Sound and Music

Sottovoce is an annual experimental music festival held in London organised by No.Signal at various venues including Cafe Oto. St Marks Rise Church and State 51. The festival hosts performances, discussions and screenings on sound, and experimental music. 

Sound@Media is an on-going web-project on sound featuring a Sound Map of Seoul, Korea and various surrounding projects and live events, screenings and workshops, hosted by Moonji Cultural Institute, Saii.

I've been avoiding this year's Proms on principle - the principle that there's not been anything very tempting on. But I was enticed out by yesterday's late night mix of English and American Experimentalism, and there was lots to enjoy in the performances by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.

Lately there seem to have been quite a few projects involving live creation of scores from sensor data, including John Eacott's Flood Tide, generating a score by processing data gathered from a flow sensor in a river; The

A participant on a recent workshop at Kew Gardens told me about a project he is involved with. It's called the Open Boat Orchestra (or OBO if you prefer an abbreviation!)

The project was the brainchild of professional sailor, Lia Ditton and it uses real-time data from a sail boat to create a unique experience in sound.

Some composers seem like a better idea than they turn out to be. Like bouncing cheques they make promises they can't live up to. They may sound like interesting characters, the ideas behind the music may intrigue - and yet the pieces themselves itself fails to live up to expectation.