Andrea Young Tag

Musicworks #126 Interview

26.11.2016 , Articles, Interviews, News

Click here to read my interview with Alex Varty.  “ERIN GEE SINGS THE BODY ELECTRONIC”

Fresh on the heels of my return from the premiere of Echo Grey in Vancouver (my newest composition for vocal quartet, feedback soloist and tape), I find I’ve received my physical copy of Musicworks, which is a triannually released publication featuring experimental sounds from across Canada.

Amidst a really massive transition phase right now, I find that teaching full time has really changed what I can do as an artist.  Pushing myself to learn entirely new skillsets in organization and pedagogical performance (sidenote: yes, everything is a performance) has left me with little time or energy to invest in building new technologies.

Music composition has been something that I can invest time into, as all I need is a few moments, a microphone, my laptop, a notepad with pencil scribbles, my imagination.

This interview with Musicworks magazine was very interesting for me, as recently my opportunities have been coming from music composition.  The whole issue is actually very interesting, with a full feature on music and sound revolution in VR spaces, as well as some features on other very energetic and productive electroacoustic artists.

Musicworks #126 is available now with a special curated cd of sounds included in the physical magazine.  On this CD you can find a track from my Voice of Echo (2011) series.

Echo Grey

21.11.2016 , Music Composition, News, Performances, Portfolio

Echo Grey (2016)

2016

Echo Grey is a composition for four voices, feedback musical instruments, and tape part (which features the sounds of a broken image file).

Movement between words or utterance, the echo’s voice exceeds the signal itself and speaks to a deeper engagement with materiality.  In Echo Grey, I composed a series of vocal patterns that emerge directly with breath as raw material, the movement of intake and exhalation made audible. The choir’s engagement with the mechanistic, impossible repetition eventually negates the signal: all that is left is the lungs and vocal vibrations of the individual who gasps, cries in defeat, and whoops in ecstasy.  These human voices are simultaneously punctuated by the feedback of microphone and amplified instruments, and a tape track composed through process – a bouncing of data back and forth between visual and aural softwares that eventually results in nothing but glitched statements.  This tape track is analogous to the squealing proximity of the sender to the receiver in the scored feedback parts.  The colour grey in the work’s title is inspired by the back and forth motion of a 2HB pencil stroking endlessly across an empty pad of paper.

Performance history

World premiere at Vancouver New Music with Andrea Young, Marina Hasselberg, Sharon Chohi Kim, Micaela Tobin, Michael Day, Braden Diotte, and Erin Gee in November 2016.

It has also been performed at Open Space Gallery (Victoria), and Neworks (Calgary).

Scores

Echo Grey 2016

Echo Grey (2016)

Sounds

Echo Grey (2016)

Fall Commission for Exo/Endo and Ilk

04.08.2016 , News, Performances

This fall 2016 the performing groups Exo/Endo and Ilk will premiere a new music composition by Erin Gee in three Canadian venues in Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary.  This new work is intended to be an extension of Gee’s work Voice of Echo (2011).  Stemming from a solo performance of this work in 2015 in Toronto at Trinity Square Video (What can a Vocaloid Do?), Gee will newly re-create materials based on vocaloid creatures, artificial intelligence, electronic voices in human bodies, authorship, subjectivity, embodiment, voice and agency telematically using a system developed by Michael Palumbo.  This work will employ five singers, and an experimental turntableist and extended bass player.

Exo/Endo is Andrea Young (voice and electronics), Michael Day (prepared turntables/percussion) Braden Diotte (multi-instrumentalist, agitated electric bass and electronics)

Ilk is Sara Sinclair Gomez, Sharon Kim, Micaela Tobin, and Andrea Young