David Eagle – As mountain winds *
Aventa Ensemble
Bill Linwood, conductor
Sunday, April 23rd, 2017 8:00PM
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall
David Eagle composes chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic music, and explores computer applications in composition and sonic arts. Active as a composer and interpreter of interactive works, he has developed various approaches focusing on sonic transformation through gesture. He is a Professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary and in 2013 he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Performances in Canada and abroad include the Turning Point Ensemble, Vancouver New Music, Trio Fibonacci, New Works Calgary, Land’s End Chamber Ensemble, accordionist Stefan Hussong, Sound Travels–New Adventures in Sound Art, New Music Concerts (Toronto), Musicacoustica in Beijing, Winnipeg New Music Festival, the Cantai Festival in Taipei, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe and most recently, at the Tessera Festival in Tokyo.
[Program note]
As mountain winds (2016) David Eagle
As mountain winds is an interactive composition for octet and computer with surround sound projection. Instrumental phrases are processed to create fluctuating and volatile sonic textures through filtering, granulating, delays, and transposing and harmonizing with just and microtonal intonation. In the performance a Kinect motion sensor tracks the composer/interpreter’s hand movements to expressively transform and extend the ensemble's passages. Standing at the mixer and computer in the midst of the audience, and performing with hand and arm gestures similar to conducting music, the movement, intensity and timbre of the sound is shaped and then projected through the surrounding loudspeakers.
As mountain winds was commissioned by the Aventa Ensemble with the support of the Canada Council. It was preceded by Two Forms of Intuition for the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and Unremembered Tongues for soprano Xin Wang and the New Music Concerts Ensemble, and completes a triptych of interactive ensemble works that use the Kinect sensor for sound spatialization.
