FLOATING SOUND GALLERY

Vienna

Elizabeth Anderson

Elizabeth Anderson’s artistic production comprises acousmatic, mixed, and radiophonic works as well as works for multimedia and sound installations. Her music has won international awards and has been performed in international venues for over thirty years.

It is the fascination with space and the expression of this realm through sound that is among her primary motivations for choosing to compose with electroacoustic techniques. She sees in this medium a rich and powerful way not only to convey to the listener these opposite realms and their strong complementarities, but also to share with the audience her imaginary world which she translates and develops through her music.

Elizabeth Anderson developed a complete curriculum for electroacoustic composition at the Académie de Soignies (Academy of Soignies, Belgium) from 1994 to 2002. She is currently a professor in the department of electroacoustic music at ARTS2 / École Supérieure des Arts, Mons, Belgium where she teaches multiphonic acousmatic composition and the semiology of electroacoustic music.

She completed initial degrees in music in the United States before travelling to Belgium where she studied composition with Jacqueline Fontyn, electronic music with Joris De Laet and electroacoustic composition with Annette Vande Gorne. She earned a doctorate in electroacoustic composition with Denis Smalley at City University London (England, UK) in 2011.

Underlying her creative and pedagogical approach is her research on the perception of electroacoustic music, to which end she conceived models to explore the meaning of electroacoustic music as constructed by the composer and the listener. She has published several articles about her research.

In March 2022, she was elected as a full member of the Class of Arts at the Royal Academy of Belgium.

http://elizabethlanganderson.com

Solar Winds, 2012, 09’ 35``

Octophonic acousmatic work

The idea to present Solar Winds near the end of 2012 sprang from a desire to honor the astronomers of the ancient Mayan culture and their worship of the Sun at a time that marks the completion of one Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and the beginning of another.

Solar Winds incorporates acoustic translations of electromagnetic phenomena that are produced by the Earth as well as other astronomical phenomena, and constitutes an imaginary celestial aural journey from the perspective of the listener who is Earth.

Solar Winds was realized in 2012 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches in Ohain (Belgium) and was premiered on October 27, 2012 during the 8th festival Visiones Sonoras organized by the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS) in the Auditorio de la Unidad Académica Cultural of the UNAM Campus Morelia (Mexico). The piece was commissioned by Musiques & Recherches.

Solar Winds was composed with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Direction générale de la culture, Service de la musique). Thanks to David Baltuch, Alexis Boilley, Rodrigo Sigal, and Annette Vande Gorne.

The diptych Solar Winds…and Beyondwas awarded First Prize in the Musica Nova 2015 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Prague, Czech Republic).