International Computer Music Conference 2003: Boundaryless Music (review)

With the resonance of the SARS epidemic still haunting the city and threatening to force a change of conference venue, it was a relief for many that ICMC2003 was finally able to be launched in Singapore. Although ongoing concerns about SARS and the relatively high costs of traveling to the city dissuaded many potential delegates from North America and Europe from attending, a number of whom had pieces on the concert program, those who did manage to make the trip were treated to a wide variety of music celebrating the state of the art, produced by approximately 80 composers from around the world.

This year's conference theme, "Boundaryless Music," encouraged the celebration of music without cultural boundaries or which transcended limitations of genre, an opportune focus given the multiculturally diverse nature of the host city. This theme was addressed most overtly by a handful of composers through the use of non-Western instruments, or, less commonly, through reference to non-Western music-making traditions. The former approach presented a rare opportunity to hear unique instruments in an electronic music context, a context where orthodox instrumentation is more the norm.

Like previous conferences, there were two concerts each day held in the afternoon and evening, with the exception of the first day's sole evening concert. In addition to these concerts, this year's conference also included a Sound Garden, an audio installation consisting of 18 pieces autonomously played by an iMac, an intermission piece, two other installations, and a Fringe Concert. Pieces were chosen from a total of 289 submissions by an international jury comprising Alessandro Cipriani (Italy), Mara Helmuth (USA), Paul Koonce (USA), Naotoshi Osaka (Japan), Jøran Rudi (Norway), Akira Takaoka (Japan), Ian Whalley (New Zealand), and Frances White (USA).

All of this year's events took place at the University Cultural Centre located on the National University of Singapore campus, some six miles from the city center. Afternoon concerts were held in a theater and evening concerts were held in a large concert hall. To my mind, the size of the concert hall in which the evening concerts took place was not especially well-suited to many of the pieces that were performed there—a number were somewhat lost in the enormity of the venue. On the other hand, the afternoon concert venue, a much smaller, 450-seat hall, was particularly well-suited to the style of music heard, and drew a pleasing number of attendees. Indeed, many of these afternoon concerts were so well attended it was often difficult to get a seat in an ideal listening position, in contrast to the evening concerts, where a full house would have brought well over 1,500 people.

What was also somewhat troubling was the fairly large number of composers unable to attend, leaving their pieces to be either cancelled or mixed by others. On more than one occasion I felt some of these pieces, which were mostly in the tape medium, were not well served, as the mixing engineer was less sympathetic and sensitive to the nuances of each piece as they happened to be brought out by the particular venue. It also tended to reaffirm the unfortunate view that tape music requires no active participation or is a performance-less affair.

A fine representation of the music selected for performance at this year's conference can be heard on the official conference CDs. These contain music by Steve Everett (USA), Pablo Furman (USA), Konstantinos Karathanasis (Greece), Julian Knowles (Australia), Cort Lippe (USA), Russell Pinkston (USA), Heinrich Taube (USA), and Paul Rudy (USA).

Given the limitations of this review, it is not possible to comment on all of the pieces heard. Instead, I will try to convey what to my ear were some of the highlights or particularly interesting aspects of music presented at this year's conference.

30 September, 8:00 p.m., Concert Hall

The tape part of Heinrich Taube's Aeolian Harp, for piano and computer-generated tape, consists...