shut up and listen! AWARD 2012

Im Rahmen des diesjährigen Festivals shut up and listen! 2012: FAR OUT wurden junge Musikschaffende eingeladen, Beiträge in den Kategorien Elektroakustische Komposition und Komposition für Akkordeon solo bzw. Akkordeon und Klangprojektion einzureichen. In einem anonymen Auswahlverfahren wählte die Jury (Belma Bešlić-Gál, Komponistin und Ko-Kuratorin von shut up and listen! 2012 und Wolfgang Seierl, Komponist/Bildender Künstler), aus 56 Einreichungen aus vier Kontinenten vier Werke aus. Diese werden am 1. Dezember im Rahmen des Festivals in Wiener Echoraum vorgestellt.

Preisträger und ausgezeichnete Werke

Chin Ting Chan (CN/USA): Katachi I. Elektroakustische Komposition
Cormac Crawley (IRL): Magnetoception. Elektroakustische Vierkanal-Komposition
Aurélio Edler-Copes (BR/F): Cantiga für Akkordeon und Klangprojektion
Robert Schwarz (A): Fliegenklavier. Elektroakustische Vierkanal-Komposition

Chin Ting Chan
Raised in Hong Kong, the music of Chin Ting (Patrick) Chan has been recognized internationally by honors and awards including the Third Annual newEar Composers’ Competition (winner), Staatsorchester Darmstadt’s Soli fan tutti Composition Prize (finalist), BGSU’s Competition in Music Composition (winner), UMKC’s Chamber Music Composition Competition (1st prize), as well as performances at the Darmstadt State Theater in Germany, Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, San Francisco New Music Forum’s Festival of Contemporary Music, SCI, GAMMA-UT, Connecticut College’s Symposium for Arts and Technology, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Madison Muse Fest, FEASt Festival, and new music festivals at BGSU, CSUF and UAH, among others; performed by artists/groups such as Zeitgeist, BelCuore Quartet, Color Field Ensemble, New Music Everywhere, KcEMA and Nonsemble 6. His music has been recorded and published at the Darling’s Acoustical Delight label (Cologne) and Melos Music, LLC.

Mr. Chan earned his B.M. degree from San José State University, and M.M. degree from Bowling Green State University where he was teaching assistant of theory/aural skills. He is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in composition at the University of Missouri–Kansas City while serving as studio manager of the IMPACT Center and teaching courses in electronic music. His mentors have included Chen Yi, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Marilyn Shrude, Burton Beerman, Andrea Reinkemeyer, Brian Belet and Pablo Furman. He is a founding member of the composer’s consortium Melos Music.

Katachi I – for fixed media (2011)
Katachi is a Japanese term that means form, shape or figure. In the ancient game of Go, the word Katachi is used to describe the formation of stones on a Go board (Go originated from Ancient China, where it is known as Weiqi). The conception of stone formation in Go is transformed to apply to the circulation and combination of sounds and timbre in the music. Katachi I uses primarily sounds produced by the Go stones, board and bowls. The circulating effect created by the different panning techniques is a dominant feature in this piece. The stereophonic image thus produced represents a recurring form or shape much similar to an image of a pentagon garden.

Cormac Crawley
Cormac ist derzeit Doktorand an der Queen’s University in Belfast. Nach einem MA in Music Technology setzte er sein Studium am Sonic Arts Research Centre fort. Seine Forschung setzt sich mit interaktiver Komposition in Verbindung zur natürlichen akustischen Umgebung auseinander. Er entwickelt interaktive Szenarien, welche die Beziehung zwischen der Umwelt und dem Klang, der innerhalb dieser Umwelt hergestellt wird, nutzbar machen. In seinen Kompositionen und Installationen versucht er, harmonische Beziehungen innerhalb einer soundscape zu identifizieren und gleichzeitig kausale Zusammenhänge von Fahrlässigkeit und Dissonanz hervorzuheben. Dies beinhaltet auch die Benützung von Sensoren, welche mit Aspekten der jeweiligen klimatischen Umgebung interagieren.

A Geomagnetic Flight
As well as the electrical storms we are familiar with, there is currently an intermittent barrage of space weather penetrating our atmosphere. This solar activity is usually directed by our magnetosphere toward the North and South Poles but recent intensity has meant that natural light displays have been visible below the Scandinavian Peninsula; in places such as Denmark, Northern Germany and Poland, UK, Ireland and more Eastern European countries; in the form of Aurora Borealis. The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach peak activity in 2013. It emits electromagnetic frequencies inaudible to us naturally; however, quite a lot of this behaviour has been sonically recorded and catalogued by Nasa. Magnetoception is a hypothesis, suggested by the migratory process, that birds are sensitive to magnetic fields including some of these geomagnetic disturbances and the notion is referenced in this piece: A sonification of geomagnetic commotion including recordings of the sun’s magnetic heartbeat, cosmic debris, solar flares, emissions from other solar objects, and how some of these pass through our earth’s atmosphere and interact in the skies above.

Aurélio Edler-Copes
Aurélio Edler-Copes (Brazil, 1976) Graduated in Composition with Gabriel Erkoreka at the Basque Country Advanced Centre of Music, Spain; Master Degree in Composition at the Hochschule der Künst Bern by the tutelage of Georges Aperghis; postgraduate in Composition and Computer Music at the annual IRCAM’s Cursus in Paris. He also studied with Sciarrino, Saariaho, Furrer, Ferneyhough, Lang, Leroux, Hurel, Andre, López-López, Sotelo, Sánchez-Verdú, among others, in festivals as Acanthes, Impuls, Matrix, Injuve…

His pieces have been awarded in a dozen of composition competitions (Injuve, Franz Joseph Reinl-Stiftung, Ensemblia, Pablo Sorozabal, Cátedra Manuel de Falla, Fundación Autor’s Prize, Verdi Competition, BAMDialogue, HIC-USA, Francisco Escudero, Prix Roma…) and are interpreted by soloists and ensembles as Klangforum Wien, MusikFabrik, Quatuor Diotima, Itinéraire, Vortex, Sond’ar-te Ensemble, OENM, Grup Instrumental de Valencia, Bilbao’s Symphonic Orchestra, Orchestra National de Lorraine, among others. He was Prix Roma of the Spanish Government working as composer in residence at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome in 2010- 2011. He was also artistic member and composer in residence at the French Academy in Madrid – Casa de Velázquez in 2011-2012.

He currently lives in Paris, works in different composition projects and is artistic director of the Krater Ensemble, from Spain. From July to September 2013 he will be composer in residency at the Kyoto Arts Center in Japan.

Cantiga – For accordion and sound projection
In “Cantiga” (“Song”) I have taken as reference the Cantigas de Santa Maria, of Alfonso X – in particular those of number 1, 252, and 326 – with the aim of bringing to mind archaic sonorities establishing a dialogue with the sound universe of the electronic music.

The accordion seemed to me the ideal instrument due to its high pitch and technical potentials which allow it to approach some textures typical of the electronic music as the same time as it creates sounds and articulations close to instruments of medieval music.

Robert Schwarz
Robert Schwarz studierte Architektur und Computermusik in Wien und danach Sound Studies an der Berliner Universität der Künste. In seinen Arbeiten verschmelzen diese Disziplinen zu poetischen Erfahrungsräumen.

Fliegenklavier – (2012; 05:50; 4 Kanal Audio)
Stück für 88 Stubenfliegen in drei Maßstäben (M 1:2,M 1:1,M 2:1), erweitertes Klavier und modularer Synthesizer.

Entstanden aus der Installation „Ein Fliegenpapier – Gelenkte Aleatorik; Akustische Gedanken über Raum und Freiheit als physikalisches Modell“. Eine akustisch- räumliche Übersetzung der Kurzgeschichte „Das Fliegenpapier“ von Robert Musil.

Bild “Frost Pattern”: Andreas Bick