Recording: The Canadian Electronic Ensemble

Artist: The Canadian Electronic Ensemble

Song: Incipit Norma (Variations on "Piece For Bob")

Recorded at The Canadian Music Centre (Norma Beecroft: Pioneers Of Electronic Music Book Launch), September 26, 2015.

The Canadian Electronic Ensemble - Incipit Norma (Variations on "Piece For Bob")

Had composer Norma Beecroft come from elsewhere, she might be more celebrated by folks who pass around lists of "pioneers of electronic music". Emerging in our own backyard, it's good to see the Canadian Music Centre reaching out to help educate the public that we have a bona fide founder here of the genre right here in our midst. This event, though, didn't focus on Beecroft's own work as much as her research into her peers and inspirations — a series of in-depth interviews that have been compiled into the new e-book Conversations With Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic Music.

To celebrate its release, the CMC put this afternoon together, which began with Beecroft being interviewed before a packed house by musician/journalist Kristel Jax. After that (and before the mingling) her music was celebrated in this short performance by the Canadian Electronic Ensemble. Founded in 1971, the CEE is the oldest continuously-existing live-performance electronic-based group in the world. (And it has had a long relationship with Beecroft: in 1975, they commissioned her to write "Consequences for 5".) But instead of just reproducing one of Beecroft's pieces, the trio presented this improvisation on a theme from her 1975 "Piece For Bob" — Beecroft's first piece to employ digital sound synthesis.