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.)