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.)