Saturday, May 28, 2022; 8pm
Pacific Spirit United Church, Vancouver, BC
Program Order
George Rahi (~25 minutes)
Sarah Davachi (~45 minutes)
Intermission
Stefan Maier (~25 minutes)
Artists’ Notes
George Rahi
Music for the Augmented Pipe Organ
Music for the Augmented Pipe Organ is a series of compositions which merge the vibrant acoustics of the pipe organ with the techniques of electronic and post-digital music. Through computer control of the organ’s pipes and stops, the timbres of the instrument are disassociated from its keyboard interface to conjure extremes of minimal and maximal soundworlds. Exploring new affordances and anomalies of the organ, the performance intertwines digital processes of machine listening and controlled feedback to respond to the resonances between each instrument and space. Following this process of hybridizing acoustic and digital performance modalities, the performance unfolds radical possibilities for the world’s oldest mechanical synthesizer.
George Rahi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. He uses self-created and altered instruments as a method of exploring the intersections between acoustic and digital technologies, modes of listening, and spatial and architectural thinking. His work includes installations, instrument making, composition, solo + ensemble performance, and works for radio, theatre & public spaces. Recent presentations have included Artificial Sonification exhibition (Matera), SPEKTRUM (Berlin), Kunst-Station Sankt Peter (Cologne),Fusebox Festival (Austin), Vancouver Pro Musica, and Regenerative Feedback Festival (Rotterdam). He has been an artist in residence at EMS in Stockholm (2019), Locus Sonus Research Group in Marseille (2021), and hcma architecture in Vancouver (2022). He holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University.
Sarah Davachi
Sarah Davachi is a master at blending intricate textures and timbres, enveloping listeners in delicately intense, durational sonic spaces. Returning to Pacific Spirit United Church’s impressive 74 stop Casavant Frères pipe organ, where a portion of her epic album Cantus, Descant (2020) was recorded, Davachi will offer up a long-form, acoustic, solo performance that incorporates works from Cantus, Descant and Antiphonals (2021), as well as some new compositions.
Davachi is a composer and performer whose work is concerned with the close intricacies of timbral and temporal space, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures that emphasize subtle variations in texture, overtone complexity, psychoacoustic phenomena, and temperament and intonation. Her compositions span both solo and chamber ensemble formats, incorporating a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Similarly informed by minimalist and long-form tenets, baroque leanings toward slow-moving chordal suspension, and experimental production practices of the recording studio environment, in her sound is manifest an intimate and patient experience that lessens perceptions of the familiar and the distant.
In addition to her acclaimed recorded output, Davachi has toured extensively across the globe alongside artists such as Grouper, Quatuor Bozzini, William Basinski, the London Contemporary Orchestra, Oren Ambarchi, Suzanne Ciani, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Apartment House, Catherine Lamb, Aaron Dilloway, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Ellen Arkbro, Michael Pisaro, Loren Connors, and filmmaker Paul Clipson. Her work has been presented at Southbank Centre (London, UK), Kontraklang (Berlin, DE), Radio France (Paris, FR), Lampo (Chicago, USA), Issue Project Room (New York, USA), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg, DE), Organ Reframed (London, UK), The Getty Center (Los Angeles, USA), Orgelpark (Amsterdam, NL), Le Guess Who? (Utrecht, NL), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montréal, CA), Ambient Church (Los Angeles, USA), Open Frame (Sydney, AU), Tusk Festival (Newcastle, UK), Mazeum Festival (Kyoto, JP), Café OTO (London, UK), Unsound (Krakow, PL), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid, ES), Barbican Centre (London, UK), and Western Front (Vancouver, CA). She currently operates the record label Late Music, founded in 2020 with the partner labels division of Warp Records.
Between 2007 and 2017, Davachi had the unique opportunity to work for the National Music Centre in Canada as an interpreter and content developer of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments. She has held artist residencies with The Banff Centre for the Arts, Quatuor Bozzini, STEIM, Elektronmusikstudion, OBORO, the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, the National Music Centre, and the Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments, and holds a master’s degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. Davachi is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, focusing on timbre and critical organology, and is based in Los Angeles, California, USA.
https://www.sarahdavachi.com/
https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/
linktr.ee/sarahdavachi
Stefan Maier
Tractatus de Umbra Manus (1447)
for organ, pre-recorded ensemble (Cornetto, Recorders, Theorbo, Renaissance Trombone, Renaissance Organ, Choir, Percussion) and spatialized loudspeaker array
MS Bodley 494, flls 155v-156r. Diagram of the northern entry to Ezekiel’s temple. Attributed to Æneas Infretim.
Tractatus de umbra manus (1447) is a concert-installation that examines the history of mystical spatial composition during the turn of the renaissance. It is a part of a larger ongoing project in speculative medievalism. It consists of a growing body of forged compositions that explore magical and occult musical practices originating in the pre-modern era. Above all, the work is inspired by conductor-musicologist Björn Schmelzer’s proclamation of the monstrosity of early music — that its practice might be best understood as a form of sounding necromancy.
What follows is an excerpt from Tractatus de Umbra Manus (1447):
“…at the request of his holiness Eugene IV, on the occasion of the consecration of the Florence Duomo, Guillaume Dufay of the papal choir composed the motet Nuper Rosarum Flores in the 1436th year of our Lord. The most perfect relations of the Temple of Jerusalem as described in the First Book of Kings — that of six to four to two to three — were used by DuFay to compose the work’s taleae and color, thus instantiating a celestial order present but unseen. As the voices resounded throughout the cathedral, divine proportion and sounding number sang in concord as the Temple of the Israelites was summoned within the just proportions of the building. The most Holy of all spaces became incarnate once again. All of the cathedral was filled with the sounds of harmonious symphonies as well as the concords of diverse instruments, so that it seemed not without reason that the angels and the sounds and singing of divine paradise had been sent from heaven to earth. The papal delegacy and the congregation were so possessed by ecstasy that all seemed to enjoy the life of the Blessed in those sacred moments. For this most venerable service rendered to the Lord and his florentine flock, Dufay was declared canonciate of Cambrai, by both motu proprio and papal bull.
As word of his holiness’ praise and Dufay’s new title spread throughout Christendom, one Æneas Infretim, a young composer placed in a backwater Abbey in Germania, known only for his stubborn adherence to the obtuse practices of the Ars Nova, set upon himself to compose a new work. Reading the visions of the prophet Ezekiel that foretold the appearance of a new Temple complex in Jerusalem, with numerations for great courtyards, buildings and liturgical structures, Æneas set the biblical proportions to music inspired by DuFay’s success. But, despite the detailed measurements given by the Prophet, Æneas found the setting to be difficult: it resulted in a work of musica ficta even more strange and obtuse than any he had heard before. (Little did he know that centuries earlier Gregory the Great had argued that the vision could only be understood as a spiritual allegory, and that any literal exegesis should be viewed as heretical. After all, one measurement suggests a door wider than the wall to which it is attached!). When the organ, voices, and fifes finally sounded, and the last bell was tolled, the monks, who had gathered to hear the new work, were so disturbed by the great cacophonous noise that the Abbot banned Æneas from ever composing for the monastery again. A great melancholy fell upon that place. The abbey was dissolved shortly thereafter. Facing ecumenical censure and excommunication, Æneas soon became a wandering fool, scrawling the measurements of Ezekiel’s temple on parchment as he roamed. It was rumored that his lute was tuned to a temperament capable only of strange discordant sonorities.
All that remains of Æneas Infretim’s work are a few scattered manuscripts and the legend of his work’s strange power…”
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Stefan Maier (b. 1990) is an artist and musician from Vancouver, Canada — the unceded, traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Through composition, performance, and multi-media installation, his practice explores the chaotic flows of sonic matter through instruments, buildings, sound systems, software, and bodies. Highlighting material instability and seeking out unruliness, his work aims to uncover alternate modes of authorship and listenings through historical and contemporary sound technology. His work has been presented by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), Unsound (PO), Ultima festival (NO), SPOR festival (DK), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (NE), and the National Music Centre (CAN) among many others. Recent sound design projects for dance and film have been presented at Sterischer Herbst (AU), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NE), and V-A-C foundation (RU). In 2017 he received a Mayor’s Art Award as an emerging musician from the City of Vancouver. He was a 2019 Macdowell Colony Fellow. Stefan will join SFU’s School of Contemporary Art as Assistant Professor of Sound Art and Sound Design in summer 2022.
