Acousmatics
and Interactive Music Festival
Pro Arte Institute, with support of the
Ford Foundation
St. Petersburg, Russia, May 30-June 3,
2005.
Reviewed by Mikhail S. Zalivadny
St.Peterburg
It is the second electro-acoustic music
festival organized in St. Petersburg by
the Pro Arte Institute. The festival called
together several creative bodies engaged
in this field of music, such as the Theremin
Centre, affiliated with the State Conservatoire
in Moscow; the re-organized Laboratory
of Computer Music Technologies at the
St. Petersburg State Conservatoire; and
the Centre for Music and Technology from
the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland;
as well as individual artists from these
cities.
Being broader in proportions and more
numerous in membership than the previous
conference held in May 2004, the new festival
was concentrated mainly on pure
music and some related sonic arts, with
very few exceptions (among the latteran
interactive opera Mother
Tongue: The Main Word by Vladimir
Rannev, with video part by Georgy Bagdasarov,
St. Petersburg). The most characteristic
forms of these arts in the festival program
were collective improvisations on the
basis of electronic note-book (lap-top)
ensemble; live electronics used in combination
with traditional music instruments (including
didjieru the Australian aboriginal
trumpet); examples of cinema for
ears (i.e. film soundtracks without
parallel visual images) treated mostly
from the musical point of view, and so
forth. A part of one of the concerts (on
June 2) was devoted to music performed
by Olesia Rostovskaya (Theremin Centre,
Moscow); this performance was a considerable
success and roused a keen interest for
the instrument and its artistic possibilities.
The theoretical part of the festival consisted
of two open lectures delivered by Andrey
Smirnov (Theremin Centre) and Sophea Lerner
(Sibelius Academy). As the main subjects
of these lectures, the advanced methods
of computer-assisted composition and collective
(in particulardistance) improvisation
were analyzed. The lectures were illustrated
with practical music examples that included
such impressive operations, as transforming
the data of solar bursts or cosmic particles
trajectories into original complex forms
of sounds.
Of course, the compositions that constituted
the festival program were of different
artistic value. But this diversity of
aesthetic levels was, to a certain extent,
in conformity with the variety of genre
and stylistic trends represented at the
concerts.
In this respect, the festival offered
to each of its participants (without excepting
the passive listeners) a rich
material for reflection and for determining
the most agreeable, individual way to
further the evolution of electroacoustic
music, considering the traditions that
yet exist.