working in tandem, in immediacy

I’m working with visual artist Tazeen Qayyum on a new performance project with sound and performative drawing. Tazeen’s practice stems from her training in Mughal miniature painting, and she has taken this tradition and exploded it outwards to many different expressions. One of her modes of working results in her performative drawings that she constructs in her studio, but also live. She works by minutely drawing one word, inscribing it 1000’s of times in patterns, resulting a document of meditation that is incredibly striking.

We’ve long been fans of each other’s work, and have been looking for a way to work together, me with my instruments and electronics and her with her drawing. What was particularly interesting to both of us was not just performing in the same space at the same time, but looking for with some kind of possible way for us to communicate and transform our practices together. What we did at her most recent (as of time of writing) exhibition was host an open rehearsal, where we actually exposed the process of investigation to outside viewers in real time.

This was an absolutely extraordinary experience, to share our thoughts and ideas out loud with others present. It was so interesting to involve and incorporate people’s observations of what they experienced as we tried new strategies in working together.

I am tremendously excited by the project’s potential. We’ll be doing a lot more of this (our schedules permitting) and there are many new paths to discover.

(do you) need to find a paradise

As the year wraps up and the lacuna between this year’s and next year’s contracts makes itself felt, I come to a point in the year where I have some room to fit in some dreaming.

What is my life looking like? What is missing? What is there that I should celebrate more?

Some of it is stuff I see around me every day and take joy in – my daughter is involved in that category, more often than not – and some of it is stuff I notice only occasionally and take for granted (we’re all guilty of that).

room tone

the hum

the layer

the subharmonic

the height

the width

the depth

the tone

Room tones are not sound. They are architecture, singing. A space, a shelter humming around us. A structure made sonic and present in multiple modes for us to inhabit.

A room tone might be my favourite thing.

Siminovitch Prize 2024

(note: we were all asked to draft some remarks on being named finalists for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize for theatre, 2024 – there are mine. To watch the documentary on my work by VideoCompany, please see here.)


What an incredible honour to be part of this stellar cohort of finalists. I am still a little disoriented at being part of this group. Sonoyo, Itai, Pete, Pityoo and Judd, I am so grateful and honoured to be in the same breath as you all.

There’s a lot I could talk about for these remarks, but I want to talk about sound, because to me the ways I think about it, the ways we can work with it, bring us around to all the things we need to talk about, everyday.

As I wrestle with the sometimes transcendent, sometimes prosaic considerations that make up the life of a theatre composer and sound designer, I come again and again to this belief: that sound is magic. The magic it possesses is latent, secret and all- encompassing, and in theatre in particular it is revealed through listening together  – together with the director, with the actors and designers, with the support staff and the others coming through the buildings where we practice. It reveals itself also slowly as I work alone in my studio, searching for different sounds and melodies, the right reverb, the right door sound as I try to make audible what Roland Barthes calls “the underside of meaning”, try to make audible the relationships unfolding through the text and through the people that speak and move with it. The process of searching for and finding the magic I can only dimly sense, but becomes fully revealed through the experience of working with others, bringing a story to life.

Working in theatre has given me the opportunity to aim the magic of sound at the things I value as a living being on this planet: Connection. Humility. Joy and play. Empathy. Collaboration. Collective action. I try to make my work with sound about instinct, and improvisation, and trying, and failing, but mostly about listening. In the theatre space I’ve found a place where I can practice listening, and through listening I have discovered I can practice being a force for good in the world. In theatre I have found a place to develop those muscles that have the potential to bring good into being, and then take those muscles out into the streets, into all the moments and rooms and spaces of my life. In my time in the performing arts, I’ve come across so many good, good hearts that have sung to me in ways I didn’t expect, and been challenged by hearts that don’t resonate with mine. And each encounter solidifies my sincere belief in the work we do in our theatre spaces and how we can apply it to the world.

To make theatre well, we must invoke community – the people in it, of course, but also the larger community of makers, the audience, and the human and nonhuman communities of our city, our town, our country, our world. In these invocations we highlight and acknowledge our interconnectedness. The collective experience of the rehearsal hall and the stage resonates out and through the walls, an Aurora Borealis of heart and spirit that touches all who pass by, that moves through and across the planet and ever outward. Of all that I’ve learned through my work in theatre over these past years, community is the most valuable lesson. 

But still, we must wrestle with this inescapable fact: theatre won’t save the world. It won’t directly solve the problems of state, of politics, of intractable ideology, or of evil. It won’t make someone who thinks I am or you are not deserving of space or human rights or even life suddenly change their minds. Listening doesn’t mean listening without boundaries, or without aspiration, or listening to those who have no desire to listen. We still need to make space for agitation, for hugs, mass protests, unions, strikes, sit-ins, letters to our representatives, tears,  smiles, boycotts, difficult conversations around the dinner table or on walks in the woods. In our rehearsal halls we still need to strive to build practices of realistic care, honest care, and to live with and through the frictions and the falling short. And we do fall short, everyday, because we want to hug the sky.

Every project holds lessons where we learn and unlearn what it means to make and take space, and to experience processes of collaboration with all their hard and smooth edges. I’ve been invited and trusted to be in rooms where stories are being told that were only dimly adjacent to my own experience in this body on this earth, and sometimes to contribute to stories that could not possibly be part of my experience in the world. I cherish that trust, and in the effort to live up to it I trust my listening ear and my listening body. If I listen – to the text, to the people, to the ideas and the silences – the needs of the story will reveal themselves, and I will be able to cradle them and lift them up on a bed of sound. Theatre won’t ever, ever be enough, and that’s ok, because even so it can be a part of what is enough. Because theatre is a place where we gather, where we tell stories and breathe together, and that is something that lends more power to all the things we dream up to fix the world. 

To the Siminovitch Foundation staff, its supporters, the jury and my supporters – particularly Peggy Baker for the nomination – thank you. You have made this moment the new pinnacle of a process of joy, terror and introspection that has lasted since my 12 year old self tried setting up my drums backwards in our Winnipeg basement to see what would happen when I tried to play along to English Beat records. I want to also thank my mother, who introduced me to the stage and continues to show me the power of storytelling; my sister, whose fierce and constant love of theatre finally brought me to those stages in a serious way; and to my father, who stood by us all, every day bewildered but understanding. To the people I have worked with: every single one of you taught me something about myself, about being and working together, about listening, and about striving for excellence. Every. Single. One.

Finally, I wouldn’t have been able to share what I have shared with you today, discover what I’ve discovered for myself without my wife Jutta and my daughter Leena. They have stood by me through everything, even when they didn’t know I needed someone to stand by me. They’ve helped me practice and embody the good things about living a life in art, and have had the patience to let me work out the difficult things about living a life in art. You listened to my ideas and sounds and gave me advice (looking at you, Leena) on how to make it better. You handled the home during my life on the road, you came to my shows and helped me carry gear, and you loved me every day through all of it – I could not have been able to do anything even approaching what I’ve done without you both. This honour is yours as much as mine.

“Art is a situation”, says the Syrian-Yemeni poet Jalal Al-Ahmadi. How will we meet it? The answer changes everyday, and that is what keeps me, keeps all of us here, celebrating the power and the joy of the telling of stories. I’m so glad we are together to honour the process of making sense of the world together.

The stories that hum in our lives will never cease. May we always be open to their power.

Travels

I spent some time as a guest composer at Elektronmusik Studion (EMS) in Stockholm recently:

It was a tremendously inspiring time, and while I was there for 10 days, I never really got over my jet lag, going into the studios at all hours. There were a number of fantastic spaces there, all of which had slightly different capabilities in terms of gear and sound.

The thing that I thought so incredible, though, was the very strong commitment from the staff that EMS was a public good. This went beyond the funding they received from the Swedish government (the studio celebrates it’s 60th year this year), but is rooted very strongly in the genesis of the institution (housed initially in a worker’s building and undergoing many shifts in outlook and equipment). At every turn I heard and experience the studio as being a gathering place for new sounds and ideas. The composers-in-residence do not have to pay anything for access to the studios, and are invited on the basis of the ideas they wish to explore at the studio.

As a result, you get a very broad range of practices and age groups, and the potential for cross-inspiration is great. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, not just for my own work but for the conversations I had with the staff and the artists there.

Looking forward to working on the piece I started there. Stay tuned.

Subharmonies

Putting on my touring musician hat again after some time to play at Cluster in Winnipeg. I’ll be performing my quadraphonic Rückstreuung project, which made its debut at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. Here’s an excerpt from that performance:

live excerpt of the quadraphonic project rüstreuung @ MOCA, Toronto in 2022

As you can see from the video, it’s really about architecture and space. The quadraphonic dissemination is explicitly chosen to allow for the tones to intersect and create rhythms and to allow the listener to discover tones that are located in specific places. Moving from one space to another reveals different sound interactions.

The project was created at Akademie der Künste during a residency at the Studio for Electroacoustic Music, where I was able to experiment on the venerable Subharchord, one of the few still functioning:

the subharchord @ Akademie der Künste SEM

Here’s where I ended up (thanks to Robert Lippok for taking the video):

Since I don’t have a Subharchord (boo) I’m using a Moog Subharmonicon, which uses the same principle of audio synthesis. The “sub” in both those names refers to the fact that instead of overtones from a fundamental pitch (which is what many synths do), these instruments divide the frequency to create subharmonies to the fundamental. Tuning these sub levels results in intersection of tones, and the use of a filter further allows one to shape the quality of the sound.

I’m really looking forward to going back to Winnipeg. I’m playing at a venue that I was at the opening of, the West End Cultural Centre – in fact, I think my mom performed at that opening. I’ve played there many times since, and it’s going to be nice to go home and explore that space with sound.

See you there?

UPDATE: I found this so I’m going to try and build it in Max/MSP. It’ll probably take me a year. ↓

quasi schematic from subharchord.com

Wind / the internet is amazing

Further to my last post, the next major research port of call is the venerable Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, where I’m working on a new project that will depend partly on data and information about high altitude wind currents. You can read a bit about it at the EMS website.

So, you know. Snooping around the intertubes to look for some data, some inspiration. Et voila! I give you: the Global Wind Atlas.

The internet is amazing.

And so, on

This weekend we will open Romeo and Juliet for the 2024 Stratford Festival season, and so this series will end, to be replaced by other posts about current projects, ideas, sounds, and thoughts.

I’ve been so surprised/delighted/humbled by how many of you have mentioned following the blog during this project. I hope I’ve been able to give you some new perspectives about how I work in theatre. It’s not the only, and definitely not the definitive way, but just one way. As I often tell my students, there are 6 ways to do any one thing – the key is to find the way that makes sense to you, and that gives you the results you want. Hopefully some of these posts have given you some ideas in your practice.

I hope you’ll continue to come back here – I have many interesting projects in the pipeline, in particular a stint at Elektronmusicstudion in Stockholm. You can read more about that here.

Feel free to email me at deb < at > debsinha dot com – I’d love to hear from you.

Have a great summer.

d

Moving through

the view from The Balcony. Yes, that one

It’s been quiet on the blog of late, because things are moving apace. Our tech time in the theatre is moving fast, trying cues, balancing, making sure we have even coverage (or as even as we can – there are over 300 speakers in this hall but even so, not every seat has even sound).

We are now into our Previews, which are for the paying audience. Before that we had:

  • Onstage rehearsals
  • Onstage rehearsals with tech (lights and sound)
  • Tech rehearsal (a first draft of the light and sound elements)
  • Tech dress (a second draft but with costumes)
  • Quick change rehearsal (where the dressers and actors practice any wardrobe changes that have to be, um, quick) (this is usually just before the Tech Dress)
  • Dress 1 (we should be close now)
  • Dress 2 (often with invited guests and the company)
  • Previews 1-3, with 4 hour rehearsals following – designers are released after the rehearsal after the 3rd preview

We should note that the acting company continues with rehearsals in the rehearsal hall as well, to nail down acting notes and needs.

preview 1! I deliberately take seats away from where I usually sit to double check

Time somehow moves faster during these 3 previews. Very often I’m juggling multiple timetables here at the Festival, because I often work on 2 or more shows each season. This season I’m only on R and J (as it is affectionately called) so I thought there would be a little more space to breathe! However, that has gone the way of all illusions…

With the advent of an audience, the show takes on a life of its own. It becomes what it is, rather than what you think it is. There’s something about the conglomeration of a plethora of consciousnesses (uh if that’s a word) that can – not always, but can – completely turn things on their head, some shows more than others. In this case, it seems that the sound and music seem to be operating like they should, but there are a lot of new things I’ve found in sitting in a house with others. Often (like this time) it’s levels – things being too loud, or improperly balanced with all the sound absorbing meat sacks (aka people) in the house. I had some of that today, which I’ve been able to address during the night’s rehearsal.

Sometimes, though (thankfully not this time, and not often) seeing a show with others completely changes scenes, cues or maybe huge decisions that were made, and you have to go back to the drawing board. At this point, and at this festival, more often than not this doesn’t happen, because everyone knows how things shift and change and they make decisions that keep that in mind. But sometimes, you need to completely rework some of the ideas you thought you had.

The key there is to be able to move fast – to know your tools, to extrapolate, to have a strong picture in your mind how sound is moving through the space and through the story. Some of this you can do with practice, on your own, some of it takes root as you work in the room, some of it can only be guessed at, and you try on the next preview. It’s tricky. The key is to make sure that you’ve done your due diligence – that you know how to use your tools quickly and efficiently, that you can make decisions and sense the musicality and the sound through the space in a very deep way, that you can make an offer that makes sense, that you refrain from flailing, and be deliberate and care-full (but also fast).

It takes time to prepare, but there’s prep and there’s prep. To know how to move fast, to move well, and to move while listening – that’s the key.

Sound

At many of the larger theatres, as a sound designer and composer, I don’t actually program the sound machinery, necessarily. The Festival Theatre sound system is a behemoth of networked devices spread out over the entire building – computers, screens sharing and controlling other computers, amps, fiber optic cable….it’s a massive system and there is no way I would be able to get my head around it all to use it optimally.

My sound operator and programmer is William Griff (you can see him in the photo below), and he’s managing the technical end of the sound system and making my material sound good. I provide the material and the cues, and he makes sure it all goes out the system in the ways that I want (and suggests some ways I haven’t thought of, but invariably make it sound even better).

some of the many sound files that I made out of the audio I’ve composed; these are both “music” and “sound design” and often straddle both categories. Uh, there are many, many more than in this picture

Once we set up everything and get all the computers talking to each other, there’s a phase of making sure that the ways in which you’ve translated your work actually work, and speak in this new environment of multiple speakers and multiple computers. We spend a time just ensuring that the architecture works – that the sound is being transmitted and that you learn a way of working together, a shorthand and an audio picture that makes sense for the room and the story. Experimenting with placing that sound here and then the other part of the cue there, and learning how you and the technician think and work so that you can communicate efficiently.

As part of the shift I was speaking about in the previous post, there’s a second stage to it as well. You end up working through the technical architecture phase back into the idea and artistry phase again. A kind of beginner’s mind that reveals a lot that you didn’t hear before in your quest for making the thing you imagine.

The thing I actually like about not programming (and not everyone likes this) is that it frees me to listen and move into a listening mindset. A lot of our programming yesterday was me standing in various places in the hall, letting cues run, calling out some thoughts and ideas to Will to translate into programming and settings.

Will, translating

To free myself to think about sound and story, to imagine the bodies onstage moving through space (the actors are not present for programming, it’s a slow and tedious process and their time is better spent elsewhere). To pay attention to the ways the sound unfolds in the room, the qualities of the storytelling it offers.

To be sure, the architecture and the programming and the technical nerding out is fun, and useful, and does serve the story as well. But ultimately you need to step out from behind the desk and sit in a seat, and listen.

It’s the best.