This article is not about Tanya Tagaq, the remarkable Inuk experimental singer

Tanya Tagaq performed in Calgary at the Palace Theatre last week, but this article is NOT about her amazing event.
And for that matter, the video below has nothing in particular to do with her show: she didn’t mention Norman McLaren, nor the National Film Board; in fact she didn’t mention … Continue Reading >This article is not about Tanya Tagaq, the remarkable Inuk experimental singer

Newfoundland has a Sound Symposium: A Place to Play with Sound

“I am the Artistic Co-director of the Sound Symposium. I’m also the host: I will be hosting most, if not all, of the evening concerts, and some of the earlier concerts; I may be introducing some of the workshops; I will be performing with 2 bands that I play with. And I might even be singing with my … Continue Reading >Newfoundland has a Sound Symposium: A Place to Play with Sound

Ohama Can: Music, Sounds, Images, The Whole Ambient Kaboodle

“I started listening to ambient music, like a lot of people did, when Music for Airports came out: Brian Eno is, I guess, the guy who invented the genre, or is credited with that. That album in the 70’s was a big influence, and I started playing it myself, and I came up with what I call ‘multi-ambient’, in which you mix streams of ambient music together. And not necessarily multiple … Continue Reading >Ohama Can: Music, Sounds, Images, The Whole Ambient Kaboodle

Soundwalking With Hildegard Part 1: The depth of Acoustic Ecology

What would you do if you were sitting in a formal concert hall, dressed for a night of highly educated performances by acclaimed composers, and you began hearing a cricket, very clearly, and no-one seemed particularly perturbed, and it began to develop harmonically and chronologically, transforming into something quite beyond the normal sound of a single cricket, developing rhuythmically and musically until it swims through your awareness like a goldfish? Or a horse-sized cricket.

Losing your mind? Acid flashback? Another dream like those you’ve been having while driving (I’ll just get out here, if you don’t mind . . .)?

Or, Hildegard Westerkamp’s famous “Cricket Voice” (1987), intended to draw your awareness to the subtleties of sound and silence which most urban dwellers … Continue Reading >Soundwalking With Hildegard Part 1: The depth of Acoustic Ecology