Electroacoustic music at EuCuE

By Barbara Black

If you like electroacoustic music and want to learn how to make it, Concordia is probably the place to go. That’s been the case for 30 years now.

This year will see the graduation of the first class taking electroacoustics as a major.. There are 150 students in the program, about 90 in first year.

In addition to those in the program, there are students in art and communications taking sound to enhance their work, and others taking electroacoustic courses as electives out of interest.

The faculty members teaching electroacoustic are an eclectic bunch. They are Rosemary Mountain, who is currently chair of the Music Department, Mark Corwin, the former chair, who also teaches other courses, such as sound recording, Ian Chuprun, Mike Pinsonneault, and Kevin Austin, who isn’t teaching this term but has been at it since the program started and is now a “sonic guru.”

As for the job prospects for graduates, Chuprun said “the field is wide open. I know a number of people living on artistic grants and commissions, while others are on salary or contracts. You do have to have a multiplicity of skills, but you can create your own niche.”

Graduates may do audio designs for video games, or design presentations for corporate clients, create commercials and movie tracks, or compose serious music. In fact, Chuprun said, the latest dance music favours electroacoustic tracks.

The showcase for the latest works in the field is EuCuE, whose listings pop up on the back page of CTR. “We do our best to produce as big an event as possible three times a year, in October, November and February, presenting five concerts over three days, about 30 works,” Chuprun said. “It’s a huge technical set-up — more than 20 speakers, with all the cabling. We send the call out for students to help, and you could get 15, or you could get one.”

Although much of the work is from a fixed medium (compact disks or audiotapes), the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, equipped for surround-sound, is an ideal venue. “It lets loudspeakers do what they do best.”

While the top artists in the field tend to be at the Université de Montréal and the Conservatoire du Québec, the job of educating the next generation falls to Concordia.

As well as the students, there are many others in Montreal who follow the music, and EuCuE never fails to bring out appreciative listeners.

“These are pro-level concerts,” Chuprun said. “It’s sort of a treat.”

February 18, 19, 20 will see works from the USA, Korea and New Zealand, as well as many student works from Concordia. The works are for fixed medium (CD and multi-channel) video (DVD and mini-DV), and live/mixed (live electronics and piano and fixed medium).

All of these multi-speaker sound projection concerts take place at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, 7141 Sherbrooke St W., and all are free.

There will also be a special three-day live, eight-channel interactive electronic showcase by the Vertice Collective (aka Vertex). They will be performing throughout the series in the Atrium of the Vanier Library/OPCH Building (Loyola Campus) daily from 10 a.m.