Kenneth Newby

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Kenneth Newby
Kenneth profile.jpg
Newby 2007
Background information
Birth nameKenneth Clayton Newby
Born (1956-09-29) 29 September 1956 (age 66)
Victoria, British Columbia Canada
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Composer
  • musician
  • media artist
  • software designer
  • animator
  • sound designer
  • educator
  • scholar
Labels
  • Songlines
  • Fathom
  • Extreme
  • City of Tribes
  • Flicker Art Collaboratory
Website kennethnewby.net

Kenneth Newby (born 1956) is a Canadian media artist, composer-performer, educator, interaction designer, and audio producer based in British Columbia. [1] He is known for his innovative use of technology in the creation of music, media performances, and installations. [2] He is a research associate at the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of British Columbia, and Director of the Flicker Art Collaboratory at Frog Hollow, Mayne Island.

Contents

Early life

Newby was born in Victoria, British Columbia.

Career

Newby joined the research faculty in media arts at Simon Fraser University, where he was a member of the Computational Poetics research group with Aleksandra Dulic and Martin Gotfrit. At the University of the Fraser Valley he was Associate Professor in Media Arts., where he studied creative forces in the field of computational art.

Newby created performances and exhibits which integrated new media diffusion techniques and augmented reality systems, and he developed generative systems for the composition and performance of music and visual art.

In the 1990s Newby released several solo albums, including Ecology of Souls in 1993. [3] He also collaborated on recordings with the groups Trance Mission and Lights in a Fat City. [4] [5]

In 2004 Newby collaborated with the group Gamelan Madu Sari on their album of Javanese music, New Nectar, [6] and later contributed to their live performance installation, "Semar's Journey", in Vancouver. [7]

Newby's recent work is focussed on long-term projects in generative art including the development of the Flicker Computer Assisted Composition system — a computer-aided system for the composition and performance of contemporary classical music; and Becoming World — a project in generative visual art in collaboration with Aleksandra Dulic.

Newby also worked as an interactivity consultant for Pixar Animation Studios, and as a sound artist and audio software developer at Electronic Arts.

Discography

Solo

YearNameRef
1993 Ecology of Souls [8] [9]
1997/2017 Sirens [10]
1998/2017Seasonal Round (an opera with libretto and vocal performance by Robert Anthony)
2017Chambers — Emergence Trilogy volume one
2017Elegeia — Emergence Trilogy volume two
2017spectral (golden) lyric — Emergence Trilogy volume three

Trance Mission

YearNameRef
1993 Trance Mission [11]
1995 Meanwhile... [12]
1996 Head Light

Lights in a Fat City

YearNameRef
1993 Sound Column [13]
1999 Memory Ground [14]

Other appearances

YearNameArtistRef
1994 Landing Stephen Kent
1995The Shirt I Slept InBeth Custer
1996 Halcyon Days w/ Steve Roach & Stephen Kent [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gamelan</span> Traditional ensemble music of Indonesia

Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called kendhang/Kendang, which register the beat. The kemanak and gangsa are commonly used gamelan instruments in Bali. Other instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed instrument called a rebab, a zither-like instrument siter and vocalists named sindhen (female) or gerong (male).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative art</span> Art created by a set of rules, without human intervention

Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. In some cases the human creator may claim that the generative system represents their own artistic idea, and in others that the system takes on the role of the creator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pelog</span> Indonesian musical scale used in Gamelan

Pelog is one of the essential tuning systems used in gamelan instruments that has a heptatonic scale. The other, older, scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches. Even in ensembles that have all seven notes, many pieces only use a subset of five notes, sometimes the additional 4th tone is also used in a piece like western accidentals.

<i>Kecak</i> Indonesian traditional dance

Kecak, known in Indonesian as tari kecakilolahhe, is a form of Balinese Hindu dance and music drama that was developed in the 1930s in Bali, Indonesia. Since its creation, it has been performed primarily by men, with the first women's kecak group having started in 2006. The dance is based on the story of the Ramayana and is traditionally performed in temples and villages across Bali.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Tenzer</span>

Michael Tenzer is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infected Mushroom</span> Israeli psytrance/electronica duo

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Philip Lionel Corner is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist.

Daniel Goode is an American composer and clarinetist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mantle Hood</span> American ethnomusicologist

Mantle Hood was an American ethnomusicologist. Among other areas, he specialized in studying gamelan music from Indonesia. Hood pioneered, in the 1950s and 1960s, a new approach to the study of music, and the creation of the first American university program devoted to ethnomusicology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was known for a suggestion, somewhat novel at the time, that his students learn to play the music they were studying.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Kent (musician)</span>

Stephen Kent is a professional didgeridoo performer, percussionist, composer and recording artist. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dika Newlin</span>

Dika Newlin was a composer, pianist, professor, musicologist, and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg and was a Schoenberg scholar and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond from 1978 to 2004. She performed as an Elvis impersonator and played punk rock while in her seventies in Richmond, Virginia.

Trance Mission is a world fusion ensemble co-founded in San Francisco by American clarinetist and composer Beth Custer and British-born didgeridoo player Stephen Kent in 1992, with Canadian musician Kenneth Newby and American percussionist John Loose. Their music incorporates elements of jazz, fourth world and ethnoambient music styles. In the 1990s, the group recorded four albums on the ambient label City of Tribes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orchid Ensemble</span> Canadian musical ensemble

The Orchid Ensemble is a Canadian musical ensemble formed in 1997 in Vancouver. It is led by Lan Tung from Taiwan on erhu, with Yu-Chen Wang from Taiwan on guzheng and Jonathan Bernard from Canada on various percussion instruments. Former guzheng players include Haiqiong Deng, Mei Han, Geling Jiang, and Bei Bei He.

Aleksandra Dulic is a Serbian Canadian painter, animator, media artist and scholar. Aleksandra is an associate professor in Creative Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC), serving as Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at (UBC). She is Visiting Professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade. In 1998 Aleksandra received BFA from University of Arts in Belgrade, MFA from the School for the Contemporary Arts in 2000 and Ph.D. from the School of Interactive Art and Technology in 2006 from Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada.

Michael Vincent is a music journalist, publisher, and composer, situated in Toronto, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systems art</span> Art influenced by cybernetics and systems theory

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gandrung</span> Indonesian traditional dance

Gandrung is a traditional dance from Indonesia. Gandrung has many variations and is popular in Bali, Lombok and Eastern Java among the Balinese, Sasak and Javanese. The most popular variation is gandrung from the Banyuwangi region in the eastern peninsula of Java, so much that the city is often referred as Kota Gandrung or "the city of gandrung". Originally a ritual dance dedicated to the goddess of rice and fertility, Dewi Sri, it is currently performed as a social dance of courtship and love in communal and social events, or as a tourist attraction. Gandrung Sewu Festival is held at Banyuwangi annually.

<i>Trance Mission</i> (Trance Mission album) 1993 studio album by Trance Mission

Trance Mission is the debut album of Trance Mission, released in 1993 through City of Tribes Records.

<i>Head Light</i> 1996 studio album by Trance Mission

Head Light is the third album by Trance Mission, released on October 21, 1996 through City of Tribes Records.

<i>Condong</i> Indonesian traditional dance

Condong is a Balinese dance which is often performed as a preface to legong and accompanied by the semar pangulingan style of gamelan. The term also refers to a stock character, a quintessential representation of the maidservant, found in the condong dance, as well as the legong, gambuh, and arja dances.

References

  1. John Shepherd; David Horn; Dave Laing, Paul Oliver, Peter Wicke (8 May 2003). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Part 1 Performance and Production. A&C Black. p. 486. ISBN   978-1-84714-472-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. Electronic Musician. Vol. 13, Issues 8-12. Polyphony Publishing Company. 1997. p. 28.
  3. "Soundscapes". Tucson Weekly, July 1995, by Linda Kohanov
  4. P-form: Performance Art Magazine. Vol. Issues 34-41. Randolph Street Gallery. 1994. p. 137.
  5. The Beat. Vol. 16. Bongo Productions. 1997. p. 28.
  6. "Semar's Journey". Georgia Straight, by Alexander Varty on June 6th, 2007
  7. "Semar's Journey". Georgia Straight, by Alexander Varty on June 6, 2007
  8. "Kenneth Newby Ecology of Souls". AllMusic review; access date 26 April 2013
  9. The Wire. Vol. 131–136. C. Parker. 1995. p. 49.
  10. " Kenneth Newby Sirens". AllMusic Review by Sean Cooper
  11. CD Review. Vol. 11, Issues 1-6. WGE Pub. 1994.
  12. " Trance Mission Meanwhile". AllMusic Review by Jim Brenholts
  13. "Lights in a Fat City Sound Column". AllMusic Review .
  14. Memory Ground: Credits at AllMusic . Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  15. " Stephen Kent / Steve Roach Halcyon Days". AllMusic Review by Carol Wright