Volume 17 Issue 9 - June 2012

“Beat by Beat | In With the NewBut Is It Music?DAVID PERLMANDarrenCopeland,2012Freedmanawardwinner.Sound art” is a performance genre, I think it’s safe to say, thatwill not ring bells, tuned or otherwise, for the majority of readersof The WholeNote. “We are, as a culture, obsessed with thenew,” says blogger John Terauds in a recent entertaining post at musicaltoronto.org,“but it takes only the shallowest scratch on the surfaceto discover that what we all seek is comfort and continuity — flowers,sunsets, barbequed ribs, cheesecake and a bit of Mozart.”Most of us, maybe, but all? Two mid-career contemporarycomposers in our midst, bothbeing honoured with significantawards this month,Darren Copeland andBrian Current, woulddoubtless disagree.Composer Copeland isprobably best known inthe new music communityas the inspiration forNew Adventures In SoundArt (NAISA). NAISA, as theirwebsite explains, is a nonprofitorganization, based atToronto’s Wychwood Barns,that “produces performancesand installations spanning theentire spectrum of electroacousticand experimental sound art … tofoster awareness and understanding… in the cultural vitality of experimental sound art in its myriadforms of expression … through the exploration of new sound technologiesin conjunction with the creation of cultural events and artifacts.”Mind you, Copeland would probably not object to being told thatwhat he does “isn’t music.” In fact you’ll search long and hard for theM-word on NAISA’s own website (among such other terms as noiseart performance, soundscape composition, multi-channel spatializationand layered listening excursion). Copeland is nevertheless anassociate composer with the Canadian Music Centre, and just thismonth was selected to receive the Harry Freedman Recording Awardby a national jury. Named for a pioneering Canadian composer, theaward contributes towards the creative costs associated with makingan audio recording of Canadian composers’ music, and is administeredby the Canadian Music Centre. In Copeland’s case the awardgoes toward the recording of his piece called Bats and Elephantswhich will be published by empreintes DIGITALes. The award will bepresented at a performance of the piece, at Gallery 345 on June 23.The work has an interesting premise: humans can’t hear the fullrange of sounds uttered by bats or elephants unless these sounds aretransposed within the range of human hearing (at which point theystart to take on the identity of other animal species, such as birds).Copeland and his guest Hector Centeno play with this concept, usingecho-location, the way bats do, to bounce sounds, from two hyperdirectionalspeakers, off the Gallery’s walls. It’s a neat variation onthe philosophical question posed at the outset of the column: whendoes a squeak become a song? Or a bellow turn into a bassline? Ornoise into music? I suspect that the answer has as much to do withthe tuning of the ears of the listener as the tuning of the frequenciesfrom the source. It should make for a fascinating event.(A brief digression before moving on to talk about our otheraward winner, Brian Current: it is entirely unsurprising to methat the Copeland concert is taking place at Gallery 345 —the “littlegallery that could” just keeps chugging away with one playfullyprovocative event after another: “Composers Play” (including theRob waymen18 thewholenote.com June 1 – July 7, 2012