Author: Debashis Sinha

Debashis Sinha's creative output spans a broad range of genres and media, from solo audiovisual performance projects and percussion on the concert stage to the interior spaces between 2 headphones.  
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upcoming DEB: here and elsewhere

Greetings everyone, and Happy New Year. After many months, it is time for an upcoming DEB, the first of 2012.

Some very excellent new projects in the pipeline, and a lot of outside-of-Toronto things happening that I thought I would like to let you all know about. If you find yourself somewhere, look for me.

Good tidings to you and your kin for 2012. I hope we see each other soon.

Deb

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1. Mrs. Warren’s Profession at Manitoba Theatre Centre Warehouse
Opens January 20
Tickets available here

I’m pleased to be the associate sound designer (with John Gzowski) for the MTC Warehouse production of the Shaw play. Directed by Alisa Palmer.

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2. Peggy Baker Dance Projects at NYC’s 92nd St Y
Feb 24-27
More information here

Peggy Baker Dance Projects is taking 3 works to the Harkness Dance Festival in NYC, 2 of which I have composed the music for: Coalesce, a 35 min trio, and Armour, a duet choreographed by NYC’s Doug Varone. I will be accompanying the, er, company to participate in the performances’ first half, where the creative genesis for the full works is presented to the audience. The 2nd half of the show is the full production.

I’d like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for helping with the travel costs of this trip through the Travel Grants to Musicians program.

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3. Knuckleduster CD’s coming very, very soon

I am super thrilled to announce that Nuukoono, the CD of my new duo Knuckleduster (with Berlin based Robert Lippok) now actually exists in the real world. We are getting ready for an early February online release, and you will be able to buy physical copies from our Warsaw based label Gustaff. Coinciding with the release will be the release of some live video from our show in Toronto last November, shot by Jeremy Mimnagh, and some other bonus material.

You can read about the genesis of the project and listen to an interview about the recording process in the fantastic GDR Radio studios in Berlin at our website.

I’ll let you all know when the CD is available online. It’s a really gorgeous object with a giant cover designed by Berlin design house AEIOU.

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4. The Light nears completion

After many months of work, my (almost) one hour Höerspiel (radio work) is nearly complete. I will be meeting with the inimitable surround sound master engineer Phil Strong to create a 5.1 mix in the next while, and the AV performance version is now nearly complete. You can preview this project at my vimeo page, here
and here.

Thanks to the Ontario Arts Council’s Grants to Media Artists (Mid Career and Established) program.

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5. ds in residence at the Koffler Centre with Yair Dalal and Frank London
March 28, with workshops the week preceding the concert. More information here.

I am thrilled to be part of a great group of Toronto musicians with NYC based Yair Dalal and Frank London. These 2 musicians are at the top of their game and we expect a lively week of rehearsals and composing preceding the concert at the Jane Mallet Theatre on March 28.

Details are still being set, but set aside the date for some very special music (and possibly some visuals programmed by yours truly).

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More is coming, including a play written by and starring my sister Pamela at Theatre Passe Muraille, opening in May and directed by Alan Dilworth. I’ll be sending out another missive in mid March detailing these and other projects.

Best of the year to you! Make sure you say hi if you are at any of these shows.

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knuckleduster toronto cd release date confirmed

good news!  the duo knuckleduster will be doing our cd release for nuukoono, our first cd on november 11 in toronto.  the illustrious garrison is the venue, and we will be welcoming music lovers from far and wide.

9pm is the start time, with an opener tbc.  knuckleduster hits the stage around 11.  tix a very affordable $10.

hope to see you there, and stay tuned as always.

 

 

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the sound of one sample peaking

i have had the good luck to expand my collection of raster noton music.  listening to the fantastic kangding ray just now, a mid 2000 release, stabil.

this sound of electricity in all its forms (kangding ray with his overtones of r and b, alva noto with his precise, detailed, relentless and beautiful clicks, shimmers, and breaths) is, i find, more and more fascinating every time i encounter it.

i think it will drive my work for some time to come.  the light is a door.

http://soundcloud.com/debsinha/electricity

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guelph jazz festival video installation

work on the light, which you have been reading excerpts of over the summer, continues apace.  now getting into the nuances of mixing spoken text with music, thanks to the help of the inimitable phil strong.

heading to the guelph jazz festival tomorrow to install skin, a single channel video which, like many of my projects, has many forms.  this time i’ll be installing it as a kind of immersive experience in the VIA rail station.

it will be part of the nuit blanche program, and many fantastic acts will be playing over the course of the night.  i will update this post next week with pictures and video from the installation.  if you are in the neighborhood, do come and say hi.

until next time.

 

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the light (excerpt)

another excerpt from my upcoming sound piece the light:

Full open bodies of air that shimmer with smog, reflecting the city light into the night sky, indigo, orange, red, violet.  Particles of dust, ash, hanging over the ocean, stopping planes from flying, the whole what-we-think-is-the-world paralyzed by a small hiccup deep below.  Halls with glass ceilings crosshatched by steel struts, designed by German engineers and Finnish architects, full of stranded people, sharing food.  Buildings crashing down, giant sinkholes opening in the middle of cities with no warning.  Grainy video posted on the internet of tidal waves coming over land, looking gentle but not stopping, never stopping, creeping forward in a slow breath when seen from the news helicopter, but raw chaos and white noise that will deafen you if that is you on the ground in the lower part of the frame.  Children buried in mudslides, cars floating upside down in the centre of the sea.

We are all particles if you look from high enough.

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the light

i’ve been working on text for a new long form audio work, and thought i would share some here.  production begins in august.  let me know what you think, i’d be happy to hear from you.

Curve (2)
Space is curved.  Somewhere, in a library, probably in on one close to where you are sitting now, the math is there to prove it.  I tried to read the equations once, pages and pages of symbols that curve and slash.  It’s beautiful.  Pictures of the universe, approximations of matter, of heat and black holes, exploding stars.  The math necessarily imperfect, but approaching perfection.  Infinity expressed with integrals, Greek letters.

I wish I knew this language.  How to bend my tongue and shape my mouth around these words—are they even words?  What would be a vowel, a consonant—a star, a comet, a galaxy?  What are these symbols saying to us?  How do I take this page of curves and explode it outward to the far corners of an expanding universe?

It goes that far.

Each summation, each equation and set has a sound, a hum, a kind of vibration that finds resonance in matter.

There are languages that derive their sounds from the harmonics of planets moving, that are based on the path of stars and the resonant hum of the universe.  To err in its pronunciation is to be in dissonance with the pulse of reality, to be a parent who pushes his child’s swing too soon, before it reaches the end of the parabola defined by the length of chain from which it hangs.

For one who speaks this language, who was born into it, the shape of lip and tongue is easy, defying explanation or parsing.  It takes an outsider to break it down to its component parts, to expose the secrets of how air is shaped to give meaning.

What, then, are we, when we try to speak the language of planets, of particles?

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sound and art: peggy baker, henry moore, brian jungen, and me

monday morning and i find myself at the AGO, surrounded by new works by brian jungen and gigantic plaster casts of henry moore works, doing a soundcheck for the peggy baker dance projects 2011 season.  in the moore gallery baker and dancer larry hahn will perform armour, a duet choreographed by new york’s doug varone and premiered in 2010.

my music is playing back in 4 channels, and the speakers are spread out evenly over the giant gallery.  baker and hahn are at one end, and as i watch them i can feel at my back the sound cascading around the space behind me, reflected by the huge and heavy moores and the smaller but equally powerful jungens.  the new jungen works are a 2011 counterpart to the moore pieces, raw and visceral in the same way as the moores, but different—of the land, more canadian, hides stretched over discarded car parts.  as with all of jungen’s work, simple and powerful in a way that really makes us see reality.  not in a different way, but in the way that it really is.

i am so blessed to be here.

catch the show in toronto—my music accompanies the above mentioned armour and the dance installation in walker court, move (which i am listening to as i write this post, a new 72 min score for 16 dancers).  details here: http://www.ago.net/interior-with-moving-figures

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Project music

soundcloud is the new place i will be hosting music for various projects that are not available elsewhere.  These include soundtracks, dance scores, and other small snippets of projects and compositions, as well as full works.

all of it is here: http://soundcloud.com/debsinha/sets

check back often, and stay tuned.

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Goodbye, Are You OK / Peggy Baker @ the AGO

aaaaaaaaaaand……i’m not done.

i am honoured to be providing music for 2 works in peggy baker dance projects’ 2011 season at the art gallery of ontario: a new one hour score for move, with 16 dancers (or thereabouts), and a remount of the duo Armour, (choreographed by doug varone), which premiered in the 2010 show confluence, which was, if you recall, a full evening show of works that i had the honour to score (in 6 channels!) as well.

it promises to be a special event.  to quote from her site: Peggy Baker Dance Projects invites to you a special performance of “interior with moving figures” at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Four works from the company’s repertoire will be simultaneously and continuously performed in four different galleries throughout the AGO for 70 minutes, allowing patrons to wander between the galleries to discover the next dance.

Showtimes are irregular, so be sure to double check the links above:
Wednesday May 11, 7:00pm
Saturday May 14, 2:00pm
Sunday May 15, 2:00pm
Wednesday May 18, 7:00pm

Wednesday night shows are free admission, and the other shows are free with ticketed admission.

are you ok, with michael healey, peggy baker, and daniel brooks has closed, and it was a great ride.  the audience reaction was palpable, every night, and national post critic robert cushman called it a “perfect jewel”.  i am honoured to have shared the stage with such great artists.

stay tuned, as always, for more…