seven instruments (flute/piccolo, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, French horn, percussion piano) and live electronics

...so to speak... (2019)

Reson III

Stereo reference copy for 8-channel electroacoustic piece based on samples drawn from Jean-François Laporte's invented pneumatic/mechanical wind instruments.

Au-delà du souffle

Event Horizon

2014

violin, violoncello, piano, audio signal processing


Laurie Radford


pulling the light	escape velocity	redshifted	proper time	singularity

An “event horizon” is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer…a “point of no return”… the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible…a phenomenon usually associated with black holes. The concept of energy at the horizon or the edge of our immediate grasp of time has been a motivating interest in a number of my compositional projects in recent years. It continues to provide impetus to explore movement, speed, transformation and process in many aspects of my music. In Event Horizon, various components of the phenomenon provide conceptual points of departure for each of the sections of the piece. The audio signal processing of the violin, violoncello and piano extends the exploration of both sound and time to the spatial and spectral attributes of the listening experience.

Event Horizon (violin, violoncello, piano, live electronics)

à la cire perdue (excerpt)

Terms of Occupancy is a 5.1 remix and extended variation of a previous stereo work, à la cire perdue (2004), this previous work itself a re-appropriation and reworking of materials from some of my previous instrumental and vocal works. The title Terms of Occupancy refers to the strategies and methods that bind me to the sounds I deploy as well as a preoccupation with multi-spatial determination for these sonic objects. The confrontation with an expanded spatial parameter led me to a substantial reshaping of the original sounds as well as a total recasting of their compositional possibilities.
Terms of Occupancy was originally an attempt to compose for an eight-channel audio performance system via a two-channel monitoring system, the missing ‘real’ channels being supplied by virtual and imagined spatial strategies given visual support within a multi-track audio sequencing environment.  Just as an orchestrator summons the sound of an oboe to mind when scoring for a large ensemble, or an architect engages their experience of shape, colour and function to conceive and model a new structure, composers draw upon both intuitive spatial knowledge and consciously acquired spatial predilections and explorations in their animation of sounding space. Composing Terms of Occupancy in this ‘virtual’ fashion meant imagining and hearing more than was audibly present upon playback. The challenge in subsequently re-composing and recasting Terms of Occupancy for the 5.1 format was the transposition and adaptation of a language of spatial movement within, firstly the octophonic and then the  stereo realm, to a fundamentally different spatial palette that afforded a new set of possibilities for meaningful movement and integration within the compositional design.

Terms Of Occupancy

Pourriez-vous être le couteau dans ma vie?
Could you be the knife in my life?
(2004)
Violin, Violoncello, Piano, Digital Signal Processing
Duration = 18 minutes

Laurie Radford

Gleam		Edge 		Curve		Point		Incision		Plunge

Action demands incision, a rending of skin, plunging into the flesh and mechanism beneath; a fearless touching, hearing, and seeing of that which must be known. The violin bow slices time into strips of cause and effect; the piano keys cut pitch into equal portions of dream and regret; synchronized bodies rend space for all to enter and be marked. The gleaming edge, the curve and point of these actions are the destination, the finely ground line of resistance and insistence, the source of delight and delirium as one scurries across the cusp of knowing. 
We are the instruments of others’ fears and terrors, needs and desires. In donning the role of instrument, we feel both the wound of subjugation and the pain of freedom. The rapiers of bow and string shred one reality and offer us another, plead and demand, heal and destroy, with both sound and silence.
Pourriez-vous être le couteau dans ma vie? continues a line of work begun with horizo (2002) for 16 instruments and digital processing. The instruments of the ensemble are processed in real-time by various digital effects. In addition, the instruments also serve as the source of an electroacoustic component: fragments of the instrumentalists’ performance are captured and subsequently transformed and combined with other fragments to create a virtual ensemble that revisits the live ensemble later in the work. Process and sound are unified in the actions of the performers.

Pourriez-vous être le couteau dans ma vie? (violin, violoncello, piano)

Reson I (string quartet, live electronics)

Solo alto saxophone, string orchestra, 2 percussion

The Future Of A Curve II (excerpt)(solo sax, string orch, 2 per)

the future of a curve III

2020

solo soprano saxophone &
saxophone ensemble
(SATB, SATB)


Laurie Radford



Parabola	    Hyperbola 	    Helix 		Ellipse

“To predict the future of a curve is to carry out a certain operation on its past.”
- Norbert Wiener  

This provocative statement by cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener encouraged me to investigate the concept of a “curve” and led me to the consideration of an entire world of curvatures, each one exhibiting distinctive characteristics and alluring possibilities for shaping sound and time. As with most of my creative work in sound, words and concepts initiate an investigation of possibilities for sonic design, generation and development. Presented with this rich world of shape and energy that is the “curve,” I chose several selections from the innumerable types of curves that have been defined over time, choices which lend themselves to vivid sonic imagery and musical concepts applicable to the solo and ensemble saxophone writing of the piece, the melodic trajectories, the spatial movement of sound across the sections of the ensemble, and to a metaphoric exploration of shape in time. The solo saxophone is featured in _the future of a curve III_ as soloist and instigator in a pursuit of meaningful expression that tends toward the ascendant, with the saxophone ensemble serving as both support and foil. the future of a curve III_ was commissioned and premiered by soloist Chinley Hinacay and the University of Calgary Saxophone Ensemble under the direction of Jeremy Brown
-	lr

The Future Of A Curve III (solo sax + 2 sax quartets)

Reson II for flute/piccolo, viola, violoncello, piano (2017) Duration: 14:00

Laurie Radford

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