Recording: Electro-Acoustic Orchestra

Artist: Electro-Acoustic Orchestra

Song: [excerpt from 3rd piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (SynapticCircusSundays), January 27, 2019.

Electro-Acoustic Orchestra - [excerpt from 3rd piece]

A return trip to The Tranzac for this York U-based ensemble, with Doug Van Nort bringing nine musicians (and a projection artist) to fill the stage area of the Southern Cross with wires and laptops (until the elaborate, hi-res projections took over, it looked rather like a particularly tech-heavy press conference as much as a group). Van Nort conducted and tweaked sounds on his mixing board, building and reconfiguring the soundfields.

[SynapticCircus returns with "a very specially curated evening" on Sunday, April 14th featuring "The Exploded Kit" — five percussionists (Colin Fisher, Nick Fraser, D. Alex Meeks, Ambrose Pottie, and Mark Zurawinski) each playing one part of a drumkit, both separately and together. (The night will also include a solo bass clarinet set from Kathryn Ladano.)]

Recording: Electro-Acoustic Orchestra

Artist: Electro-Acoustic Orchestra

Song: [edited excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 1), November 2, 2016.

Electro-Acoustic Orchestra - [edited excerpt from first piece]

This night of abstracted sounds lead off a rather satisfying edition of the long-running 416 Festival. Under the leadership of Doug Van Nort (conducting and mixing desk), the room-filling EAO is based out his DisPerSion Lab up at York University. It contains a mix of veteran players (such as Robert Appleton, Glen Hall, and Ted Philips) with a crew of emerging performers, mixing laptop-based electronics with a full range of acoustic instruments. Van Nort deployed a lot of gestural conducting, presumably shaping the way the performers interacted with each other, mixing a couple big swells with more subtle sonic fields. Pay attention at the end of this extract for the way the Hall's saxophone pulls itself into clearer focus from the general swirl of the ensemble. (There were a few faces here that were, as yet, strangers to me, but the ensemble was listed as: Chris Anderson-Lundy, Robert Appleton, David Bandi, Aaron Corbett, Marcello Fiorini, Glen Hall, Ian Macchiusi, Mackenzie Perrault, Liz Petzold, Ted Philips, Danny Sheahan, Fae Sirois and Lauren Wilson.)

Recording: Oliveros-Ione-Bourne-Van Nort

Artist: Pauline Oliveros/Ione/Anne Bourne/Doug Van Nort

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XI – Night 2), October 14, 2016.

Pauline Oliveros/Ione/Anne Bourne/Doug Van Nort - [excerpt 1]

Pauline Oliveros/Ione/Anne Bourne/Doug Van Nort - [excerpt 2]

This visit to the X Avant Festival from legendary electronic music theorist and Deep Listening advocate Pauline Oliveros (alongside her partner Ione) was accompanied with a couple spin-offs from some of her local acolytes — a talk at York University overseen by electroacoustician Doug Van Nort earlier on the day of this performance as well as an outdoor Deep Listening workshop out in the St. George the Martyr courtyard the following afternoon. Both also accompanied the honoured guests for this improvised quartet, delivered in 8-channel surround sound live-mixed by Van Nort, who was also supplying some other sonic interventions to Bourne's cello, Oliveros' digital accordion and Ione's spoken dream-fragments. There were some cool spacialization effects with sound occasionally sweeping around the room, adding moments of immediacy to the players' patient sound-tilling — and plenty to be harvested for those with an attention span and an itch for serenity.

Recording: Kyle Brenders Ensemble

Artist: Kyle Brenders Ensemble

Song: Grasslands [1st mvt]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Festival – Day 2), September 3, 2016.

Kyle Brenders Ensemble - Grasslands [1st mvt]

A lovely day, warm in the sun with a cool breeze, the Intersection Festival once again filled Dundas Square with music of all kinds, offering a counterpoint to business at usual in the ad-basked concrete canyon. With Tad Michalak (of Burn Down the Capital/Feast in the East) again taking a leading role in curating the day, the music had nods to the festival's more chamber music-intensive past while upping the noise and weirdness reverberating off the surrounding walls. That had a sort of push-pull effect on the passers-by, sometimes drawing them in, sometimes causing evident confusion and moving along.

A very-worthy re-emergence of this abstract big band (with a slightly-shuffled lineup¹ from its appearance back in February) saw them fill the square with electroacoustic soundfields. There was an interesting tug of war between the horns' drift and the electronics' drone, while Michael Davidson's vibes rode above giving things a hint of melodic direction.

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¹ This time out the band included Kyle Brenders (saxophones, composition), Scott Peterson (bass), Nick Buligan (trumpet), Peter Lutek (clarinet, electronics), Karen Ng (alto sax), Cheldon Paterson (turntables), Brandon Valdivia (drums), Doug Van Nort (electronics), and Michael Davidson (vibes).

Recording: Kyle Brenders Ensemble

Artist: Kyle Brenders Ensemble

Song: Grasslands [4th mvt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 3), February 27, 2016.

Kyle Brenders Ensemble - Grasslands [4th mvt]

Now stick with me here — this "Kyle Brenders Ensemble" is not to be confused with the Kyle Brenders Large Ensemble (which is, in fact, smaller than this one), or the Kyle Brenders Big Band or any other big band that Brenders is associated with. So far as I can tell, this particular ensemble came about more specifically for this gig, and was geared more towards a sort of large-format electroacoustic exploration than to play any of Brenders' more melodic (but still oft-tricky) material. With laptops, turntables and electronics on hand, the members¹ here navigated through six movements of a sprawling, forty-five minute piece called "Grasslands", with scratchy acoustic creaks alternating with (and then complementing) the electronic interferences. The sonic zones included menacing hums, ambient apprehensiveness, and doom-drones before closing out with a minimalist repetition groove. None of which should be taken to mean that this music was "academic" or too precious — at several points, it felt like the key comparison here was to some of the more arranged and experimental releases on Constellation Records. Brenders casually commented afterwards that this performance might be the last for this unit, but this should definitely be brought back for an encore.

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¹ The full lineup for this ensemble was:

• Kyle Brenders (saxophones, electronics)
• Ben Grossman (hurdy gurdy, electronics)
• Germaine Liu (percussion)
• Peter Lutek (clarinet, electronics)
• Karen Ng (alto saxophone)
• Cheldon Paterson (turntables)
• Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet)
• Nick Storring (cello, electronics)
• Brandon Valdivia (drums)
• Doug Van Nort (electronics)