Electroacoustic aficionados will meet from Oct. 19 to 22

By Barbara Black

You may think you don’t know anything about electroacoustic music, or EA, but you’ve probably listened to a lot without knowing it. Despite the ubiquity of the medium, and the fact that it’s been around for about 50 years, Rosemary Mountain and some of her fellow scholars around the world are convinced that it needs a fuller lexicon, more rigorous analysis, and a documented history.

Mountain, who is currently chair of the Music Department at Concordia and scientific research director of Hexagram, is one of the hosts of an international conference being held in Montreal this month called EMS-05. (EMS stands for electroacoustic music studies.)

About 60 people are expected to attend, and the speakers are from England, France, Italy, Netherlands, Greece, Argentina, Norway, the U.S.A. and Canada.

“The participants are mostly people who have recognized that issues like the analysis and history of electroacoustics are in dire need of more attention, and they are coming to the conference so that we can collectively design more appropriate methodologies and structures,” Mountain said in an interview.

“We expect considerable serious discussion, because we are in need of it, and doubtless there will be some approaches suggested that others will question.”

She said that although EA is about 50 years old, it is still rather esoteric, has little terminology, history or scholarly analysis, which she and a handful of colleagues are trying to provide.

In an abstract for a similar conference last year in Florida, she said, “The importance of sharing information about new technology has thrown together individuals of disparate aesthetics. Perhaps the time has come to regroup and integrate with acoustic composers according to shared musical preferences.”

The composers at EMS-05 are all either Canadian or intimately involved with the Canadian electroacoustic scene. The keynote speech will be by Francis Dhomont, who taught at the Université de Montréal for many years and has since retired to his home country, France.

Other participants will be visiting professor at Concordia R. Murray Schafer, Yves Gigon, an alumnus of Concordia, Gilles Gobeil, Barry Truax, alcides lanza and Hildegard Westerkamp. On Oct 21, Concordia professor Kevin Austin will give a presentation on analysis in EA studies.

The Black Box, which is part of the new EV building on Ste. Catherine St., will have some installations, videos, and other interesting performances as part of the conference, and there will be concerts at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, a popular venue for EA productions.

For more specifics on EMS-05, please go to ems05.concordia.ca.