Publications
Playing With Words
Playing with Words: the spoken word in artistic practice is a collection of responses from over 40 leading contemporary composers and artists who have been invited to represent aspects of their creative practice with words, and in particular, the spoken word, for the printed page.
The book concentrates on the kinds of creative play to be found in different sound based genres such as electroacoustic music composition, text sound composition, and sound poetry, while reflecting artistic practices in disciplines such as digital arts, electronic, concrete and experimental poetry, performance art and fine art.
The contributors have chosen to represent their work in a variety of ways which include writing, graphics, poetry, photographs and through interview.
Contributors include:Trevor Wishart, Paul Lansky, Michael Vincent, Lars-Gunner Bodin, Sten Hanson, Barry Truax, Katharine Norman, Joan La Barbara, Brandon LaBelle, David Toop, Jaap Blonk, Jorg Piringer, Imogen Stidworthy, Tomomi Adachi, Sue Tompkins, Pamela Z, Laurie Anderson, Paul Burwell, Bob Cobbing.
Edited by Cathy Lane and co-published with CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice).
Playing With Words can be purchased from Cornerhouse Books
“…captures numerous valuable snapshots of activity in areas that are often only semi-visible….” – The Wire – April, 2009
La Scena Musicale
I am a regular contributor to La Scena Musicale, Canada’s largest national classical music magazine. Since 2001, I have also been the magazine’s news editor, a position that I enjoy as it requires keeping up-to-date on daily classical and opera news from around the world. Pull my leg.
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The Lebrecht Weekly
For nearly 4 years, I have honoured to be the editor of the Lebrecht Weekly newsletter that goes out every Wednesday of the week to a subscription service to hundrds of dedicated Norman Lebrecht fans.
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MFA Thesis:
Generation X – The Opera
Whether I am listening to the bustling restaurant below my apartment in the dinner hours, or to a symphony orchestra at the concert hall, I hear them as one and the same; conversations that communicate. My research has been centered on looking beyond the metaphoric relationship between language and music and extending the relationship as a means to explore speech melody and rhythm composition.
My research not only places my work as a contemporary music composer, but helps me understand the inherent significance of my music as a codified sonic art form within society. My MFA graduating project, a spoken word opera entitled Generation X- Tales for an Accelerated Culture, exemplifies the rhythmic aspects of English language parlance on both the temporal and pitch class levels. I have developed a system of composition to facilitate the technical issues involved with documenting speech melody within a musical context. The spoken text is notated using what I call “vocal integrative counterpoint”, which incorporates human speech as it exists on the continuum between the pitch-time axes. Part of this methodology utilises phonetic, non-lexical fragmentations techniques used by linguists to isolate and establish the conscious control between all vocal utterances. I also employ techniques that mimic the conversational syntax of speech through the use of multi-voice counterpoint, canon, fugue, hockets, and melodic elisions. My research seeks to continue to develop spoken text, as a powerful means of expression by exploring the musicality inherent within it.
Generation X – The Opera (2006, 103 pages – PDF)
