VS17 JAMU | CMMAS

CREATIVE MINDS COME TOGETHER

Conciertos Acusmáticos

Acousmatic concerts

JAMU

Biographies

Michal Indrák

Indrák was born on 8th February 1982 in Krnov (Czech Republic) and is composer of contemporery and experimental music, improviser and librarian. In 2001-2003 he studied music education and mathematics at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). He graduated in composition at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno in 2008 and finished Ph.D. studies in 2013. He is a member of the Brno Improvising Unit and Dunami ensemble. Indrák passed many courses on composition. In 2013 he participated in the Festival OSTRAVA DAYS 2013 with the composers Philip Glass, Christian Wolff, Bernard Lang, Petr Kotik and others. Michal wrote two books: Progression of musical forms in music of the 20th century with regard to the relationship to the music content and Formální a interpretační problematika smyčcových kvartetů Miloslava Ištvana with Štěpán Filípek. Michal teaches at FEKT VUT (Audioengineering) and Faculty of Music JAMU (Theory of composition and semiotics).

Dan Dlouhý

(Brno – Czech Republic, 1965)

Composer, percussionist and instruments' creator, he is the founding member, artistic and stage director of the DAMA DAMA Percussion Ensemble, the duo CONVERGENCY and Art Inkognito. Graduate of Brno Technical University, in Nuclear Equipment (1983 – 88) and of JAMU in Brno in percussion performance (1988 - 92), composition with A. S. Piňos (1993 - 99) and Theory of Composition (Ph.D.) (1999-2002).

He is the composer of more than 150 works and has performed in multiple occasions for both Czech and foreign radio and television. He has released 10 albums profiling the work of DAMA DAMA and CONVERGENCE, and worked as a musician and composer creating music for television and theater.

Dan Dlouhy has received different awards from the Czech Music Fund, Czech Music Board, Generation 1995, Musica Nova 2000 and the European Percussion Ensembles Competition in Enschede. Since 2011 he is the head of the Department of Composition, Conducting and Opera Directing at the Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, Czech Republic.

Jiří Suchánek

Czech sound and media artist, musician and multimedia experimenter focused in building permanent audio-light installations that are usually interactive and placed in natural or public spaces. In his works he is connecting sound, light, sculptural objects, electronics + code with carefully chosen spaces. Through his work he explores relationship between nature, technology and durability of the electronic media in a wild climatic situations. He also performs with his experimental electronic music based on a sonification of atomic data. Jiří Suchánek studied atelier video-multimedia-performance (Keiko Sei, Peter Ronai) at Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology. He attended several workshops and study fellowships. Currently he is at fellowship at the Institute of Sonology in den Haag. Since 2009 Jiří works as an assistant at Department of Audiovisual Technology at Faculty of Fine Arts Brno University of Technology where he teaches Audio technology and History of SoundArt.

Jan Kavan

Is a composer, cellist, programmer and game developer. He achieved master's degree and doctoral degree at JAMU in Brno (Composition and Theory of Composition) where he currently teaches composition, multimedia composition, interactive and electroacoustic music. In 1999, together with Ivo Medek, co-founded Ensemble Marijan - specialized at performing their own composed, comprovised and multimedia pieces.

He is a member of a string quartet “Metamorphosis” and an international string formation “Rêve Général”. As a soloist he performed with North Czech Philharmonic, Czech Chamber Soloists and the Moravian Philharmonic specializing at contemporary classical music. He is long time member of an experimental ensemble tEóRia OtraSu.

Apart from traditional composition he specializes in procedural, adaptive and live response music as well as multimedia compositions. He authored a book about Pure Data and often lectures about procedural and adaptive music at various events and conferences. As a game developer he worked on many titles and last year released multiple awards-winning psychological horror game “Someday You'll Return”.

Otto Wanke

After moving to Vienna, he began to study instrumental composition under Wolfgang Liebhart at the Konservatorium Wien. Additionally he started to study film composition under Iris ter Schiphorst and electroacoustic composition under Karlheinz Essl at the Music university of Vienna (MDW). Recently he has been active as a performer of electroacoustic music, working as a soloist as well as in cooperation with other musicians. 2018 he was employed as an assistant at the department of ethnomusicology at the music university of Vienna and he started doing PhD program with focus on spectral music (MDW Vienna, under Gesine Schröder).

Program notes

Michal Indrák: Piece in rotating phaseThe inspiration for the piece was the sound research of a simple, but internally very complex micro event sound stretched in time and space, which undergoes morphing in its individual partial of sound spectra. This main sound event is the process of brewing coffee in a mocha press as a symbol of the transformation of things by the activity of an external inputs into very sophisticated and unlinear shapes. The process of brewing coffee as a rotating ritual of a recurring event that brings expectations from brand new day.

Otto Wanke: Cycling

The initial idea came to me while working in Max/MSP. By placing the limiter to the outlet of several delay lines, various gestures were shaped using extreme feedback. Afterwards the piece was divided into four sections, characterized by different forms and effects of the feedback. The initial feedback procedure was further developed into the compositional process within the sound synthesis. The feedback effect was also associated with different repetitive structures, which were linked to the related compositional techniques like granular synthesis, beat slicing or scrubbing.

Dan Dlouhý: Voices

The intentionally stylistically versatile composition from 2020 uses a variety of musical material from transformed sounds of the environment, through modified voices to instrumental passages with the names of jazz and contemporary classical music. Different musical atmospheres with occasional vigor of the musical and sound excerpts are built in contrast to the fragility of the vocal expression, which always re-emerges despite repeated silencing.

Jiří Suchánek: Tranfers, composed 2018 for Radiocustica, radio Vltava

Moves cause further moves. Empty spaces fill up over time and overfull accelerates. Simultanous movement of money, people, information, rubble, planets, responsibility, love, photons or attention. The common denominator is the complexity and incomprehensibility of hyper-parallel movements, in which one tries (probably within the instinct of self-preservation) to make order at least for a short time. Flashing moments of the effort to see and clarify are intertwined with the composition, as well as the rush of chaos and hard-to-catch events over time. Prefered is the perception of sound and its spectromorphology as a symbol. I am close to understanding composition as nature - a dynamic, non-linear system, where events never repeat exactly the same and each act in the overall process means something. Compositions is collage of recorded acoustic, synthesized (Kyma X, max/msp, Reaktor) and processed sounds.

Jan Kavan: Distant Spaces, composed 5/2021

Distant Spaces is an electroacoustic composition inspired by a year-long COVID-19 lockdown when the only possibility to venture out was to close my eyes and imagine distant, surreal worlds far away from the Earth. The composition catalogues one such a trip where I met both friends and strangers while respecting the mutual both physical and spiritual distance.