design by Robin Parmar
Diffusion Prize 2010 Presentation
With Robert Normandeau and special guests from Canada.
Soundings is proud to announce the Diffusion 2010 Prize, an international competition designed to find the best in electroacoustic music composers. This prize has been established by RTÉ Lyric FM and the Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music (CCMCM) at the University of Limerick. First prize is a valuable commission to produce a composition for presentation two years hence. This award will be presented by Lyric FM's Bernard Clarke.
For this concert we are pleased to have special guests from Quebec, Canada, including the renowned Robert Normandeau, empreintes DIGITALes recording artist and multi-award winner. Accompanying him are fellow Quebecois luminaries Dominic Thibault and Nicolas Bernier. Rounding out the programme is Ireland's own Enda Grennan, presenting his work commissioned as a result of winning the previous Diffusion Prize.
Their pieces will be played over a state of the art surround-sound system. This is a rare chance to hear stunning multi-channel audio in a lovely listening environment.
Robert Normandeau completed the first PhDMus. in Electroacoustic Composition in Montreal, under Marcelle Deschênes and Francis Dhomont (1992). He is a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (1987) and co-founded Réseaux, an organization for the production of media arts events (1991). Since 1999 he has been professor in electroacoustic music composition at Université de Montréal. Among his many international awards are Ars Electronica (1993 and 1996), Bourges (1986, 1988 and 1993), Fribourg (2002), Luigi Russolo (1989 and 1990), Métamorphoses (2002 and 2004) and Musica Nova (1994, 1995 and 1998). His compositions employ esthetical criteria whereby he creates a "cinema for the ear" in which meaning as well as sound become the elements that elaborate his works.
Nicolas Bernier has created acousmatic compositions, live electronics, installations and art video, as well as music for dance, theatre and cinema. He his the founder of the sound art microorganism Ekumen, member of the media art organization Perte de Signal and is art director of R seaux, a major Canadian electroacoustic concert producer. His works have been awarded and broadcast in festivals around the world including Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), AKOUSMA (Canada), Mutek (Canada), DotMov Festival (Japan) and Transmediale (Germany). He has a dozen releases as a solo artist and in collaboration.
Dominic Thibault is a Masters student at the Université de Montréal, focussing on the influence of rock music in the compositional processes of acousmatic music.He has worked on collaborations with Jocsan Rivera and multimedia installations with visual artist Paul-Antoine Gauvreau. Alongside this he is the secretary of the CÉCO (Cercle des étudiants compositeurs de l'Université de Montréal) and the technical representative of the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS) studio. He has won both the V Concurso Internacional De Miniaturas Electroacústicas competition (Andalucia) and Jeu de Temps 2007 (Canadian Electroacoustic Community).
Enda Grennan has worked as a composer, sound designer and performance artist. His work was selected for the Contemporary Music Centre Young Composers Platform in 2007 and The Diffusion Prize 2008. He has completed a number of collaborative works with dance, film and performance artists. These include "The Lightly Fragranced Solo" for contemporary dancer Angie Smalis, which has been performed at several international festivals. He is currently completing a PhD. in composition at the University of Limerick.
Admission is only 10 euros at the door. University of Limerick students are free with student ID. Space is limited: first come, first served.
Soundings is curated by Robert Sazdov with Robin Parmar. It is brought to you by the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre (DMARC) at the University of Limerick.