TOO REAL / FEELS FAKE (2022)
composed by James O'Callaghan 
performed by l'Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM+):
Véronique Lacroix - conductor

Jeff Stonehouse - Flutes
Geneviève Déraspe - Flutes
Martin Gauvreau - Clarinets
Carmelle Préfontaine - Bassoon
Laurence Latreille-Gagné - Horn
Pamela Reimer - Piano
Olivier Maranda - Percussion
Hubert Brizard - Violin I
Caroline Laurent - Violin II
Marie-Lise Ouellet - Viola
Julie Trudeau - Cello
Samuel-San Vachon - Contrabass + 5-string Electric Bass Guitar

Recorded 4 May 2022, Salle Pierre Mercure
Video : Le Conserve Média
Audio mixing: James O'Callaghan

Programme note
EN
TOO REAL / FEELS FAKE is an examination of the uncanny space between ‘real’ and simulated sounds and spaces. Traversing between instrumental, environmental, and synthetic sounds, the work renders homage to the nostalgic and beautiful quality of things that are ‘not quite right.’ Drawn from the ‘classic’ synthesized sounds of simple oscillators and vintage drum machines, vocal synthesis, general MIDI samples, field recordings, and manipulated media samples (including recordings of a reel-to-reel film projector and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s spoken line “realer than real” from the David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ (1999)), the work is an expression of the poetry of the hyperreal, where instruments imitate sounds that were meant to imitate instruments.
  Most of all, it is a tribute to the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal and their director Véronique Lacroix, who commissioned the work. I wanted to create a work that would be fun and virtuosic, allowing for the musicians to explore many different sides of their expression, filtered through excess and saturation.
FR
  TOO REAL / FEELS FAKE (“TROP RÉEL / A l’AIR FAUX”) examine l'espace étrange entre les sons et les espaces «réels» et simulés. Traversant des sons instrumentaux, environnementaux et synthétiques, l'œuvre rend hommage à la nostalgie et à la beauté des choses qui « ne sont pas tout à fait correctes ». Tiré des sons synthétisés « classiques » d’oscillateurs simples et de boîtes à rythmes vintages, de la synthèse vocale, d'échantillons general MIDI, d'enregistrements environnementaux et d'échantillons multimédias manipulés (y compris des enregistrements d'un projecteur de film 8mm (« reel-to-reel ») et la phrase parlée « realer than real » (« plus réel que réel » ) de Jennifer Jason Leigh du film de David Cronenberg eXistenZ (1999 )), l'œuvre est une expression de la poésie de l'hyperréel, où les instruments imitent des sons censés imiter des instruments.
Il s'agit surtout d'un hommage à l'Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal et leur directrice Véronique Lacroix, qui a commandé l'œuvre. Je voulais créer une œuvre ludique et virtuose, permettant aux musiciens d'explorer de nombreuses facettes de leur expression, filtrées par l'excès et la saturation.

TOO REAL / FEELS FAKE - ECM+, Véronique Lacroix

Performed by: National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Alain Trudel, conductor.
Commissioned by the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
'Isomorphia' is part of a trio of related pieces with the same form and basic materials, including 'Isomorphic', an acousmatic piece, and 'Isomorph' for orchestra (without electronics).
This mixed piece transforms between field recordings and instrumental transcriptions of them.

Isomorphia - National Youth Orchestra of Canada

In an archipelago is a work for sextet and electronics, or any combination of its constituent parts, from solos, various possible duos and trios, and so on, all the way up to the full band, for a total of 127 possible combinations. The work was composed during the
COVID-19 pandemic, where an uncertain future led to the idea of affording the extracting of solos from the commission of a chamber piece-to-be. Each instrument’s part was composed one-by-one, first as a mockup assembled from recordings of my past pieces, among other sources. I listened to each of these parts in different combinations and fine-tuned them as I went in order to compose in such a way that they could exist on their own or in this variable company. I then transcribed the parts into a notated chamber score.
Each instrument has a phoneme attached to it, drawn from the title, and the title of each performance becomes an assemblage of its parts.
Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s 1985 essay The Repeating Island set out a way of thinking borne of the postcolonial conditions of the Caribbean that challenges the binary ontologies of Analytical and Continental Thinking. An Archipelagic Thinking is one of multiplicity and polyrhythm which conceptualizes through fragmentary interrelations rather than a system or a totality. In composing this piece, I was thinking about
connectivity through isolation, and the idea that repetition brings necessarily a difference and a deferral. The kind of densely modular repetition I experiment with, where every moment is densely recontextualizable, is one that I hope offers an opportunity to collapse
binary listening.

In an archipelago was commissioned by Standing Wave.

Listen to the work as an interactive app, creating your own mix of the different instruments in any combination!
iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/standing-wave/id1601878153
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ChromaMixedMedia.StandingWave

In an archipelago - Standing Wave (full ensemble)

'Mother earth death possession' a scene from Frankenstein: l'opéra courtepointe.
http://operafrankenstein.weebly.com
Written for and premiered by Sarah Albu (voice) and Marc-Olivier Lamontagne (electric guitar)
A scene in a 12-composer collaborative new media opera produced by Bradyworks:
http://www.timbrady.ca/Bradyworks.html

Mother earth death possession - Sarah Albu and Marc-Olivier Lamontagne

LIMIT (2025)
composed by James O'Callaghan
performed by Paramirabo and Ensemble Hopper:
François Deppe - conductor

Jeffrey Stonehouse - Flute, Pan Flute
Gwénaëlle Ratouit  - Clarinet
Cédric De Bruycker - Contrabass Clarinet
Pamela Reimer - Synthesizer, Piano
François Couvreur - Electric Guitar
Krystina Marcoux - Percussion
Moran Le Bars - Percussion
Hubert Brizard - Violin
Victor Guaita - Viola
Viviana Gosselin - Cello

Recorded 10 April 2025, Le MOM, Liège

Audio recording: Patrick Delges
Audio mixing: James O'Callaghan

Programme note
LIMIT was composed for two ensembles with whom I have long artistic relationships, Paramirabo from Montréal, and Hopper from Liège, and it was a great pleasure to be part of their joining forces for the first time. Looking at the instrumental forces of the commission, I saw a lot of potential for a noisy, distorted sound world - with electric guitar, synthesizer, and two clarinets, whose closed-tube construction emphasizes odd harmonics in the same way that distortion creates wave-folding. And so, built around the idea of distortion, square waves, and odd harmonics, I wrote the piece as an homage to two genres of music close to my heart: industrial music and musique concrète. The piece was premiered in Belgium, so I wanted to give a special nod to one of my favourite groups from there who ended their activity this year after more than 30 years: Front 242. The piece also gives nods and sometimes direct quotations from works by Einstürzende Neubauten, Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb, as well as Pièrre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.
The piece was composed partly during a residency at the Centre Henri Pousseur in Liège, and I wish to thank Patrick Delges for his technical assistance during the residency and the production.

LIMIT - Paramirabo + Ensemble Hopper, François Deppe

"Orison" is a work for ondes Martenot and electronics commissioned and performed by Daniel Áñez. It was irresistible for me to associate this early electronic instrument with science fiction and the idea of extra-terrestrial life, and so the work takes on a quasi-narrative, atmospheric character addressing these themes and their relationship with spirituality, the idea of the metaphysical 'other,' and personal feelings of alienation and otherness. Besides being an incredible ondist, Daniel has a virtuosic fluency with synthesizers and effects pedals, and so the work incorporates a significant signal processing component, which Daniel implemented. The work also features a vocoder during a brief sung passage. The work premiered in 2024 at the Electric Eclectics festival in Meaford, ON, and this studio recording was realized by Daniel Áñez and James O'Callaghan in 2025.

Orison - Daniel Áñez

For or from (soprano, flute, and electronics) commissioned and performed by Sarah Albu (soprano) and Jeff Stonehouse (flute)
22 June 2015, International Festival for Contemporary Performance, The New School at Mannes, New York City

	For or from draws from sounds from the environment, especially non-human animal vocalisations, and interpolates these sounds with instrumental and vocal imitations. Composing the work was an attempt to transform recordings specific to a time and a place into abstract notation, realisable by performers in a new specific context. Sometimes these transformations are heard ‘in real time’ in the performance, as the live sounds of the musicians morph into the field recordings and vice versa. In this way, the work is a meditation on memory, temporality, and individual embodiment of sound - sounds from the past, from experiences outside of the concert hall, are preserved and transported through the transcription process, reshaped for interpretation and reflection by the musicians, whose present experiences and individual sound qualities embody the external sounds as their own.

For or from - Sarah Albu and Jeff Stonehouse

Premiered by Quatuor Bozzini  at the Woodend Barn, Banchory, Scotland.
Recording engineer: Nicolas Godmaire.

pre-echo (after empties) is an attempt at creating an instrumental transcription of an acousmatic work of mine, Empties-impetus. The parent work’s source sounds are principally derived from string instruments and the work has a performance modality where it is partially diffused through the instruments of a string quartet with transducers. pre-echo (after empties), then, acts as a facsimile of the performance of instruments and objects in studio composition, realised in real-time with performers. Some of the other source material used in the acousmatic work re-appears as found objects to be performed by the quartet: buckets of earth with trowels, pencil and paper, duct tape, and a lamp. The interaction between instrumental performance and objects offers an occasion to consider the historical and semiotic weight of instruments-as-objects.

pre-echo (after empties) - Quatuor Bozzini

Commissioned and premiered by Quasar quatuor de saxophones at the Music Multimedia Room, Schulich School of Music, Montréal.
Recording engineer: Guillaume Barrette.

In specific cities attempts to pose the question: are the sounds of individual cities generic, or are they unique? The short answer is certainly ‘both’, but examining that duality through music offers an occasion to consider the ways our environments shape us, the way we are connected through shared aural experiences and made individual through unique ones. The work situates field recordings from various cities with transcriptions and transformations of them for the saxophone quartet. We might consider saxophones as quintessentially urban instruments, born of the industrial revolution: in In specific cities, their mechanical qualities are emphasised and compared to exhaust pipes, car horns, engines, sirens, brakes, and bells.

In specific cities was commissioned by Quasar with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

In specific cities - Quasar

Into sections is a musical examination of the relationship between identity and place through the sounds of insects. In their multitude, the tiny creatures are often heard before they are seen, composing an ever-present aural territory to which we are tenants. Though many species of insect have a global reach that rivals our own, the different sounds they make sometimes imprint and make a place distinct. 
Into sections was commissioned by the Tempest Flute Ensemble in Vancouver and ECM+ in Montréal; the two cities in effect my two homes, the piece examines personal narrative through space as defined by recordings of insects made predominantly in those two geographical regions.
Despite their important ecological roles, insects are often associated with disease and danger; they are ‘alien’ to us. So, the piece is also an examination of the alienation between self and place resulting from living in different places; of divorcing oneself from a sense of ‘home,’ of the kind of revulsion or disgust of embodiment, as in the body horror genre cinema of David Cronenberg.
There are other bisections in the piece, between noise and pitch, light and dark (night and day), cutting divisions into the continuum of the body of sound. The idea of filters is used to govern form within sections, cutting parts of the spectrum below or above certain threshold; the piece derives some material from the application of this technique in Daft Punk’s One More Time.

Into sections - ECM+ Flûtes, Véronique Lacroix

Available on the album 'Espaces tautologiques' through empreintes DIGITALes: http://www.electrocd.com/en/cat/imed_16140/

Isomorphic is part of a triptych of works of the same form, using the same environmental sounds as source material; the two other works are Isomorph (2013) for orchestra, and Isomorphia (2013) for orchestra and fixed sounds.
In this acousmatic piece sound sources continually transform according to metaphorical and morphological comparisons.

Isomorphic was realized in 2011-14 in the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec) and completed in 2014 at PRIM (Montréal), and premiered on June 18, 2015 during the concert The Privacy of Domestic Life as part of the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival in Montréal (Québec). The piece was commissioned by Codes d’accès. Isomorphic was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Musica Nova 2015 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Prague, Czech Republic).

This version was mastered by Dominique Bassal in April 2016 in Montréal.

Isomorphic (2014, excerpt)

Available on the album 'Espaces tautologiques' through empreintes DIGITALes: http://www.electrocd.com/en/cat/imed_16140/

Objects-Interiors is a work that ‘takes place’ inside a piano. The historied, polysemous instrument is re-examined as its own kind of interior space. Much of the sound material consists of impulse responses — bursts of noise that capture the reverberant properties of an acoustic space. As the piece moves from capturing the real space of the piano, it imagines other spaces, comparing the piano’s resonant chamber to other kinds of interiors, and, finally into a surreal world where space, motion, and sound are blurred.

Objects-Interiors is the first work in a trilogy of acousmatic pieces, with Bodies-Soundings (2014) and Empties-Impetus (2014-15), that imagine the sounding bodies of instruments as resonant spaces.

Objects-Interiors was realized in 2013 in the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec), and premiered on March 14, 2013 during the Cluster festival in Winnipeg (Canada). Objects-Interiors was awarded the First Prize in the Jeu de temps / Times Play (JTTP) competition of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC, Canada, 2013), and the First Prize in the Hugh Le Caine Prize of the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers (Canada, 2013).

This version was mastered by Dominique Bassal in April 2016 in Montréal.

Objects-Interiors (2013, excerpt)

Available on the album 'Espaces tautologiques' through empreintes DIGITALes: http://www.electrocd.com/en/cat/imed_16140/

Bodies-Soundings interrogates two instruments — an acoustic guitar and a toy piano — as ‘sounding bodies,’ whose resonant chambers do not sound, but only ‘resound.’ The instruments are used as loudspeaker cabinets, amplifying sounds both sourced from the instruments, and external sounds that expand and contradict the instruments’ identities. Without performers, they are simultaneously ‘disembodied’ and re-imagined as physical bodies of their own, animated by living sounds; anthropomorphizing them while also emphasizing their physical construction.

Bodies-Soundings is the second work in a trilogy of acousmatic pieces, with Objects-Interiors (2013) and Empties-Impetus (2014-15), that imagine the sounding bodies of instruments as resonant spaces.

Bodies-Soundings was realized in 2014 at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Canada) and in the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec), and premiered on March 8, 2014 during the Cluster festival in Winnipeg (Canada). Bodies-Soundings was awarded the First Prize at the Musicworks Electronic Music Competition (Toronto, Canada, 2014).

This version was mastered by Dominique Bassal in April 2016 in Montréal.

Bodies-Soundings (2014, excerpt)

Available on the album 'Espaces tautologiques' through empreintes DIGITALes: http://www.electrocd.com/en/cat/imed_16140/

Empties-Impetus attempts to navigate the instruments of the string quartet as imaginary interior spaces and as bearers of meaning; variously by grappling with the historical weight of the idiom and the recognizable quality of its timbres, and also by subverting that meaning by reassessing the objects according to their physical construction, spatial properties, and different environmental contexts.

Empties-Impetus is the final work in a trilogy of acousmatic pieces, with Objects-Interiors (2013) and Bodies-Soundings (2014), that imagine the sounding bodies of instruments as resonant spaces.

Empties-Impetus was realized in 2014-15 in the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec) and completed in 2015 at the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM) in Paris (France), and premiered on January 24, 2015 in the Auditorium Saint-Germain of the Maison des pratiques artistiques amateurs (Paris, France). The piece was commissioned by the Ina-GRM. Empties-Impetus was finalist in the 2nd Klang competition (Montpellier, France, 2015).

This version was mastered by Dominique Bassal in April 2016 in Montréal.

Empties-Impetus (2015, excerpt)

Bernard Parmegiani’s 'De Natura Sonorum' is a monolithic twelve-movement work of electronic music, premiered in 1975. In this arrangement for sextet of the second movement, Accidents/Harmoniques, I have set myself the impossible task of distilling the infinite world of electronic sound into something reproducible by acoustic instruments. Such a process can hold a lens to the parent work to see it in a new way, be a means to discover new techniques and sounds in instrumental composition, and opens questions of reducibility: What are the essential features of a work? To what extent can we say that such a reproduction is ‘the same’ or of the same category of its source material?

Commissioned and premiered by Standing Wave, 18 January 2018, Vancouver Symphony New Music Festival, The Orpheum.

Recording by Brian Chan

A video demonstrating the process is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpaTl-4MOw

Accidents / Harmoniques (Bernard Parmegiani transcription) - Standing Wave

Writing a work for a tour puts into perspective an essential and fascinating problematic of written music: abstract musical principles are distilled into specific individual sound-events created in specific spaces by specific musicians. Rather than write music that neutralizes these circumstances, I have attempted to ‘tune’ a work to the particularities of the various concert spaces where the work will be realized, and the specific instruments and instrumentalists that will realize it.  

I have researched the acoustics of the concert halls of the tour to generate musical material that will respond to their resonant frequencies. The form of the work mirrors the trajectory of the tour, structured as a sequence of spaces demarcated by an orchestration of the acoustic response of each hall. Features specific to Chloé Dominguez’ cello have guided the materials of the work as well, treating the cello as an interior space-within-a-space. Finally, field recordings from the larger environments around the work’s performance sites are a further source material.  

The work’s title emblematizes the problematic relationship between the abstract and the particular with the homographic word pairing ‘close’ and ‘close’. The two words are written the same but could mean either the adjective ‘close’ (near to) or the verb ‘close’ (to shut or bring to an end). The work hopes to examine the tension between these related ideas: first, the intimacy of the solo instrument and the sensation of being familiar with one’s environment. Second, the idea of ‘enclosure’ (the cello and the concert hall as enclosed spaces) and claustrophobia. 

Close / Close was commissioned by l’Ensemble contemporain de Montréal  with support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Recording: 11 November 2018, The Music Gallery, Toronto. Recording engineer: Paul Hodge

Close / Close - Chloé Dominguez + Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Véronique Lacroix

Of definitions of “ground” was composed in reaction to the sound of the electrical utility frequency or ‘mains hum’, which can sometimes be heard through loudspeakers and amplifiers. It is generally considered an ‘unwanted’ noise, often caused by interconnection of electrical equipment that results in there being multiple paths to the ground, also known as a “ground loop”. Many of my concert experiences, as a composer or listener, have been coloured by trying to eliminate or ignore this sound. And so, I wanted to create a work where this sound is instead the focus. The harmony of the work is built around this hum and its harmonic series, and much of the instrumental writing attempts to simulate related electroacoustic phenomena, such as harmonic distortion and feedback. 

Because the electrical utility frequency is different in different countries (for example, in North America it is 60 Hz and in Europe it is 50 Hz), there are two different versions of the score, depending on where the piece is performed. In reflecting on the way this sound connects us to place, the work subtly incorporates field recordings which also differ between the two versions, linking to the sites of the premiere performances in Québec and Belgium. The piece is then a meditation on the way sound can “ground” us or connect us to a feeling of familiar ground.  

Of definitions of “ground” was commissioned by Le Vivier for Ensemble Hopper with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Recording: 10 May 2019, Église Sacré-Coeur, Chicoutimi. Recording engineer: Pascal Beaulieu

Of definitions of "ground" (60 Hz version)- Ensemble Hopper

James O’Callaghan is a composer and multimedia artist based in Berlin. His work has been described as “very personal… with its own colour anchored in the unpredictable,” (Goethe-Institut). It spans chamber, orchestral, live electronic and acousmatic idioms, audio installations, video-music, site-specific performances, electronic dance music, and interdisciplinary collaboration — most recently with choreographer Edouard Lock and artist Lois Brown. In 2016 an album of his acousmatic works, Espaces Tautologiques, was released by empreintes DIGITALes, and his extended collaboration with Ensemble Paramirabo resulted in a portrait album of his works in 2019, entitled Alone and unalone.
	His music has received nearly forty prizes and nominations, including the ISCM Young Composer Award (2017), the Salvatore Martirano Award (2016), and the SOCAN Foundation John Weinzweig Grand Prize (2014). Significant nominations include those for the Gaudeamus Award (2016), Prix Métamorphoses (2018), and two JUNO Awards (2014, 2020). In 2021 he received the Prix Opus for “Composer of the Year.” 
	Active as an arts organiser, he co-founded and co-directed the Montréal Contemporary Music Lab. Originally from British Columbia, he lived in Montréal for 11 years and since 2022 has been based out of Berlin.

James O'Callaghan

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