BEAMS collaborates with Rapid Fire Theatre This Saturday April 13!

This Saturday the 13th at 10:00 pm BEAMS is thrilled to be performing our first collaboration with the madcap sketch comedy improvisers of Rapid Fire Theatre as part of their Bonfire Festival. BEAMers Allison Balcetis, saxophones, and Cam Neufeld, electric violin, will be joining Don Ross on clarinets and electronics to present Slippery Sounds with Ben Gorodetsky and him team of comic geniuses.

How does electroacoustic improv work with sketch improv? Divinely, as it turns out! Instead of hearing “tweedle tweedle” when someone says “look at the birds” you’re just as likely to hear “skronk! crumble”.....it works! Come on out! Zeidler Hall at the Citadel, deets in link below.

https://www.facebook.com/events/101127880078568/

Sat April 13 at 10pm
First half: RFT NEWS
(RFT’s own improvised news show)
&
Second half: SLIPPERY SOUNDS
(Featuring the musical stylings of the artists from the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society)
Music also courtesy of RFT’s one-man house band Nick Samoil
Tickets: http://www.tixonthesquare.ca/event/detail/5348/


 

IceBerg

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IceBerg was a success!

Here are some videos that were shown!

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IceBerg

The IceBerg has temporarily come out of his deep-freeze hibernation,

and is presenting, under the aegis of BEAMS, the

Boreal ElectroAcoustic Music Society,

a program at the Ortona Gallery.

Music, video, poetry,

even the opportunity for participation by members of the audience.

The program will include:

-- Musickk, a short vocal improvisation, in the style of sound poetry, by Ron Hartwell. Ron was an early member of OTHERWISE, Edmonton’s enemble for free musical improvisation in the late ‘70s.

-- Solitude, a video piece involving Haiga poetry and images by Gerald St. Maur, extended piano and voice audio by Reinhard von Berg, video realization by Piotr Grella-Mozejko.

-- Philip Jagger: Singkronoscities. Sinkronoscities is the art against the frontlines. Pushing the boundaries of performance video and music into something more beautiful.

-- Helve Sastok: Shooting Stars. A vibrant dynamic electroacoustic piece shown with video realization by Piotr Grella-Mozejko uses crumpling paper and wind chimes as sound sources.

-- IceBerg, a video based on photographs of Ice On Whyte taken by Evelyn Berg, video realized by Gene Kosowan, live sound track performed by Reinhard von Berg and Izumi Kuribayashi.

-- Becky’s Black Friday. Experimentalist Gene Kosowan will present “Becky’s Black Friday,” an unorthodox take on the Rebecca Black tune “Friday,” arguably the worst dance song ever recorded.

-- Four items from Nocturne, a book of poems and attendant paintings by Gerald St. Maur. Video realization by Gene Kosowan, audio performed live by Reinhard von Berg, Bill Damur, Izumi Kuribayashi, and Don Ross.

-- Apollinaire; trois poèmes. In the video trilogy “Apollinaire; trois poèmes,” Pro Coro Canada soprano Catherine Kubash recites three works by the French surrealist with soundscapes by Ativan Zoloft, Babysugarbag, and Poster Tube Killer.

-- Inside, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1970. This is from For Times To Come, 17 Texts for Intuitive Music. A similar collection of verbal improvisation scores by Stockhausen, Aus den sieben Tagen, was realized and recorded on vinyl by Stockhausen’s ensemble around 1970; these are some of the best group improvisations ever recorded. Some of these were performed by OTHERWISE around 1980.

There will be opportunity for audience members to participate in the first and last piece of the program.

Tickets $10; $5 members

Door: 7 PM

Concert: March 10, 7:30 PM

at the Ortona Gallery, 9722-102 St.

Further Information: call Reinhard at (780)439-6822; <ravonberg@gmail.com>

Wunderbar to host live screening of Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness, the movie that proclaimed marijuana to be “Public Enemy No. 1” when it was released more than three-quarters of a century ago, returns to the silver screen with a surreal soundscape. The movie, which will include live accompaniment, runs Sunday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. at Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus (8120-101 Street). Admission is $8, no minors allowed. BEAMS member fl3m will provide the score for the movie, while fellow BEAMS members Shawn Pinchbeck and Allison Balcetis will perform live with a series of vintage shorts.

“It's sure to be weird,” said Wunderbar owner Craig Martel, who viewed an advance screening of the doctored film before agreeing to a performance date.

For this occasion, the 1936 outing of Reefer Madness, originally funded by a church group to propagandize the evils of marijuana -- but wound up becoming a cult exploitation classic -- has been converted into a silent film, captioned and edited down to 45 minutes. All audio has been replaced by a totally original soundtrack created from such sources as orchestral tunings and factory machinery. The soundscape is designed to go beyond the contemporary confines of "stoner rock," and even into territory beyond what is deemed music.

Special guests include Shawn Pinchbeck, who is reviving his classic electroacoustic take on the 1929 surrealistic classic Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. San Diego megaflutist Marion Garver Fredrickson returns to Edmonton to present her take on the Georges Méliès 1902 film classic Le Voyage dans la Lune. Also featured will be saxophonist Allison Balcetis, slated to improvise to the Thomas Edison 1910 film version of Frankenstein.

For more information, visit wunderbar-edmonton.com online or The New Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus page on Facebook or email Gene Kosowan at g_kos@yahoo.ca

Ramshackle Day Parade with Beamer SkruntSkrunt

RAMSHACKLE DAY PARADE
JANUARY 22nd
8pm
BOHEMIA 10217 97st
entry by donation
18+
http://ramshackledayparade.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/ramshackle-day-paradejan-22snowskrunt-skruntbong-sample/

Art's Birthday Edmonton / Non Music Awards Night 2013 Saturday Jan 19th, Bohemia

Art's Birthday Edmonton Non Music Awards Night

When: Saturday, Jan 19, 2013
Where: Bohemia, 10217 - 97 Street NW 
Description: Art's Birthday Party 
Contact phil jagger

Beams Presents Arts Birthday Have yourself a Ear Cake Edmontons Non Music Awards fl3m Abram Hindle (Skruntskunt)'s Don Ross Bill Damur AgaperayGunexperiment Mystery Guests And Others $10 $5 for Beams Members 10217 97 St Bohemia!!! No Minors

The show was a success with more than 20+ in attendance. Videos didn't work out unfortunately. Here are some videos from the performers!

You are invited to Unsilent Night - a festive nouveau-caroling event that I have the pleasure of co-organizing for the second year, along with Sable Chan.

Get out your CD, cassette, or mp3 boombox, bundle up, and join us for Phil Kline's 45 minute interactive sound walk through the streets of the Old Strathcona neighbourhood in Edmonton.

5:00 pm, Saturday December 22nd
Meet at Gazebo Park (83 Ave. & 104 St).
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/223228601144212/?fref=ts
www.unsilentnight.com

WHAT IS IT?
Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night is a free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts, recorded on cassettes, CDs and mp3s, and played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets every December. People bring their own boomboxes and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound which is different from every listener's perspective. Since 1992, this 45-minute work has grown into a worldwide annual communal event that has become an essential part of many winter holiday celebrations. 2012 marks the second year of Unsilent Night in Edmonton.

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
Most people consider it loud and joyous. Glittering and mysterious. The average effect seems to be somewhere between pacifying and invigorating. Joe Woodard of The Los Angeles Times describes it as "A dreamy fruitcake of parts, tranquil even through its anarchy." And K. Leander Williams in Time Out New York says “Kline’s luminous, shimmering wash of bell tones is one of the loveliest communal new-music experiences you’ll ever encounter, and it’s never the same twice.” The Onion calls it “an ambient wash of heaven-sent shimmer, recognizable as seasonal mostly for its modulating bells and time-stretched hymnal melodies.”

HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?
You do not need to bring a boombox to join in, but it is more fun if you can! For those that like to plan ahead, you can download the audio files ahead of time from www.unsilentnight.com/download.html to load onto your mp3 player, CD or cassette. We will have extra cassettes, CD's, and boomboxes available. We will also have mp3 speakers for those who bring iPods, smartphones, or other mp3 players. This year, an iPhone app is also available.
Please RSVP if you do need to borrow equipment, as there is a limited number of each item.
Plan to arrive a few minutes early to get set up.

Robert Normandeau, Surround Sound Spectacular

On December 1, 2012 at 8:00 pm at the University of Alberta Fine Arts Bldg., Room 2-7 the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society in cooperation with the University of Alberta Music Dept. present Montreal based electroacoustic music composer Robert Normandeau.

http://www.electrocd.com/en/bio/normandeau_ro/

Robert Normandeau is one of the world’s leading composers of acousmatic music composition, works that are composed of sounds rather than musical notes. We will construct a special listening environment for this event with a 16 speaker surround sound system with which Normandeau will perform a live diffusion of his compositions manually on a mixing console.


Normandeau has performed his works worldwide. His compositions have won numerous awards and competitions over the last 25 years. His compositions have been described as “cinema for the ear”, in which ‘meaning’ as well as ‘sound’ are explored.


This concert will promote his new recent CD release Palimpsestes released on the iconic Quebec based label empreintes DIGITALes.


Admission to this event is free. For further information, contact Shawn Pinchbeck at BEAMS or visit the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) page on Facebook.

Contact:

Shawn Pinchbeck, Vice President, BEAMS

Sounds, Images and Videos from the Sea of Sound

Sea of Sound went very well, we had a wide variety of submissions, performances, videos and compositions!

Here's a sampling of some of the 2012 instalment of Sea of Sound:
Direct Playlist Link



Video compositions by John Osbourne and Don Ross were shown as well:

Lines for Clarinet from John Osborne on Vimeo.

NME Festival - Sea of Sound Nights!

The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) in conjunction with New Music Edmonton’s Edmonton New Music Festival will present two evenings of performance on November 15th and 16th at Bohemia (10217-97 Street) that somehow relate to the two themes Improvise/Synthesize and MediaX.

The Sea of Sound Festival3 is an event that celebrates the symphony of sounds happening around us that we take for granted in our daily lives. We hope it acts like a 12,000 km oil change and tune-up for the ears, re-tuning the way we listen and hear the world around us. BEAMS wishes to explore this theme by presenting works that present the audience, participants or performers with new or innovative approaches to sound art performance.

At the NME Festival – Sea of Sound nights, BEAMS members will be performing at Bohemia on November 15, 2012 and November 16, 2012.

The Sea of Sound nights occur over two evenings and the prelimary lineup includes:

• Improvise/Synthesize – Thursday, November 15, 2012
• Don Ross – Zizivoodoo
  Wilf Kozub – I’m in Love with the City
  Everybody (?) – Untitled
  Shawn Pinchbeck – Cell
  Vipers Without Vapours  - Sound
• Media X – Friday, November 16, 2012
• Phil Jagger – Hertitagauzen
  John Osborne – Line for Clarinet
  Gene Kosowan – e is for wEbber
  John Osborne – Raga Marwa
  Wayne DeFehr – Untitled
  Skruntskrunt (Abram Hindle) – Interactive

Doors around 9pm, Music at 10pm sharp.

A new BEAMS Website!

We updated our webpage!

Our old webpage can be found here: http://beams.ca/index-20121101.html

Oct 4 Ramshackle Day Parade with Don Ross

Don Ross will be performing at Bohemia at 8pm on October 4th, 2012 with the Ramshackle Day Parade!

(un)sound: electro meets acoustic event Sept. 29 at the Harcourt House Annex.

BEAMS & Harcourt House - (un)plugged

The evening, part of Alberta Culture Days, will involve a series of duos pairing electronic artists with acoustic musicians, many of them familiar to the Edmonton scene.

Artists will include San Diego flutist Marion Garver Fredrickson in her first Edmonton stage appearance since the BEAMS Sea of Sound Festival in 2005, and Shawn Pinchbeck who will perform for the first time since successfully defending his doctorate thesis earlier this year at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Also on the bill will be Pocket Universe, who released their latest CD, Torment, in 2012, and performance art-oriented act Agaperaygunexperiment.

Rounding out the bill will be Don Ross, Wayne DeFehr and Gene Kosowan.

Admission is $10 ($5 to BEAMS and Harcourt House members).

http://www.facebook.com/events/275059612595985/

Addendum

(un)sound was a success! There were excellent performances (video linked above) and excellent turn out. Please browse the video to see what you missed!

The Saturn Sessions

The Saturn Sessions

Press Release
May 19 - 8 pm (7pm Door)
Ortona Armoury
9722 - 102 Street
Tickets $5

Arts Birthday

Arts Birthday

Sea of Sound Festival

Nov 18 - 20 - Sea of Sound Festival

BEAMS Newsletter (Spring, 2009)

BEAMS Newsletter (Spring, 2009)
(PDF Document)