I grew up in a bungalow in the woods off the Bruce trail about a twenty-minute drive north of Milton, Ontario. Milton actually has the fastest growing population of any city in Canada and as far back as I can remember my experience of the whole region has been in many ways defined by this constant development and all its ramifications. When I was really young there was an active quarry down the street and every day at 12pm the whole house would shake from a large dynamite blast, causing any precariously placed item in the room to crash to the floor. As well as being an event in the day that would automatically bring you into the present moment, this was also a convenient way to know what time it was. As years went on, things changed and the rock from the quarries became more roads and housing developments and at one point Milton’s population tripled within two years. Eventually I moved to Toronto, but every time I came home I would notice a new development where a field once was and big-box stores rising up by the week forming a trail back towards the GTA along highway 401.
Once I was coming home and while driving down Trafalgar Rd. I noticed a very large factory type-building had appeared on the east side of the street, and as I drove to the other end of it I saw that the entire side of the building was opening. I stopped the car, having never seen a building open before, and was amazed to see a whole three-story house being guided out into the open air on a massive wheeled forklift system. I later found out that the factory is actually completely portable and is owned by Mattamy Homes™, one of North America’s largest development companies. It can be set up within a few days at any location where a development is planned and three houses can be built at the same time inside of it, after which they are wheeled out and planted directly into their foundations. Once the last house outside of the building is finished they build three more inside and then tear the factory down around them, leaving them where they were built. This is the “most efficient way to build communities”, says Mattamy on their website.
I am continually unsure of what is beautiful; especially when the things I would automatically assume to be disturbing reveal themselves with grace and beauty.
Find an old cassette, the kind that has small screws in each corner, and open it up. Cut away nine and a half inches of tape and discard the rest. Next, attach the two ends of your little piece together, preferably with mylar splicing tape which is commonly used in film editing. Put the spools back in the casing and place the circular tape in around them. Make sure you fit the tape through the feed wheels on either side so it doesn’t jam up, then close up the case. Now you have a loop of your own, so write your name on the front in case you lose it. Alternatively, force a vinyl record to skip by cutting into it or pasting tape onto it. Vinyl has so much nostalgic value; maybe that’s why it feels so sexual to cut into it.
I am in love with my loop. My loop repeats over and over. My loop is a person, and your loop is too. They like to dance with each other, phasing back and forth, and when they meet they might be different lengths but together they form a relationship that lasts much longer. It’s a physical love though; digital won’t usually do it for me. It’s just so rigid, and I need something that will give, something I can touch, something I can hold, and something that can hold me. My loop is a memory held forever, but a memory slowly dissolving (even though I could swear I know it by heart). When it is real, and I can touch it, then I know I can never really erase it since each time I re-record the layers stay latent in its skin. When you can see it you know where you are in the cycle. When you can hear it you know where you are in the cycle.
I’ve been taing part in a residency project lead by the talented vocalist Charlotte Mundy at Somewhere There for the past two months. We’ve been playing new music by local composers as well as a fair bit of Christian Wolff’s music, which I’ve especially enjoyed. Most of it is written for open instrumentations so it’s been very fun mixing up the groups and finding different sounds.
Watch out for our final concert sometime in the end on August for which Charlotte will perform a new piece I wrote for solo voice and electronics based on an essay by Robert Steijn of United Sorry
Super excited about a new group I’ve been playing with. We just did a recording of some new pieces we wrote and some improvising which we recorded inside a closet. We are currently recording more and hopefully will release this stuff soon.
I recently started a project blog to document the process of writing a piece for bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson . You can read about it on the blog itself Here and through the projects section of this site Here. I’ll try my best to keep it interesting somehow…
This wednesday, February 10th the students of Gregory Oh’s new music class at the University of Toronto will be giving a concert that I highly recommended checking out. I have been working with the students for the past four weeks in a workshop exploring the creative use of technology in composing and performing. What has resulted is a group of communally written compositions using among other things: Multi-channel low-fi electronics, home-made interactive interfaces, found sounds, and remixed baroque music.
Nadina Mackie Jackson is going to be performing a short little piece I wrote recently for a recital she’s giving next week at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, it’s called Our Weight in Phrases and it’s written for solo bassoon and electronics. She’s a fantastic musician and I’m really excited to have the chance to work with her. The piece itself was a bit of an experiment in preparation for a solo bassoon project I will be collaborating on with Nadina to be premiered later this year, so look out for that in the months to come. Good luck to Nadina next week!
Choreographer Brian Solomon asked me to write some music for a solo he has been working on which will be shown this week in Sudbury Ontario. Here is a little article about the show, which was curated by Heidi Strauss: http://www.sudburylivingmagazine.com/content/arts/dance11252009.aspx.
An excerpt of some of the music for clarinet and electronics:
Thanks so much to everyone who came (or wanted to come but couldn’t) to our show last week.
Here is a quote from a nice review of the show which you can read in full here :
“…Unlike many young choreographers, she (Julia) is not afraid to take the stage alone and perform to complete silence. And she doesn’t have to be; even with the smallest gesture she can command the attention of the audience. In this piece, she often finds herself in uncomfortable positions, her neck bent to the side or her body exploring the space around her as she stands on the tip of her toes, struggling to maintain a precarious balance. This discomfort demands a heightened awareness of her body; the tiniest deviation and she could fall off balance. Behind a deceptive appearance of simplicity, Male always successfully manages to create complex and utterly fascinating solos.”
We are both watching my piece perform itself, although for me I am unable to perceive the part of it that is completely, only me. You are unable to perceive the part of it that’s completely, only you, and you must also decide how much I am to be included in this material. I must also decide how much you are to be included in this material. Or, neither of us might feel that we have a choice. If anything is left that we can agree to call impersonal, perhaps it will mean that we understand each other better.
But all of this is just distracting you from what I really want to say.
When I am about to leave the place, it becomes contained, and I am already outside of it.
meaning of movement maybe, but what they are, are things for me to do
But all of this is just distracting you from what I really want to say.
