Berichte/Features

Woche 5-9 / 29.1.-4.3.07

Barry Schrader
EAM / 2006 / 49:26

01 Bachahama
02 Ground
03 Dance from the Outside
04 Still Life 1-5
05 Triptych

Triptych is, in part, an attempt to illustrate some of my own compositional theory, particularly my belief that, at any given moment, and, in most music for the entire piece, the most important information resides in one of the primary dimensions: pitch or rythm. Thus the first two sections of the piece deal, respectively, with pitch and rythm as the primary dimensions; both sections are constructed in the same general form, rondo-variations. The third section, which is not in any traditional form, is an attempt on my part to switch the listener's attention to a third possible primary dimensio: timbre. I don't believe that it's feasible to do this with instrumental music, but in electro-acoustic music what I refer to as timbral transformation can be constructed in a way that, perhaps, focuses the listener on what in this area of musical information. I attempt to do this here by repeating the pitch and the rythmic information, constructed in a traditional period structure (antedecent (A,B), consequent (A,C). Since the pitch and rythmic material keeps repeating, the quality of this information will decrease with each repetition brings about a change in the timbre of the material, which, over the course of the piece, moves from a fairly simple state to one of complex noise. That you can hear this happening, and that it follows in a straight line, creates, I believe, the possibility of the perception of timbre as a primary dimension since this is what you end up listening for; it's where the new information occurs. The piece ends with a brief coda recapitulating the theme.

Barry Schrader has been acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as a composer born to the electronic medium, named "a seminal composer of electro- acoustic music" by Journal SEAMUS, and described by Gramaphone as a composer of approachable electronic music with a distinctive individual voice to reward the adventurous. "There's a great sweep to Schrader's work that puts it more in line with ambitious large-scale electronic works by the likes of Stockhausen, a line that can be traced backwards to Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven." writes Dan Warburton of the Paris Transatlantic Magazine. His compositions for electronics, dance, film, video, mixed media, live/electro-acoustic music combinations, and real- time computer performance have been presented throughout the world. He has received recognition in the form of grants, awards, and commissions, from such organizations as the Groupe Musique ExpäRmentale de Bourges, Apple Computer, ASCAP, Yamaha, Meet the Composer, Los Angeles Film Forum, URBAN-15, The CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, Res Musica, Yellow Springs Institute and the Centre Internationale de Recherche Musicale, and has recently been awarded a Copland Grant through Innova Recordings. His works have been featured in numerous festivals including the Australian International Electronic Music Festival, Festival d'Automne a Paris, Tokyo Gakugei University Exhibition of Electronic Music, New Music Los Angeles, Musiques Actuelles Nice Coˆte d'Azur, the Darmstadt Festival, SynthŠŸ, the London Almeida Festival, the Biennale de Paris, and the Beijing MusicAcoustica Festival. In 1988, Schrader was invited by the Chinese Ministry of Culture to present concerts and lectures in electro-acoustic and computer music in Beijing and Shanghai. Active in the promotion of electro-acoustic music, Schrader is the founder and the first president of SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), and is an advisory member of the Board of the CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community). He has been involved with the inauguration and operation of several performance series such as SCREAM (Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music), the Currents concert series at Theatre Vanguard (the first ongoing series of electro-acoustic music concerts in the U.S.), and the CalArts Electro-Acoustic Music Marathon. He has written for several publications including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Grolier's Encyclopedia, Contemporary Music Review, and Journal SEAMUS. He is also the author of the book Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music . He has been a member of the Composition Faculty of the California Institute of the Arts School of Music since 1971, and has also taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the California State University at Los Angeles. His music is recorded on the Opus One, Laurel, CIRM, SEAMUS, Centaur, and Innova labels.


Eldad Tsabary
Psychotropic / 2000-2004 / 57:29

1. Unearthly Sadness Takes Over / 2004 / 7:14 / for electronics
2. Recurring Lucid Nightmare / 2003 / 5:00 / for orchestra
3. Flutes of the Black Forest / 2004 / 6:48 / for electronics
4. Bendicho juez de la verdad / 2000 / 7:35 / for trombone, electronics
5. The Cosmic Chainsaw / 2004 / 4:36 / for electronics
6. Sea of Awareness / 2004 / 5:15 / for electronics
7. Lost in a Lucid Nightmare / 2003 / 3:54 / for electronics
8. Buttons / 2003 / 6:12 / for electronics
9. Sunrise in Detroit / 2004 / 5:18 / for electronics
10. God is Good to Daddy / 2004 / 5:37 / for electronics

Eldad Tsabary is a Montréal based composer and sound artist whose music is inspired by the concepts of sound-mass, metamorphosis, and constant motion and is often based on intercultural subject matter. His works have been played at Carnegie Hall, CCRMA, and ISCM among others (see list) and performed by The Bulgarian Philharmonic, Silvie Jensen, the Cygnus Ensemble, Haim Avitsur, and others. He is the winner of several prizes, including the Harbourfront Centre New Canadian Sound Work 2006, a third prize at ZKM's competition Shortcuts:Beauty 2006, and a selection in Madrid Abierto's Public Art Project Competition 2007. Eldad is a professor of electronic art-music at Concordia University in Montre´al and an Artist Mentor for the MFA in New Media Program of the Transart Institute (Krems, Austria). His music has been released on ERMMedia, Capstone Records, New Adventures in Sound Art and JAZZIS among others and published by Editions BIM (Switzerland). He studied composition under David Loeb, David Del Tredici, David Olan, and Tim Brady and theory under Carl Schachter, Philip Rupprecht and Philip Lambert.

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