Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 things to know about Painting Music: One-Page Score Project
Vancouver New Music and Laboratorio team up for a new edition the graphic-score series, this one from the Sunshine Coast
When ennui has a throbbing soul (in three parts), a graphic score by Allyson Clay, was turned into sound by musician Matthew Ariaratnam.
Painting Music: One-Page Score Project—Sunshine Coast by Vancouver New Music and Laboratorio will be released March 12 at 4 pm PST and on March 19 at 4 pm PST on YouTube.
THE TERM “MUSICAL score” likely brings to mind a treble clef, bass clef, staff, and notes. In the world of Vancouver New Music, anything can be a score—from photographs and drawings to field recordings and maps. And with what’s known as graphic notation, anyone can be a composer. People don’t need any prior knowledge of how to write or read traditional musical notation, just a desire to create, play with, and explore sound.
VNM’s ongoing One-Page Score Project is all about translating those visuals into sound.
The organization’s next edition is a collaboration with Laboratorio, a Roberts Creek-based arts organization led by VNM artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi.
Painting Music: One-Page Score Project—Sunshine Coast will be released on VNM’s YouTube channel on two dates: session one on March 12 at 4 pm PST and session two on March 19 at 4 pm PST.
Here are five things to know about the latest iteration of this visual and sonic exploration.
This past February, Laboratorio hosted workshops for Sunshine Coast community members who have backgrounds in animation, painting, writing, education, and choreography and more. They delved into the world of graphic notation, creating images to represent sounds and sonic textures for one-page graphic scores. They were then paired with professional musicians from Vancouver, Roberts Creek, Galiano Island, Montreal, and Ottawa, who created sonic interpretation of their score, each contributing their unique musical style and instrumentation. The final 12 scores will have their premiere at the upcoming YouTube events.
Among the participating musicians is Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, one of the country’s top contemporary pianists. Having performed with Music Toronto, Music on Main, Western Front, Vancouver Symphony, and Victoria Symphony, among many other organizations, she was a co-founder of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival.
Matthew Ariaratnam is another musician who’s involved. The interdisciplinary sound artist, composer, guitarist, and listener creates sensory walks, writes dumbpop and chamber music, and collaborates frequently with choreographers, visual artists, and theatre-makers. Among his recent projects are Impermanence (dumbpop), Isolation Commission (Little Chamber Music Society), and Altar :=: Source (Music on Main).
The program also features music by Stefan Smulovitz, Matthew Ariaratnam, Parmela Attariwala, David Benchekroun, Terri Hron, Robyn Jacob, Anne-F Jacques, Sam Meadahl, Meteoric, Graham Ord, and Sundar Subramanian
Laboratorio is all about fostering art that creates dialogues of all kinds, turning the “event” model of art (such as a concert, exhibition, or performance) on its head by replacing “the performer” with a workshop for performers. It supports artistic practice more as a behaviour, where “beauty is an activity rather than an entity”.
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