To MH and Lili...
The very nature of honey is for me an inspiring natural model, in life and especially in the realization of this work. Honey is the result of a long transformation. Honey, instead of being secreted spontaneously, results from a long process of metamorphoses which begins with quasi-volatile materials (pollen, nectar) that evolve in a continuous densification process to produce a rich, dense texture, up to crystallization. Bees collect, unify, transfigure and transfuse: they make possible the passage from pollen to honey, that is to say they take a powder—dispersion without order — and turn it into a structured and unified liquid. The symbolism of honey is associated with transformation and synthesis. Honey also represents a time of harvest and abundance.
Marie-Hélène Breault
Marie-Hélène Breault specializes in 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. She has distinguished herself through her participation in the premiere performances of several works by Canadian composers, and her collaborations with theatre and dance artists. She frequently performed with the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+) and the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ). The winner of numerous awards, she frequently receives grants for her projects from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). Marie-Hélène Breault teaches flute at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).Website | ︎
Program
Replica (2012-2013) 14’42”
Marie-Hélène Breault and Martin Bédard
To Suzanne
The Replica project is inspired by the existential opposition between continuity and transformation as comprised in the sentence “Eadem mutata resurgo,” or “I am reborned changed as identical.” The work is built mostly from flute sounds, mainly old recordings of the performer and new materials generated during a first instrumental writing. The replica of these materials in a second writing on support creates various sceneries in which are interpreted on one hand the instrument and its expressive potential and on the other hand the performer and her history.
In Replica, the dichotomic relation between continuity and transformation is made of 4 compositional modalities: contrast between pure instrumental sound and re-built sound; creation of new material on the basis of old recordings; progressive transformation of motives and sound objects based on repetition; and duplication of the instrumental by the electro. On the road towards instrumental utopia, the project took the form of an acousmatic work.
Credit : Danielle Giguère (2014)
Antoine Lussier
Antoine Lussier has been passionate about music and recording since a young age. A guitarist and composer, he has spent several years touring internationally with his band Ion Dissonance, as well as with pop, rock, hip-hop, classical, blues, and gypsy ensembles. Thanks to his significant contributions to the international scene with Ion Dissonance, Antoine has been endorsed by numerous award-winning companies such as Ibanez, Mesa Boogie, Peavey, Vader, and Dickies Clothing. Currently, as a sound engineer and producer, he excels in both production and teaching. He explores acoustic composition with passion and works in various sectors of music and image, including sound design for short films and music and sound creation oriented towards video games. Holding a bachelor's degree in digital music from the University of Montreal, Antoine is pursuing graduate studies in research-creation at the same institution. His dedication to research is evident in his desire to deepen the functions of an instrument essential to his career: the recording studio.︎
Program
Choose Wwisely [Performance] (2025) 11’21”
This study was carried out as part of my master's research. The aim of this piece is to explore the creative possibilities of the Wwise audio integration engine in order to build an experimental musical performance. The sound materials used consist of synthesized sounds and sound recordings that I first processed in my digital audio station, then implemented in Wwise to create a structure for the piece. It soon became apparent that not only was it easy to inscribe these sounds in a certain temporality using Wwise, but that it was also possible to create new materials that could be used within the machine itself.
Louis Dufort
The music of Montréal composer Louis Dufort ranges from a cathartic form of expressionism mostly found in his early works to organicism focusing on the inner structure of sound matter in his latest works.Although he first developed his style through electroacoustic music, he quickly delved into mixed music and multimedia music, which drew attention from a number of extremely diverse Montréal-based organizations, such as the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+), the Quasar saxophone quartet and Quatuor Bozzini, the Ensemble de flûtes Alizé, Réseaux, the Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du Québec (ACREQ), and Chants libres, for whom he wrote the music of the opera L’Archange in 2005 (repeat performances in 2008).
In 2007, Dufort received commissions from Société Radio-Canada (SRC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for a video remix and an acousmatic remix on Glenn Gould, for the famous pianist’s 75th birthday.
Dance collaborations are also an important part of Louis Dufort’s work, mainly collaborations with the dance company Compagnie Marie Chouinard, with whom he has been working regularly since 1996.
Dufort’s international profile has been increasing since the early 2000’s. In 2001, he received a mention from Prix Ars Electronica (Austria). In 2005, he collaborated with the German Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) and, two years later, the Recombinant Media Labs (RML) in San Fransisco. Some of Marie Chouinard’s projects have also been acclaimed abroad, including Body_Remix, premiered at the Venice Biennial in 2005.
Louis Dufort is also a member of the artistic committee of the Élektra festival and SMCQ, and he teaches at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal.
•• In February 2018 he was awarded the Prix Opus 2016-17: Artistic Director of the Year for his role in the Akousma 13 festival.
Website | ︎ | ︎
Program
Monts Valin (20) 11’37”
Based on field recordings, this piece is inspired by a collection of meaningful moments experienced during my many hikes on Monts Valin, located in Saguenay. These moments present a wide range of states of consciousness, from pure enjoyment to heady excitement, all underpinned by the holistic beauty and complexity of nature. What also fascinates me is that regardless of my state of consciousness, the forest remains sovereign. It is there, neutral and abstract, exposing its beauty through its light, colors, textures, movements, and sounds. Consequently, the forest becomes music.
Monts Valin was composed on the octophonic system of the Chicoutimi Musical Experimentation Center during a residency and mentoring activity (Achicoutimatique) and premiered at the same place on August 12, 2021. Since then, the work has been reworked and spatialized for 16 speakers specially made for Akousma.
Credit : Valérian Mazataud (2018)
Pauline Patie
Pauline Patie is a French multimedia artist and electroacoustic composer based in Montreal. Recently graduating with a master's degree from the Department of Digital Music at the University of Montreal, she specializes in audiovisual performance and the design of compositional systems exploring the dynamic interactions between sound and image.
Her work has been widely acclaimed throughout her career. She received the prestigious Marcelle-Deschênes Prize from the University of Montreal in 2021 and earned honorable mentions in international electroacoustic music competitions in 2022, including MusicaNova in the Czech Republic and the Destellos Foundation in Argentina. She also won first prize in the acousmatic category at the MA/IN 2022 competition in Italy and was a finalist for the Russolo Prize 2023. Her works have also been featured by the London-based label RMN Classical.
Alongside her artistic activities, Pauline is a teaching assistant in acoustic and electroacoustic composition, sharing her passion and knowledge with emerging artists. She also holds the position of Vice-President of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC), where she is actively involved in breaking down barriers and promoting the electroacoustic scene.
Drawn to the exploration of trance states, Pauline creates works that blend discomfort and tranquility, integrating the laws of physics into her compositional systems. She questions the subtle and mysterious reactions of the body to sound immersion and how this experience influences the perceptual habits of listeners.
Her work has been widely acclaimed throughout her career. She received the prestigious Marcelle-Deschênes Prize from the University of Montreal in 2021 and earned honorable mentions in international electroacoustic music competitions in 2022, including MusicaNova in the Czech Republic and the Destellos Foundation in Argentina. She also won first prize in the acousmatic category at the MA/IN 2022 competition in Italy and was a finalist for the Russolo Prize 2023. Her works have also been featured by the London-based label RMN Classical.
Alongside her artistic activities, Pauline is a teaching assistant in acoustic and electroacoustic composition, sharing her passion and knowledge with emerging artists. She also holds the position of Vice-President of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC), where she is actively involved in breaking down barriers and promoting the electroacoustic scene.
Drawn to the exploration of trance states, Pauline creates works that blend discomfort and tranquility, integrating the laws of physics into her compositional systems. She questions the subtle and mysterious reactions of the body to sound immersion and how this experience influences the perceptual habits of listeners.
Program
Surtitré (20) 10’17”
“Silence contains all truths; speech carries all lies.”
- Jacques Ferron
Ally or traitor, language musicalizes the richness of thought. How many ways are there for language to say the same thing? How many words are needed to say nothing? Is the word only capable in its song of offering freedom to our thought? I've expressed this idea through the contraction and relaxation of sound: a formal representation of the articulation of words, struggling with the meanders of thought.
Credit : Maxime Patie
Akousma Remix
Four videos featuring performances from different concerts,
recorded during the Akousma 17.
Scroll down to watch our remixes, which
will be published over the summer and fall of 2022. Huge thanks to La Conserve Média for recording and editing.
This project was made possible thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Now initiative.
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Remix_01
Akousma Remix_01 from AKOUSMA on Vimeo.
In this remix
Marcelle Deschênes
Kevin Austin
Chantal Dumas
Véro Marengère & Alain Lefebvre
Frédéric Auger
Anne-F Jacques
Louis Dufort
Jesse Osborne-Lanthier
Remix_02
Akousma Remix_02 from AKOUSMA on Vimeo.
In this remix
Félix-Antoine
Morin
Martín Rodríguez
Mélanie Frisoli
Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux
France Jobin
Sarah Feldman
Xavier Madore
Dominic Jasmin
Gilles Gobeil
Remix_03
Akousma Remix_03 from AKOUSMA on Vimeo.
In this remix
Hugo Tremblay
Jean-François Blouin
Claude Périard
Rouzbeh Shadpey
Gisèle Ricard
Blablatrains
Pauline Patie
Robert Normandeau
Gilles Gobeil
Remix_04
Akousma Remix_04 from AKOUSMA on Vimeo.
In this remix
Érick d’Orion
Pablo Geeraert & Joseph Sims
Stéphane Roy
Roger Tellier-Craig
Erin Gee
Jean-François Denis
Léa Boudreau
Christophe Lengelé
Robert Normandeau
About
Scroll down for more on the many faces of Akousma
History, mission and aknowledgementsAwards ︎Major events
The organization ︎ The team
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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...)
The organization
UNIQUE IN CANADA
AKOUSMA is the leading presenter of electroacoustic music not only in Quebec, but also in Canada. Quebec composers are widely recognized for their success in major international competitions, and if we can speak of a “Montréal school” of electroacoustic music, this is because there is a concert production company like Akousma to showcase its work.
AKOUSMA is highly active in Montréal’s creative and experimental music scene and frequently collaborates with other organizations in the same vein. Over the years, we have presented works in partnership with Artengine (Ottawa), SMCQ, Orgue et couleurs, NEM, Avatar, FIMAV, Machines, Recto-Verso, Eastern Bloc, Codes d’accès, and Le Vivier, alongside collaborations with Radio-Canada, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, ACREQ, and others.
AKOUSMA also works actively for the future of creative and experimental music in Montréal through Le Vivier, a coalition of nearly 50 organizations working in the new music sector, whose main goal is to establish a site for performance and creation at the heart of Montréal. Since 1997, Akousma has commissioned 54 works, of which the list can be found here.
DIGITAL MUSIC OF ALL KINDS
Following on from the Rien à voir concert series (1997–2004), which was entirely dedicated to acousmatic music, the Akousma festival was launched in 2005 to showcase the wider spectrum of electroacoustic music—from musique concrète to visual music, mixed music, and live performance.
To this end, the concert production company adds more names to its list of partnerships each year, allowing it to hold concerts across Montréal (at Eastern Bloc, the SAT, Le Vivier, and Suoni) as well as extending its action further afield (to Victoriaville, Joliette, Gatineau, Quebec City, Ottawa, and Troy [NY]). The diverse range of venues in which Akousma holds its concerts reflects the multitude of paths that electroacoustic music has taken since Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète first encountered Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic music. In the decades between their era and our own, computer technology has mutated to democratize the means of production; as a result, what was once the music of the future has gradually become part of our day-to-day landscape. Today, while university music departments provide the opportunity to learn and master the intricate parameters of sound, many sound artists achieve their expertise via the self-directed and self-taught route.
For this very reason, and while embracing the full range of practices within the genre, Akousma also works hard to promote young local and international artists alongside the veterans and pioneers who paved the way in Quebec and worldwide. And, in his ten years as artistic director, Louis Dufort has built up an impressive list of invitees:
︎ 2011-2012, AKOUSMA 8 : Marc Behrens (DE), Robert
Hampson (GB), France Jobin (QC), Pierre-Yves Macé (FR), Stephan Mathieu (DE), Hélène
Prévost (QC), Roger Tellier-Craig (QC), Horacio Vaggione (FR/AR)
︎ 2012-2013, AKOUSMA 9 : Monty Adkins (GB), Manuella
Blackburn (GB), Maxime Corbeil-Perron (QC), Francisco Lopez (ES), Martin Marier
(QC), Daniel Menche (US), Minibloc (QC), Émilie Payeur (QC), Paulina Sundin
(SE), Martin Tétreault + Quatuor de tourne-disques (QC), Pierre Alexandre
Tremblay (QC), Keith F. Whitman (US)
︎ 2013-2014,
AKOUSMA X : David Arango-Valencia (QC),
François Bayle (FR), Martin Bédard (QC), Simon
Chioini (QC),
Brunhild Ferrari (FR), FÜNF (QC), Monique Jean (QC), Loscil (CA), Adrian Moore (GB), Matthew Schoen (QC), Nick
Storring (CA), Ben Vida (US)
︎ 2014-2015,
AKOUSMA XI : Adam Basanta (QC),
David Berezan (CA/GB), Myriam Bleau (QC), Olivia
Block (US), Christian Bouchard (QC), Guillaume Cliche (QC), Mark Fell (GB), Gilles Gobeil (QC), Hanna Hartman (SE), Rene Hell (US), Jullian Hoff (QC), Line
Katcho (QC), Pierre-Luc
Lecours (QC), Seth
Nehil (US), Robert Normandeau (QC), James O'Callaghan (QC), Jean Piché (QC), Sylvain Pohu (QC), Laurie Radford (CA), Jana Winderen (NOR)
︎ 2015-2016, AKOUSMA 12 : Thomas Ankersmit
(NL), Martin Bédard (QC), Nicolas Bernier (QC), Marie-Hélène Breault (QC), John Chantler (AU), George Forget (QC), Golden
Retriever (US), Jane/Kin (QC), Xavier Madore (QC), Martin Messier (QC), Fernando Murillo (MX), Junya Oikawa (US), Jesse Osborne-Lanthier (QC), John
Rea (QC), Scant
Intone (CA), Dominic Thibault (QC), Benjamin Thigpen (US), Valerio Tricoli (IT), Roxanne Turcotte (QC)
︎ 2016-2017,
AKOUSMA 13 : Antwood
(CA), Myriam
Boucher (QC), Richard
Chartier (NL), Simon Chioini (QC), Michel Chion (FR), Concordia Laptop Orchestra (QC), Noah Creshevky
(US), David Cronkite (QC), Paul
Dolden (QC), Vincent
Fliniaux (QC), Gilles
Gobeil (QC), Joël
Lavoie (QC), Lucas
Paris (QC), Pipo
Pierre-Louis (QC), Pita (GB), Andrea Parkins (US), Colby Richardson (CA), Adam
Stanovic (GB), Hans Tutshku (DE), Jon Vaughn (CA)
︎ 2017-2018, AKOUSMA 14 : Oren Ambarchi (AU),
Elizabeth Anderson (US/BE), Natasha Barrett (GB/NO), Rashad Becker (DE),
Nicolas Bernier (QC), Falaises (QC), Fousek/Hansen/Tellier-Craig (QC), GMACKRR
(QC), Terri Hron (CA), France Jobin (QC), Estelle Lemire (QC), Magnitude6 (QC),
Félix-Antoine Morin (QC), Tristan Perich (US), Nadia Ratsimandresy (FR),
Patrick Saint-Denis (QC), Chris Strickland (QC), Nicolas Thirion (FR), Hildegard
Westerkamp (CA), Horacio Vaggione (ARG/FR), Byron Westbrook (US)
︎ 2018-2019,
AKOUSMA 15 : Befaco (ES), Mathieu
Bezkorowajny (QC), Rose Bolton (CA), Georges Forget (QC), Vincent Gagnon (QC),
Nashim Gargari (MX/QC), Ilya Ghafouri (QC), Giant Claw (US), Monique Jean (QC),
L'ensemble d'oscillateurs (QC), Markus Mehr (DE), Cendrine Robelin (FR), SPIEL
(QC),Tempo Reale (IT), Philippe Vandal (QC), Franck Vigroux (FR)
︎ 2019-2020, AKOUSMA 16 : François Bonnet,
alias Kassel Jaeger (FR), Christian Bouchard (QC), Collectif Cégep St-Laurent
(QC), Richard Devine (US), Nicolas Giannini (QC), Dominic Jasmin (QC), Monique
Jean (QC), Panayiotis Kokoras (GR), Philippe Leroux (FR/CA), Bérangère Maximin
(FR), Lise-Lotte Norelius (SE), Ryu Yoshizawa, alias koeosaeme (JP)
Akousma Festival
19th edition : October 18 > 20, 2023 / Montreal
We look forward to seeing you for the 2023 edition of the Akousma festival, from October 18 to 20.
Suscribe to our newsletter so you won’t miss anything about the 2023-2024 program !
The year 2023 is that of the 75th anniversary of musique concrète, an event that we will celebrate during the Musique Concrète Days, as a prelude to the festival (September 21 > October 13).
The festival will continue on October 21 with the first concert of our CAM Tour, which presents a double bill with Line Katcho and blablaTrains, and on October 22 at Eastern Bloc with the last concert of the mini-tour that bring our friends from Tempo Reale in Quebec.
TICKETS
USINE C
TICKET FOR 1 CONCERT (October 18, 19 or 20)
- In advance 25,00 $ / 18,00$ (until opening night)
- Regular 30,00 $
- Students 20,00 $
PASSPORT 3 NIGHTS (October 18, 19 or 20)
- In advance 50,00 / 36,00$ (until opening night)
- Regular 60,00 $
- Students 40,00 $
October 18, 2023
Day 1 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
1st prize of the 2023 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.
Julie Delisle (ca)
Julie Delisle is a composer, multidisciplinary researcher specializing in audio technologies and a flautist. She graduated from the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, holds a doctorate in musicology (PhD) from the University of Montreal and is a former postdoctoral fellow at the Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory (McGill University). Her music is colored by her research into instrumental timbre and her interest in sound design, Chinese martial arts and mathematics.
Program
Pipa Aura Suichi (2023) 11’03”
Pipa aura Suichi was entirely composed with sounds coming from the instrumentarium of Jean-François Laporte (Productions Totem Contemporain). It appeared to me that the materials chosen, thanks to their articulatory possibilities, often behaved in such a way as to cause chain reactions. The sounds, taken outside their instrumental context in a sort of schizophonia, also obey a particular temporality which unfolds over the triggers, attacks, resonances and propulsions, like the incredible machines of the Japanese show Pitagora Suichi.
Photo: La Conserve Média / Codes d’accès
Francis Dhomont (fr)
An ardent exegete of the acousmatic modality, his work has, since 1963, consisted exclusively of pieces on support which testify to a constant interest in morphological writing and for the ambiguities between sound and the image that it can arouse.
Mega-Hertz Grand Prix 2013 (Germany), Doctor Honoris causa from the University of Montreal. SACEM 2007 Prize for best contemporary electroacoustic creation. Career scholarship from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2000).
He has received numerous distinctions for his works, including, in 1999, five first international prizes for four of his works. Recipient in 1997 of the Lynch-Staunton Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, 1st Prize (1981) and “Magisterium” Prize (1988) at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Ars Electronica Prize 1992 (Austria), etc. .
From 1978 to 2004, he shared his activities between France and Quebec, where he taught at the University of Montreal from 1980 to 1996. He now lives in Avignon (France) and devotes himself to composition and theoretical reflection.
The very first concert presented by Réseaux des arts médiatiques (Akousma) was given on Saturday, November 2, 1991, at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur, in Montreal. It was a concert by Francis Dhomont, who was celebrating his 65th birthday at the time.
His work on electrocd
Program
SOMME TOUTE (2022) 14’30”
spatialized by Louis Dufort
To Annette Vande Gorne
Looking/listening to a journey spanning more than fifty years and more than ninety opuses. Reminder, nostalgic assessment, synthesis, outcome perhaps.
This free abstraction, introduced by my latest writing choices, is the testimony of a long journey over the successive discoveries which constitute my contribution to the rich acousmatic repertoire. It also alludes to eighteen of my milestone works, temporal testimonies which could summarize the evolution of my thought and my language. FD
Commissioned by Musiques & Recherches and composed in the composer's studio in Avignon (France).
Mourad Bncr (ca)
Multimedia artist based in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang (Montreal). Mourad Bncr's sound and visual work is inspired by the concept of ephemeral memory. His creations infused with beat music leave a lot of room for texture and detail, establishing links between his North African cultural heritage, universes imbued with science fiction and a fascination with technological obsolescence. Over the years, he has led a prolific professional career as a trainer and sound designer specializing in the creation of immersive environments, spatialized audio and mixed reality, with recurring collaborators such as French artist Pierre Friquet or again the Nature Graphique and Iregular studios. Combining real sound recording, instrumentation, sound synthesis and microsampling techniques, his musical language appropriates the notion of space in a unique way and comes close to cinematic composition. He wrote the music for several films, collaborating on the work of directors such as Nicolas Lachapelle, Ariel St-Louis Lamoureux, Florian Delafournière and Kibwe Tavares. After several musical releases under the alias Famelik, a project between electronica and abstract-hip hop which has occupied him since 2007, his musical project assumes several different trajectories, giving rise to different aliases including [indistinct voices over PA], a project encapsulating the most abstract aspects of his creations. His EP UNREST, released by Unlog in 2021, is intended to be a synthesis of this journey, an assumed transition towards a new musical color.
Website
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Program
The World After Us (2020-23) 19’33’’
The world after us; the part of us we leave behind in the places we pass through.
Between hauntology and fragments of synthetic sound memory, this triptych continues the work of the piece UNREST, released in 2021 by Unlog under the project [indistinct voices over PA]. Meditative, sometimes abrasive, these three images aim to be both immaterial and inhabited, confronting our relationship with space, imaginary places haunted by our collective past and future unconscious.
This collection takes its name from the filmmaker Nicolas Lachapelle's eponymous film released in 2020, a creative documentary and cinematic reflection on the spirit of places, for which Mourad composed the soundtrack. The two artists also collaborated on the short film Zug Island (2022).
Guillaume Côté (ca)
Through a blend of concrete, synthetic and vocal materials, sound artist Guillaume Côté explores the territorial, linguistic and social dynamics specific to Quebec.
His eclectic artistic research is based not only on the encounter with the Other through a musical discourse with narrative or informative aims, but also on the abstraction induced by modular systems.
An avid collaborator, he is co-founder of the audio-digital creation company Trames, of Falaises and Aubes collective, as well as holding the position of technical-artistic support at Avatar center in Quebec City, Canada.
Discrete Stream of Light, released in 2023, is his first solo release.
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Program
Discrete Stream of Light (2022) 20’
Arpeggiated patterns, hypnotic repetitions, all within reach of a discrete stream of light.
A 20-minute work containing 4 distinct movements. Originally recorded in real time, with no subsequent modifications, the version presented at Akousma takes up the same principle of spontaneity, with everything played in real time.
Photo: Sarah Seené
October 18, 2023
Day 1 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Get Tickets!
Roxanne Lacasse (ca)
Roxanne Melissa Guerra-Lacasse, born on a Wednesday, March 30, 1994, is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Quebec, near the Metropolis, navigating between two cultures: Quebecois and Mexican. Throughout her journey, the arts have been at the core of her career. She pursued studies in theater at Laval University and electroacoustic composition at the Montreal Conservatory of Music. The theme of love has been a significant source of inspiration for her, serving as a driving force behind her creative endeavors.
Following her studies, she dedicated herself to her non-profit organization, Angle Psy, which she co-founded with the aim of raising awareness among young people on topics related to mental health and rape culture. Her non-profit organization has garnered numerous awards and distinctions in the realm of entrepreneurship.
Simultaneously, she continues to work on her musical projects, striving to enhance her overall artistic body of work.
Programme
La Berceuse de la veuve (2020-23) 10’15”
«La Berceuse de la Veuve» originated from a theatrical piece I had written as part of my dramatic writing course during my Bachelor's degree in theater at Laval University. The basic concept revolved around the quest for Eternal Love. To achieve this, the portrayal of my secondary characters drew inspiration from the characteristics of stones that I personally associated with history, while my protagonist was inspired by music, which, for me, is connected to the vibrational fields existing in all forms.
After completing the writing, I translated my piece into Spanish to stage it in Costa Rica as part of my "Proyecto Final" course. I conducted several workshops on sound research with my actors, but I felt that there was a missing dimension to my work. After my stay in Costa Rica, I studied electroacoustic composition at the Conservatory to further develop my musical skills. During my second year, I composed music for this piece I had written, focusing my research on ritualistic music. I primarily expressed this composition using stones and minerals, as well as other materials I consider ritualistic, such as guitar strings, chimes, air, water, etc.
I wanted to take the work even further, so during a creative residency between Prim and Code d'accès, I worked on the spatialization of my piece to provide the audience with an additional dimension to the sonic experience. In this sense, my piece aims to be a multidimensional and sensory experience. I look forward to sharing the spatialization of the fruit of my efforts in this space with you.
Rocío Cano Valiño (ar)
Rocío CANO VALIÑO - born in Buenos Aires, Argentina – is a composer and interior designer. Rocío’s musical production is dedicated to instrumental, mixed and electroacoustic pieces. She is a member of the artistic committee of the Ensemble Orbis, which is based in Lyon and she co-founded. Rocío’s music was performed by ensembles such as: Proxima Centauri, HANATSU mirror, Paramirabo, Ensemble Orbis, Ensemble Ars Nova, Duo PARCOURS, among others...
Rocío is pursuing her Master’s in Contemporary Composition at the CNSMD in Lyon (France), where she studies with François Roux. She also takes lessons with Martín Matalon and Luca Antignani. She did an international mobility at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz (Austria) with Franck Bedrossian. Rocío obtained a DNSPM in composition at the CNSMDL in Lyon, a degree in musicology at the University Lumière Lyon 2, a Diploma of Musical Studies (DEM) in electroacoustic composition with Stéphane Borrel at the CRR in Lyon. In Argentina, she studied composition with Demian Rudel Rey.
She has received various commissions: Aide à l’écriture du Ministère de la Culture [FR]; France Musique “Création Mondiale”, residency at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) and premiered at the Festival Présences 2020 at the Maison de la Radio [FR]; Fondo Nacional de las Artes [AR]; Studio Césaré CNCM [FR]; Ibermúsicas [AR-Latin America]; Bahía[in]sonora Festival [AR]; SACEM [FR]; OARA [FR] …
Her works have received distinctions from: Destellos Foundation [AR], Musicworks [CA], TRINAC UNESCO [AR], Banc d'Essai GRM [FR], KLANG! [FR], Exhibitronic [FR], Rampazzi Prize [IT], Marcelle Deschênes Prize [CA], Métamorphoses [BE], TRIMARG [AR], Luigi Russolo Award [FR-ES], among others. Rocío’s compositions have been selected and performed in various festivals around the world.
In 2017, the label Resterecords released her first monographic album “Tâches”. Rocío's music is published by Babel Scores, Score Follower, Musiques & Recherches, Monochrome Vision, Taukay Edizioni Musicali and Phas.e. La Lettre du Musicien published her "Portrait double vie" written by Antoine Pecqueur in the "Architecture" edition in 2020.
Website
Program
Astérion (2018) 8’22”
Astérion is an acousmatic piece inspired by the story “The House of Asterion” by Borges. The story describes the life of the Minotaur named Asterion who lives in an immense palace (the Labyrinth) composed of such a tangle of rooms and corridors that it is impossible for anyone other than his architect (Daedalus) to find his path. This is his home and his prison, is finite and at the same time infinite. He spends his days playing, running through stone galleries and pretending to sleep. Every nine years, nine men enter his house so Asterion release them from their suffering. One of them prophesied, at the moment of his death, that one day his redeemer would arrive (Theseus).
The acousmatic work leads the auditor through the labyrinth. In the last part, the musical concentration is accentuated linking this moment to the confrontation of Theseus with the Minotaur. The sigh of the end represents the last breath of Asterion.
The piece was awarded at the Banc d'Essai 2018 GRM (France) and it received the Teresa Rampazzi Prize 2018 (Italy), the Exhibitronic Prize 2018 (France), a special mention at the Métamorphoses Competition 2018 (Belgium) and the First Prize Destellos Foundation 2019 (Argentina).
Okno (2020) 10’
Okno is an electroacoustic stereo piece inspired by the story "Okno, el esclavo" by the Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo. In the tale, the idea of the real and the fictitious is always present, at the uncertain border between dream and reality. It also describes the invention of the imagination... The story considers both identity and art as vectors of expression.
Through this musical piece, the idea of the imaginary is expressed by sounds that may have a connotation already determined in themselves - an imaginary sound is then constructed outside its original context. Moreover, in the work, there are recordings of machine devices (tape recorders,...) questioning the relationship between human beings and automation. It is about this limit, where the tool ceases to have an entity of its own to become an element integrated in us? The fact that I manipulated the machine, doesn't that make it a human behavior?
[...] El ruido cambió de ritmo [...] que puedo imaginar. No hay nada que imaginar. Todo está ahí, ante los ojos y el oído que escucha [...] Yo, en la semioscuridad del cuarto, adivino las formas que me rodean [...]
The work was commissioned by Radio France for the radio broadcast "Création Mondiale" and was realized at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris, France. The premiere of the piece was on February 14, 2020 at the Festival Présences at the Maison de la Radio (Paris).
Okno received the 1st prize of the Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest 2020, the Marcelle Deschênes Prize 2020 (Canada), the 2nd Prize of the International Electroacoustic Composition Competition Klang! 2021 (France) and an Honorable Mention from the Iannis Xenakis International Electroacoustic Composition Competition 2021 (Greece).
Sarah Belle Reid (ca)
Sarah Belle Reid is a performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer, and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electronic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical music, experimental and interactive electronics, visual arts, noise music, and improvisation. Often praised for her ability to transport audience members through vivid sonic adventures, Reid's sonic palette has been described as ranging from "graceful" and "danceable" all the way to "silk-falling-through-space," and "pit-full-of-centipedes" (San Francisco Classical Voice). Her debut album for trumpet and interactive electronics, "Underneath and Sonder," was released on pfMENTUM in October, 2019.
When watching Sarah Belle Reid perform live, one quickly notices that her trumpet is also unusual—the blinking lights and colorful wires attached to her horn are part of an electronic sensor-based interface she co-designed, called MIGSI. Reid was inspired to build MIGSI as a way of integrating her passion for technology, trumpet, and improvisation. She has been gaining international recognition for the work since it's initial development in 2015: “Reid has greatly extended the possibilities of the humble trumpet into new territory by the application of innovative sensing technology and sound processing.” (Sequenza 21). She frequently performs, leads workshops, and lectures at notable festivals, institutions, and conferences around the world, such as Moogfest, Stanford University, and the International Conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).
Reid's compositional practice draws influence from trumpeter-improviser Wadada Leo Smith (with whom she worked closely with while attending Calarts) and sound artist/electronic pioneer Pauline Oliveros, for their use of nontraditional notational practices and performance philosophies. In 2013–14, Sarah Belle Reid played trumpet in legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden's band while pursuing graduate studies at Calarts. Haden asked her to improvise on one of the songs, expressing that he didn't want to hear the "right" notes or chord changes. Instead, he said, "I want to hear your voice." Although simple on the surface, this moment deeply impacted Reid, inspiring her pursue her creative interests and curiosities without concern for whether they were the "right" choices, or how they would all fit together.
In Reid's improvisations and compositions, musical notation is often experimental and graphical—an invitation to explore a new sonic universe. This spirit for exploration has led her to collaborate with musicians and artists of all genres, including experimental electronic musician David Rosenboom, thereminist Carolina Eyck, and baroque-pop artist Julia Holter. Reid recorded trumpet and electronics on Holter's 2019 record Aviary, and recently wrapped up an extensive tour throughout North America, Europe, and Australia as a member of her band. Reid's own compositions have been premiered and performed by a number of renowned musicians, most recently pianist Vicki Ray and trumpeter Nate Wooley, and have received support and recognition from the Association of Canadian Women Composers and SOCAN. In 2017 her composition “Flux” for amplified percussion quartet won the Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Percussion Quartet’s Next Wave Composer Initiative.
Reid holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from California Institute of the Arts, with a research focus on the development of new electronic instruments and musical notation systems as interfaces for exploring temporal perception and co-creation. She also has a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts, as well as a Bachelor of Music in trumpet performance from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. Reid is on faculty at Chapman University (Orange, CA) teaching music technology, as well as Temple University (Philadelphia, PA), where she teaches Physical Computing and Electronic Instrument Design.
Website
Program Manifold (2023) 25’
Manifold is an investigation into temporal perception and memory—tiny moments that seem to persist indefinitely; hazy, fragmented narratives that degrade and slip away; forgotten rituals and cherished traditions.
This work— for trumpet, voice, live processing & interactive electronics—explores the collection, manipulation and distortion of moments in time through the use of feedback, looping, chaotic circuits, and granular processing in combination with experimental trumpet and vocal techniques.
The result is a constantly churning and shape-shifting sound world that is at once intimate, relentless, playful, and surreal—frenetic improvisation, melting melodies, and punctuated silence.
October 19, 2023
Day 2 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Diego Bermudez Chamberland (ca/cr)
Diego Bermudez Chamberland is a Latin-Quebec artist (Québécois/Costa Rican) who navigates several mediums related to sound and audiovisual creation such as composition, live musical performance, audiovisual performance and sound design.
His practice is inspired by his interest in exploring the mix of sound and visual materials. Collaboration is an essential aspect of his artistic practice. He sees it as a way to transcend his creative reflexes and thus take his works to new horizons.
He collaborates closely with Productions Totem Contemporain both in the creation of works for invented instruments, as well as for sound recording and the establishment of the Totem Électroacoustique competition. He also organizes the muramur concert series which leaves room for performative audiovisual exploration.
His works have been performed in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Australia and Mexico.
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Programme
Destin//Trouble (2021) 18’21”
Destin//Trouble is the second composition of an acousmatic work in three movements (Cartografía interior) drawing its inspiration mainly from Scandinavian mythology as told in Snorri Sturluson's collection: the Edda. It is important to emphasize that the work does not attempt to materialize this universe in a literal way, but rather offers a free and personal sound adaptation. A music was born that explores energy, continuous and fragmented temporality, multiple spaces through varied timbres and articulations rather than research focused on mimicry or the literal recreation of this universe.
The possible connections between some major themes of Scandinavian mythology (natural forces, infinite territories and dynamism) and the composition were explored during the creative process. These themes are transposed into the morphology of sounds, the formal approach to editing and the work of space. The sound materials at the heart of the work come from various experiments based on the hybridization of synthetic sounds, acoustic instruments, naturalistic sound recordings, as well as a series of transformations using digital audio processing.
Destin//Trouble took the third place (ex æquo) at the 2021 JTTP composition contest.
Nicola Ratti (it)
Nicola Ratti is a multifaceted musician and sound designer who has been active for years in various experimental felds. His sound production creates systems that take shape from repetition and expansion, with particular attention to the construction of environments that gravitate in relation to the space and architecture we live in and balancing the emotional and perceptual orientations we are used to.
Born in Milano in 1978, he has performed in Europe, North America, Russia and Japan and his albums have been released by different international labels since 2006. His longest collaborative project the duo Bellows, formed with Giuseppe Ielasi in 2007. As composer and sound designer his works cross different felds from theatre to cinema passing through performing arts, radio works and sound art.
He's a co-founder and member of Standards, an artist-run centre focused on sound and space, active in Milano since 2015. This is a short bio, visit his website for a deeper look on his production.
Website
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PROGRAM
so the year will be this one 20’
Live version of K1/K2 for modular synthesizer piano tape loops.
Crédit : Lucrezia Pegoraro
Tomoko Sauvage (jp)
Tomoko Sauvage (JP/FR) is a musician and sound artist who is best known for her long-time experimentation on instrument combining water, ceramics, sub-aquatic amplification and electronics. Her research is grounded in live-performance practices that embrace the unpredictable dynamics of materials. Incorporating ritualistic gestures, she playfully improvises with environments, using chance as a compositional method. Her performances and installations have been presented at RIBOCA, V&A Museum, Manifesta, Roskilde Festival, Sharjah Art Foundation, Centre Pompidou Metz and Nyege Nyege Festival, among others.
Sauvage’s performances have been presented internationally including RIBOCA (Riga), V&A Museum (London), Manifesta (Palermo, Marseille), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Roskilde Festival, Centre Pompidou Metz and Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda). Her installation piece has recently been exhibited at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE) and Galerie Chantal Crousel (Paris).
Her third solo album Fischgeist was recorded in a water tank in Berlin and published by bohemian drips in 2020. She lives and works in Paris since 2003.
Her work is supported by La Pommerie/ CRAFT (creation of the porcelain bowls, Limousin, France) and Aquarian Audio (Hydrophones, USA)
Website
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Waterbowls solo (improvisation) 30’
Born and raised in Yokohama, Japan, Sauvage moved to Paris in 2003 after studying jazz piano in New York. Through listening to Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley, she became interested in Indian music and studied improvisation of Hindustani music. In 2006, she attended a concert of Aanayampatti Ganesan, a virtuoso of Jalatharangam – the traditional Carnatic music instrument with water-filled porcelain bowls. Fascinated by the simplicity of its device and sonority, Sauvage immediately started to hit China bowls with chopsticks in her kitchen. Soon her desire of immersing herself in the water engendered the idea of using an underwater microphone and led to the birth of the electro-aquatic instrument.
Crédit : WOS Festival / Leo Lopez
October 19, 2023
Day 2 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Pierre-Luc Senécal (ca)
Master of Music (Université de Montréal, CA), Pierre-Luc Senécal built his artistic practice within the rich electroacoustic music field. Strongly inspired by rock, pop, and metal, he instills his electronic pieces with sensibility, lyricism and dashing passion. Listen to his music and you will discover dark depths and halos of luminous sounds. Hear the roar of its repertoire, complex and contrasted.
Amongst his notable achievements are the sound design for the famous Resident Evil 7: Biohazard video game and the founding of the dark, clamorous and attention-catching Growlers Choir. This unique vocal ensemble, exclusively made up of metal singers, was featured on America's Got Talent, one of the most famous TV shows in the world.
Program
Broken Voices (2023) 14’ - **premiere**
Broken Voices marks the first segment of a series exploring the theme of war. This haunting subject prompted extensive historicalresearch, which paradoxically heightened artistic inquiries. How does one depict in music the ravages of war? How to employ sound to convey the brutality of an armed conflict? How to make specific war trauma resonate universally? How to compose about an unexperienced reality? Broken Voices stands as my endeavour to address these questions.
The piece fuses elements from prior works, sounds of metallic objects, vintage vinyl songs, and crucially, voice samples. Processed with saturation and feedback, the voices echo within themselves, metaphorically symbolizing anguished cries muffled by cascades of noise.
I'm grateful to Marc Béland, Émilie Sigouin, Vincent Pascal, and Rose Naggar-Tremblay for their voices. Additionally, I extend my appreciation to Jonathan Littell, who generously granted permission for the incorporation of excerpts from his novel "The Kindly Ones." I co-created this piece in partnership with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, who provided invaluable assistance as a music producer, and Bernard Gariépy-Strobl, who expertly fulfilled the role of mixing engineer.
Crédit : Elias Touil
Marja Ahti (fi)
Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a Swedish-Finnish composer and sound artist based in Turku, Finland. Ahti works with field recordings and other acoustic sound material combined with synthesizers and electronic feedback in order to find the space where these sounds start to communicate. She makes music that rides on waves of slowly warping harmonies and mutating textures – rough edged, yet precise compositions, rich in detail.
Ahti has presented her music in many different contexts around Europe, in Japan and the United States. She is currently active in the duo Ahti & Ahti with her partner Niko-Matti Ahti and in the artist/organizer collective Himera.
Website
PROGRAM
Still Lives (2020-2023), 21’
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Untitled
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Dust / Light
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In Ictu Oculi
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Exosphere
For her Akousma concert Marja Ahti will perform a set fusing new material with unique realizations of recent pieces. Ahti's performances are often a continuation of the compositional process, in which new pieces grow like branches out of pre-existing structures.
Crédit : Laurent Orseau
Devon Hansen (us)
Devon Hansen is a musician and writer based in Montreal.
Having produced electronic music since age 12 and sharpened their compositional skills through Concordia University’s Electroacoustic Studies program, Hansen’s work has taken a wide range of forms — from hip-hop, techno, and ambient music to compositions for podcasts, installations, and interactive media, as well as multichannel acousmatic pieces. Their music has been released by a number of labels in North America, Europe, and Japan, and they have performed in small independent spaces and at larger festivals alike.
Most recently, Hansen has developed an approach to improvised performance that focuses on the hybrid use of modular synthesis and laptop, wherein the laptop serves as a live looper and processor for a single sound source. No patch notes or structures are determined in advance, and little to no rehearsal takes place, a method inspired by Hansen’s experience as part of the improvisation trio Fousek/Hansen/Tellier-Craig.
Hansen is currently working on a series of releases for their digital label Idioms. You can also follow their work on Instagram.
PROGRAM
Untitled Improvisation
"There is a state of mind that means being open to anything and trying to be extremely vulnerable to things. I try to know nothing, to be simple, curious, and open. And I try not to be clever. That’s the state of mind."— Laurie Anderson
Combining laptop and modular synthesizer, this improvisation makes use of a single synthesis voice to build layers via on-the-fly patching, live-looping, and processing. It begins from a basic initial patch and evolves through curious whims and impulsive decisions, leaning toward simplicity, restraint, and delicate detail.
October 20, 2023
Day 3 -
8pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Get Tickets!
Nicola Giannini (ca/it)
Nicola Giannini is an electroacoustic music composer based in Montreal. His practice focuses on immersive music, both acousmatic and live. His works have been presented in North America, South America and Europe. He received the first prize at the 2019 JTTP competition organized by the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and an honorable mention at the XII Fundación Destellos competition. He was also a finalist in the 2018 Città di Udine competition. Originally from Italy, he is a doctoral student under the supervision of Robert Normandeau at the Université de Montréal, where he is also a research assistant at the Groupe de recherche en immersion spatiale (GRIS) and a lecturer.
Program
Rebonds (2021) 13’
Rebonds is a playful piece that explores the boundaries between rhythm, pitch, texture, and space. The work is inspired by the rhythmic figure of the rebound, a recurrent figure in electroacoustic music, characterized by the repetition of an element at a progressively increasing speed. The goal is to create sound choreographies, exploring sound spatialization possibilities. The work was composed at the Université de Montréal and during a residency at the Sporobole art center in Sherbrooke.
In October 2022, the piece won the Micheline-Coulombe-Saint-Marcoux prize during the first edition of the AKOUSMAtique competition.
Photo : Louis Cummins
Bénédicte (ca)
Maxime Gordon is a Montreal based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sound and music. She has been releasing and writing experimental electronic music as Bénédicte since 2017. 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), the Spatial Sound Institute (Budapest), MONOM (Berlin), Eastern Bloc x Nuit Blanche (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
Halves, Shoals (2023) 15’50
World premiere
Photo : Sean Vadaru
Elias Merino (es)
Elías Merino is a composer, sonic artist and researcher based in Madrid. His practice includes installation, composition, and live performance. His work drifts from algorithmic abstract computer music, to contemporary unusual electronics, and instrumental music; and explores time-perspective shifting, fractured narratives, immersive contemplation, states of bewilderment, otherness, and the uncanny.
He is also interested in different approaches related with speculative futures and fiction, post-digital materiality, object-oriented composition, and Posthumanities. Combining his personal activity, he is involved in collaborative projects. Elías is one half of the audiovisual duo SYNSPECIES w/ Tadej Droljc and half of Grievous Bodily Harmonics w/ Rian Treanor.
His work has been exhibited across Japan, the US, UK, Spain, France, Czech Republic, South America, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Italy, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Portugal, Taiwan, Sweden, Poland, Finland or The Netherlands. He has performed in festivals and venues such Sónar Festival (Barcelona and Istambul) MUTEK (Montreal and Mexico), Philharmonie de Paris (NEMO Biennale), L.E.V. Festival, Semibreve, Cafe OTO, Lunchmeat Festival, HCMF (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival), Sonica Glasgow, MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art Romania, La Casa Encendida, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Matadero Madrid, or MNCARS to mention a few. His recorded albums have been released on different labels including Room40 or SUPERPANG among others.
Elías Merino holds a Masters Degree in sonic arts and PhD in composition at CeReNeM (Centre for Research in New Music).
Website
Program
Synthesis of Unlocated Affections: empathy distress (2023) 30’
#thingness #xenorepresentation #presence #brutalistmateriality #uncanny #defamiliarisation #postdigitalontology #noornamentation #elasticity #wrongsublime #unitary #disafection #partiallyconnectedessentiallyisolated #displacingtheemitter #selftransformation #unusualemergentqualities #othernes
October 20, 2023
Day 3 -
9pm
1345 Ave. Lalonde, Montréal, QC H2L 5A9
Get Tickets!
Evan Magoni / Gonima (us)
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.
Site web
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Program
Homeostasis (2023) 15’40
Création
Olivia Block (us)
Olivia Block is a media artist and composer. Currently, her practice includes live performance, recordings, audio-visual installations, sound design, and scores for orchestra and chamber music concerts.
Block’s studio pieces often combine field recordings, electronic sounds, electric organ, piano and long chamber music passages. She composes scores for ensemble, orchestra, pipe organ and piano. Her recordings are published on Another Timbre, Erstwhile, Glistening Examples, NNA Tapes, Room40, Sedimental, and Touch, among other labels.
Block performs using various techniques and instruments. She plays improvised and composed pieces on synth organ, laptop, analog synth, amplified objects, inside of grand piano and microphone, among other materials.
Block creates multi-channel diffusion concerts and site-specific, multi-channel sound installations. She recently completed a 14-channel sound installation featuring sounds from Harry Bertoia’s “Sonambient” sculptures for the Nasher Sculpture Gallery in Dallas, TX.
Block has performed, premiered and exhibited her work throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours in festivals and performance series including Incubate (Tilburg), MoogFest, Festival del Bosque Germinal (Mexico City), Sonic Light (Amsterdam), Redbull Academy, Kontraste (Krems), Dissonanze (Rome), Archipel (Geneva) and many others.
Block has created site specific sound installations for public spaces and exhibition spaces worldwide, including the including Arthur Ross Gallery at University of Pennsylvania, CEAM at Flagler University, MCA Chicago, Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Museo Reina Sofia, and University of Chicago, Manhattan Museum of Arts and Design, Sokolowsko Sanitorium (Poland), CONTEXT (Miami and NY), and The Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park (Chicago). She recently completed a 14- channel sound installation featuring sounds from Harry Bertoia’s “Sonambient” sculptures for the Nasher Sculpture Gallery in Dallas, TX. Her most recent album, Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea, is out on Room40.
Website
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Program
Breach (2022) 24’
Block’s new multichannel sound composition contains field recordings from various locations within the Laguna San Ignacio (San Ignacio lagoon) in the Baja, Mexico. Additionally, Block includes synthesized audio material in response to the field recordings. This composition places the listener in the lagoon from multiple points of view-underwater, on the shore, and inside of imaginary seascapes. The combination of field recordings and textures creates a subjective aural space rather than an objective representation of a location.
The sound collage is a framework through which we might imagine the experience of a listening whale. As we imagine ourselves listening, swimming and breathing we are often interrupted by the presence of anthropogenic noises. San Ignacio is the winter home to eastern Pacific gray whales (whose exhalation breaths at the surface water may be heard in some of the recordings). The lagoon is an UNESCO protected, pristine location for the whales to breed and feed. There are boats present in the waters, which have been captured in these recordings, presenting a loud din of noise underwater which covers the natural sounds.
Photo : Walter WlodarczykAho Ssan LIVE (fr)
Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to compose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film of Ingha Mago in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM inFrance. His debut LP «Simulacrum» was released on the 7th of February 2020 via Subtext Recordings.Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against my own experience of growing up black in France. Aho Ssan debuted “Simulacrum” at Berlin Atonal 2019.
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Program
The Falling Man (2021) / 24’08
Commissioned by INA grm as part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
The Falling Man is a piece in three parts, aiming to plunge the listener into the unknown. The title is a reference to the famous photo of Richard Drew, taken during the attack on the World Trade Center. Produced during the covid crisis, the piece attempts to make a link with the events that we have all been experiencing for over a year. Unlike the famous photo, the play attempts to have a much happier ending.
Photo : Romain Guédé ︎