On Saturday, the Klingler ElectroAcoustic Residency hosted a concert in Kobacker Hall for the fifth anniversary of the program. This concert, which consisted of electroacoustic compositions from six alumni of the residency, was the conclusion to a weekend of events for the anniversary.
Dean of the College of Musical Arts Bill Mathis and professor of musicology, composition and theory Elainie Lillios opened the night with announcements and introductions. They extended thanks to Joe Klingler, founder and sponsor of KEAR, who was there in support of the success of the program.
The concert was described by Professor Lillios as “cinema for the ear.” Over the course of the two-hour presentation, six collections of sound, music and spoken word from different KEAR composers were played over multiple speakers surrounding the audience for an all-encompassing experience.
The weekend celebration of KEAR’s anniversary included lectures, workshops and a concert at the Toledo Museum of Art in addition to the concert on Saturday night. KEAR is a two-week program in which recipients can compose and create in the University’s 10.2 multi-channel Ambisonic electroacoustic studio. Throughout the residency, recipients work on projects while also sharing what they are learning with other students in the College of Musical Arts. Recipients of KEAR, which include the eight alumni who returned this weekend for the fifth anniversary of the program, come from all over the world to work in the University’s studio.
Here’s a selection of the six composers who performed at the concert on Saturday. The compositions they presented are featured below.
Robert Normandeau (Canada)
The piece that he put together for the fifth anniversary of KEAR is titled Melancholia. The composition was completed last spring during his residency at the University and attempts to express the feeling of melancholy through sound and music. Melancholia has several movements: black mood, nostalgia, anguish, boredom, reverie, anger, exhaustion and sadness.
Jonty Harrison (United Kingdom)
His piece, Postcards Home, was a reinvented version of the project he was working on during his residency at the University in the winter of 2015. The composition consists of audio from all over the world, broken up the sound of camera shutters. The audio is taken from several countries such as Italy, Australia and Iceland as well as very local sounds such as the railroad horns of the train that passes through on the outskirts of the University.
Brad Garton (United States)
The composition that he presented was titled Memory Book. This piece included a visual element and incorporate music into an autobiographical book that he had written. He created sound in real time while reading the text from select chapters as a way to make a “soundtrack for a book.”
Louise Harris (United Kingdom)
Her composition, Alocas, featured a graphic that she created to accompany the music and sound of her piece. This work, which is still in progress, showed her specialty in combining visual elements with her electro-acoustic compositions. Her intention is for pieces such as Alocas to be presented in a “small, very dark space, creating an immersive environment in which the audio viewer is completely enveloped by both the sonic and visual structures.”
