Logo for sound archive - some further variations to follow...
Thursday 14 February 2013
Monday 4 February 2013
A review of Javaari
I found a review by Joseph Sannicandro of my music online. His blog gives a full acount of the AKOUSMA festival.
Really interesting to see some initial thoughts on Javaari, although a little on the negative side, plus there are some major misconceptions about what acousmatic music should or should not be!:
"Manuela Blackburn, PhD., is an electroustic composer from the UK, and also a lecturer on music technology at Liverpool Hope University. I mention her academic training in part because her work has some of the qualities one might expect, utilizing Max/MSP and presenting her work in a very controlled manner. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way; this is by no means the sort of overly cerebral Computer Music that often comes out of the academe. The program consisted of four prepared pieces, the last which was exchanged in favor of a recently completed piece, the first of a planned trilogy utilizing Indian music samples. That last piece incorporated tabla and sitar, which I found to be not very compelling. Acousmatic music is meant to obscure the source material, but both instruments were clearly recognizable, not to mention identified by the composer in her address to the audience beforehand. Freed from their original context but still identifiable, they were utilized in way that didn’t resonate with me. The philosophy (or spirituality) of Indian music is an inherent part of its structures, eg. the drone, or the meter/tala, and underlies the music (as social practice, as art). Manipulated and cut up in this way that impact is lost, so their inclusion begins to seem like an necessary exoticization rather than teasing out something new. The first three pieces were more appealing, however, at times verging on glitch territory. Each featured a steady momentum, almost impatient, never stopping or repeating. The compositions were dynamic and propulsive in a very thoughtful way. The audience was seated with the composer’s mixing console behind us, with some space available to lie down in center of the front rows" ....by Joseph Sannicandro
Really interesting to see some initial thoughts on Javaari, although a little on the negative side, plus there are some major misconceptions about what acousmatic music should or should not be!:
"Manuela Blackburn, PhD., is an electroustic composer from the UK, and also a lecturer on music technology at Liverpool Hope University. I mention her academic training in part because her work has some of the qualities one might expect, utilizing Max/MSP and presenting her work in a very controlled manner. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way; this is by no means the sort of overly cerebral Computer Music that often comes out of the academe. The program consisted of four prepared pieces, the last which was exchanged in favor of a recently completed piece, the first of a planned trilogy utilizing Indian music samples. That last piece incorporated tabla and sitar, which I found to be not very compelling. Acousmatic music is meant to obscure the source material, but both instruments were clearly recognizable, not to mention identified by the composer in her address to the audience beforehand. Freed from their original context but still identifiable, they were utilized in way that didn’t resonate with me. The philosophy (or spirituality) of Indian music is an inherent part of its structures, eg. the drone, or the meter/tala, and underlies the music (as social practice, as art). Manipulated and cut up in this way that impact is lost, so their inclusion begins to seem like an necessary exoticization rather than teasing out something new. The first three pieces were more appealing, however, at times verging on glitch territory. Each featured a steady momentum, almost impatient, never stopping or repeating. The compositions were dynamic and propulsive in a very thoughtful way. The audience was seated with the composer’s mixing console behind us, with some space available to lie down in center of the front rows" ....by Joseph Sannicandro
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