Robin Minard (born 1953) is a Canadian composer and installation artist.
Minard was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He began his studies of composition at the University of Western Ontario, then at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, studying under Gilles Tremblay. He then continued his studies with John Rea at McGill University. He was a member of the music design and performance ensemble Sonde from 1979 to 1988. In 1988 he undertook doctoral studies in environmental music at the University of Paris VIII studying under composer Horacio Vaggione. From 1992 to 1996 he taught at the studio for electronic music at the TU Berlin. Since 1997, he has been Professor of Electro-Acoustic Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt and the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany.
Minard has concentrated his work on electro-acoustic composition and sound installations in public since the early 1980s. One primary area of interest in his work is dealing with acoustic space in an urban world increasingly polluted with noise, and redefining the concept of functional music in that context. He points out that, with the exception of concert halls, theaters and some conference rooms, the ear is rarely a factor in the planning and design of architecture and urban infrastructure. Minard describes two different strategies of "composing space" which enters into dialogue with the architectural and acoustic environment: conditioning and articulation. Conditioning he considers to be analogous to laying a mantle of color over a space in the visual realm. Articulation refers to the addition of the dimension of time to architecture using sound; the movement of sound articulates and decorates the space. Some examples of his work utilizing these principles include; Music for Passageways (1985), Sound Catchers (1991), Silent Music (1994), Still / Life (1996), Intermezzo (1999), Sound Bits (2002), Outside In (2006) and Klangzug (2010).
Moshe Safdie is an Israeli-Canadian-American architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. He is known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design throughout his six-decade career. His projects include cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; housing; mixed-use urban centers; airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities in the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. Safdie is most identified with designing Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport, as well as his debut project Habitat 67, which was originally conceived as his thesis at McGill University. He holds legal citizenship in Israel, Canada, and the United States.
Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014.
Alexander Brott,, born Joël Brod, was a Canadian conductor, composer, violinist and music teacher.
Acousmatic music is a form of electroacoustic music that is specifically composed for presentation using speakers, as opposed to a live performance. It stems from a compositional tradition that dates back to the origins of musique concrète in the late 1940s. Unlike acoustic or electroacoustic musical works that are realized from scores, compositions that are purely acousmatic often exist solely as fixed media audio recordings.
Gilles Tremblay, was a Canadian composer from Quebec.
István Anhalt was a Hungarian-Canadian composer.
Hildegard Westerkamp is a Canadian composer, radio artist, teacher and sound ecologist of German origin. She studied flute and piano at the Conservatory of Music in Freiburg, West Germany from 1966 to 1968 and moved to Canada in 1975. She received a Bachelor of Music from the University of British Columbia in 1972 and a Master of Arts from Simon Fraser University in 1988. She taught acoustic communication at Simon Fraser University from 1982 to 1991.
Sonde is a music design and performance ensemble based in Montreal. From 1975 to about 1985, Sonde gave hundreds of performances in North America and Europe on sound sources of their own invention. Sonde was also engaged in television, film, and dance.
The Schulich School of Music is one of the constituent faculties of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 555, Rue Sherbrooke Ouest. The faculty was named after the benefactor Seymour Schulich.
Christian Calon is a French-born Canadian composer who is active in electroacoustic music. He has worked extensively in large computer-based studios in Canada and Europe and has received commissions from the Canada Council, the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Marseille, and the Ministère des Affaires culturelles du Québec. His work is written in an expressionist and narrative style and his pieces are characterized by acousmatic diffusion.
Gilles Gobeil is an electroacoustic music composer from Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, Canada, and currently living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Gobeil received his musical education at the Université de Montréal. Gobeil is professor for music theory at the Cégep de Drummondville and was guest professor for electro-acoustics at the Université de Montréal and at the Conservatoire de Montréal.
Åke Parmerud is a Swedish composer, musician, and multimedia artist noted for his acoustic and electronic works, which have been performed mostly in Europe, Mexico, and Canada. He is also noted for the design of stage and acoustics as well as interactive media and software. He has received recognition for his work from a number of festivals in Europe and has won two Swedish Grammis awards. He has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music since 1998.
Magali Babin is a Canadian musician, composer and sound artist based primarily in Montreal, Quebec. Active since the mid-1980s, she has received several commissions from many new music festivals and organisations.
Alcides Emigdio Lanza, known professionally as alcides lanza, is a Canadian composer, conductor, pianist, and music educator of Argentinian birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1976. As both a composer and performer he is known as an exponent of contemporary classical music and avant-garde music. His works often utilize a combination of traditional and unusual instruments, and incorporate electronic sounds and extensions. He is also known for using special lighting effects when presenting his music. Many of his compositions are published by Boosey & Hawkes, and lanza himself owns his own publishing company, Shelan Editions. He is an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers., and an Honorary Member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community.
Michel Longtin is a Canadian composer and music educator based in Montreal. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, he won the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music in 1986 for Pohjatuuli.
Donald Steven is a Canadian-American composer, music educator, and academic administrator. An associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre, he won a BMI Student Composer Award in 1970, the Canadian Federation of University Women's Golden Jubilee Creative Arts Award in 1972, the 1987 Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year and the 1991 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. His musical compositions are characterized by their emphasis on instrumental colour and atmosphere. Perhaps his most well known piece is his Illusions for solo cello, which has been widely performed in concert and on television and radio broadcasts.
Kurt Stallmann is an American composer who lives and works in Houston, Texas.
Jean Piché is a Canadian composer and video artist.
Sound scenography is the process of staging spaces and environments through sound. It combines expertise from the fields of architecture, acoustics, communication, sound design and interaction design to convey artistic, historical, scientific, or commercial content or to establish atmospheres and moods.