Laurie Radford

Les Ponts de l’Espace presents six works by Laurie Radford composed between 2001 and 2006 and reshaped for the 5.1 surround format, mastered by Dominique Bassal. The bridges of the title are several: between stereo or eight-channel originals and their surround versions, between raw recordings of urban environments and heavily transformed studio sounds, between his instrumental works and new electroacoustic pieces made from them, and between the places and years where the material was recorded, composed and mixed.

Les ponts de l’espace I, commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, is a set of six miniatures first heard between chamber works at a festival. Each moves sounds along set geometric paths and sets an unprocessed winter street against sounds of the Primordium, an invented wall instrument of strings, jangles and membranes built by Tom Nunn at Concordia University. Les ponts de l’espace II adds a gallery opening in Ljubljana and traditional bell ringing in Slovenia, recorded by Miriam Fabijan in 1992, as is the trumpet of Franzl Fabijan heard here and in Verb Tales and à la cire perdue.

À la cire perdue, named after lost-wax bronze casting, uses Radford’s own mixed works as source, sunk in convolution, spectral mutation and cross-synthesis until only ghostly echoes remain; Terms of Occupancy began as an eight-channel extension of it. Verb Tales started as a study of the reverberant tails of vocal recordings, and Mining Inference, dedicated to alcides lanza, is a short remix of his interferences III, commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the electronic music studio at McGill University.

Born in Manitoba in 1958, Radford writes for instruments, voices and electroacoustic media, often performing in his mixed works, and has had commissions from the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Penderecki String Quartet and the Montréal Symphony Orchestra.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0891, 2008.