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Reviewed by:
  • Entre Espaces
  • Barry Schrader
Elainie Lillios : Entre Espaces. Compact disc, 2011, IMED 11110; empreintes DIGITALes, 4580, avenue de Lorimier, Montréal (Québec) H2H 2B5, Canada; telephone (+1) 514.526.4096; fax (+1) 514.526.4487; electronic mail info@empreintesDIGITALes.com; http://www.empreintesDIGITALes.com/.

[Editor's note: Selected reviews are posted on the web at http://www.computermusicjournal.org (click on the Reviews tab). In some cases, they are either unpublished in the Journal itself or published in an abbreviated form in the Journal.]

For over 50 years electroacoustic music has had a continuous history of works composed and realized in the studio. It is no longer a novelty, and even though it may still be rejected by the entrenched "classical music" establishment, most of the music that people hear today is, in whole or in part, electroacoustic. In fact, electroacoustic music (as opposed to acoustic music) is now the dominant musical medium in much of the world. With this being the case, one would expect that contemporary masters of the medium would have appeared by now, the pioneering phase having been over for some time. Of course, this is the case, and there are several composers who fit nicely into this category. One of these is composer Elainie Lillios, and her mastery of the medium is aptly demonstrated in her excellent new CD, Entre espaces, released on the empreintes DIGITALes label.

Lillios has long been a part of the American electroacoustic music scene. She is an associate professor of composition and coordinator ofmusic technology at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and her work has been presented internationally by organizations such as the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), Rien à voir, L'espace du son, ?? and June in Buffalo. She specializes in what most today would call acousmatic music, the modern state of musique concrète, and she also works with live electroacoustic music in several forms, ambisonics, and multimedia installations. Although her music has been previously recorded on 15 compilation CDs, this is her first solo CD.

Putting together a CD of a single composer's music is no small task, even when the composer does it herself, as is the case with Entre espaces. A successful CD requires not only outstanding music, but, like a good concert, the selected content and work order should present a variety of material with a degree of contrast. Few composers would want to be judged on the basis of one work, or a section of a single work, as this would display only a part of their compositional thinking and abilities. Lillios is keenly aware of this, and so has created a CD that takes us on a sonic journey through her compositional ideas, considerations, and techniques. After listening to Entre espaces, we know her as a composer and can come to a well-deserved appreciation of her work.

The first work, Dreams in the Desert (2001) is an excellent introduction to both the CD and Lillios's work as a whole. The composer states that this work "calls to mind the reveries of a person on a desert caravan." It is quite appropriate, then, that the first timbre we hear is derived from the sound of flowing water, perhaps the most important thing someone on a desert caravan would consider. The beginning of Dreams in the Desert is a short introduction (0:00-0:11), a small ternary structure that presents the water material first in a flowing manner as a constant event with changing pitch and some delay (0:00-0:03), then as an isolated event with less delay (0:03-0:08), and then back to the original presentation quickly crescendoing into the first main part of the work beginning at 0:12. Part I (0:12-3:20) is made up of water sounds. The initial event resembles a sustained, E-flat dominant seventh chord created from smoothly looped, flowing water sounds. It is attacked hard and quickly becomes a pedal below variously processed, flowing water sounds. This chord, heard several times in the work, is one of the signature elements of this piece. The pedal chord gradually fades away, but dovetails...

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