earsay ARTISTS earsay artist biographies

Rainer Bürck
Andrew Czink
Susan Frykberg
Damian Keller
Giorgio Magnanensi
John Oliver
Hildegard Westerkamp
Structural Damage
TRIONYS

Rainer Bürck

(Germany) studied piano and composition in Stuttgart and electroacoustic music in Nürnberg, with Wilfried Jentzsch. He also studied musicology and philosophy at the University of Tübingen. He currently works as a freelance composer and pianist. As a pianist he concentrates on contemporary repertoire and since 1995 has also worked extensively on collaborative improvisational projects with numerous partners. He has premiered works by composers from several countries, especially in collaboration with his piano duo partner Robert Rühle. As a composer, Bürck has been focusing in recent years on electroacoustic music, creating works for tape, performers and tape, and performers and live electronics. His works have been performed and broadcast in Europe, North and South America and Australia. More
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Andrew Czink
(Canada) is a composer/pianist based in Vancouver and a co-director of earsay productions. His primary training was of a classical bent, with excursions into jazz and popular forms early on. His compositional education was heavily rooted in the “contemporary avant–garde.” Along with exposure to and study of various Asian and African musics, this suite of influences continue their hold on his musical thought. His music has been performed and broadcast in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Canada where he has received numerous awards and commissions. He also teaches synthesis, MIDI and digital studio operations at the Centre for Digital Imaging & Sound (CDIS) and currently produces the radio program Musica Nova on Vancouver Co-op Radio CFRO 102.7 FM.   More
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Susan Frykberg (New Zealand) is a composer of electroacoustic music who often combines feminist ideas and theatrical processes in her work. She has created a number of “environments” in which stories (often mythological) of women’s lives are the “context” for her music. Since the birth of her son, Esha, much of her music has attempted to bring some sense of the momentous and awe inspiring nature of birth-giving (and hence motherhood) into her work. Susan has studied with, and been influenced by, composers John Rimmer, Barry Vercoe, Barry Connyngham, Iannis Xenakis and Barry Truax. She currently teaches acoustic/ electroacoustic communication online from New Zealand for Simon Fraser University in Canada. More.
Contact Susan Frykberg
Damián Keller (Argentina) is a composer and pianist concerned with sound and perception. He experiments with time structures and sonic materials - “everyday” and environmental sounds - in his music, seeking to discover what it is that makes combinations of sound work for us as music. He studied piano in Argentina and the USA, and composition in Brazil and Canada. He has composed works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and electronic media. Being Argentine, he likes drinking mate and listening to tango. More  
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Giorgio Magnanensi (Italy) is a composer and conductor devoted to contemporary music. He teaches at the Conservatory of Music in Parma and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. He is a member of Gruppo di Ricerca per la Musica Contemporanea (Research Group for Contemporary Music) at the University of Bologna. Driven by his conviction that the most vital stimuli of musical thought today pass through channels unrestricted by academia, he collaborates with musicians of diverse backgrounds and sensibilities, experimenting with compositional structures open to a variety of materials, practices and languages of music including the use of electronics, sampling and creative improvisation. This experimentation provides the foundation for evocative musical invention that shares the soundscapes of our present time. More.
Contact Giorgio Magnanensi
John Oliver (Canada) composes for electroacoustics, chamber ensemble, orchestra, opera, and dance, using traditional and electronic instruments. Oliver first came to international attention during 1988/89 when he won six prizes for five compositions ranging from chamber to orchestral to electroacoustic music. Among these the “City of Varese Prize” at the 1988 Luigi Russolo Competition, and the Canada Council’s Grand Prize at the CBC’s 8th National Competition for Young Composers for his live electroacoustic work El Reposo del Fuego. Oliver’s recent music combines familiar musical materials or techniques with new inventions, with a view to creating a new, exciting listening experience. Master classes with I. Xenakis and Roger Reynolds, along with personal studies in perception, psychoacoustics, and social theory, as well as formal training with, among others, John Adams and Bruce Mather, have contributed to his artistic direction. He holds a doctorate in composition from McGill University. More
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Hildegard Westerkamp (Canada) was born in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946 emigrated in 1968 and gave birth to her daughter in 1977. After completing her music studies her ears were drawn to the acoustic environment as another cultural context or place for intense listening. As a composer, educator, and radio artist her work centres around environmental sound and acoustic ecology. Her compositions deal with aspects of the acoustic environment: with urban, rural or wilderness soundscapes, with the voices of children, men and women, with noise or silence, music and media sounds, or with the sounds of different cultures. She is a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE). More
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Structural Damage

Andrew Czink, keyboards & John Oliver, guitar & electronics + special guests

 
         

MANDATE and ARTISTIC OBJECTIVES
The mandate of our duo is to perform music we create together and in collaboration with guest artists – other composer/performers or creators from other artistic disciplines – to bring to audiences a unique creative musical and visual experience that reflects the musical and artistic advances of our time, while maintaining the historical link to the traditional musical instruments of the past. As a duo we perform on our main instruments, piano and guitar, whose sounds we extend by unusual performance techniques and electronic extensions and manipulations. The inherent theatricality of the musician’s performance gestures are further enhanced by the addition of new performance devices that sense the performer’s motion, proximity, and other spacial and sensory information. Our goal is to create a gutsy and visceral experience.


HISTORY
STRUCTURAL DAMAGE first performed together in Vancouver on January 23, 1999 at Rainer Bürck’s Without Fear CD-release concert [earsay CD 99001] in Vancouver. Composer/performers Czink and Oliver formulated the idea for the group STRUCTURAL DAMAGE during their rehearsals in preparation for this concert. The trio developed a new work by email and mail during the months before the concert, and performed after a week of rehearsal. The resulting 25-minute piece, called Structural Damage, inspired the name for the group.


On March 30, 2000 they performed & recorded a special event at Vancouver’s Western Front with special guest composer/performers Giorgio Magnanensi, (DJ/electronics), and Douglas Schmidt (accordion). The resulting CD, STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: Live at the Lux (es-00001) was released this year on the earsay label. In January 2001 the duo performed at the Standford University Ballroom (Palo Alto) and the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, (Berkeley) in California.

 

Structural Damage web site

   

 

TRIONYS

Rainer Bürck,
keyboards & electronics

Günter Marx,
violin & electronics

Martin Bürck,
gongs, percussion & electronics
 

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Founded in 1998, TRIONYS started their artistic collaboration in 2000. The trio focuses on the combination of gestural instrumental actions and live electronics. In the years 2000 and 2001 the three musicians worked out their first project called vector alpha. This work of about one hour's duration comprises thirteen parts, each of them being defined by specific sound regions, playing actions and interactions between the musicians and which fit into an overall dramatic form. Alongside parts which are exactly determined, there is also room for spontaneous and exciting improvisation.

The official debut of TRIONYS took place at Le Festival International de Musiques Universitaires (FIMU) in Belfort, playing two concerts on June 2nd and 3rd, 2001. On July 14th, 2001 the trio performed at Schloss Monrepos in Ludwigsburg, where they presented their second project TRIONYS unplugged. In contrast to their first project, which is mostly fixed, this second project is based on completely free improvisation on acoustic instruments.

The roots of TRIONYS go back to the late seventies and eigthies when Rainer Bürck and Martin Bürck explored the boundaries between experimental rock music and experimental contemporary music in a trio under the same name. In the summer of 1998 Rainer and Martin Bürck developed plans for a renewed artistic collaboration. They were able to win Günter Marx as a congenial and dedicated partner, who had already collaborated with Rainer Bürck on several occasions in the nineties.

Rainer Bürck
works as a free-lance pianist and composer. His activities as a pianist concentrate on contemporary repertoire, and he has performed at numerous festivals and venues of contemporary music in Europe and North America and has premiered many works by composers from several countries. Since 1995 Rainer Bürck has been collaborating with various performers on different improvisation projects. As a composer Rainer Bürck has been focussing on electroacoustic music in recent years, creating works for tape and for and performers plus electronics. His works have been performed and broadcast in Europe, North and South America and Australia. In 1999 his work Flautando for flute & electronics was awarded the 1st prize at the Musica Nova Competition in Prague and the 2nd prize at the EAR Competition of the Hungarian Radio.

Günter Marx
is the principal violinist at the Opera in Dortmund. In addition to this, he has been performing both as a soloist and as a member of several chamber music ensembles such as the Brahms Quartett Hamburg, the Leonardo Quartett Cologne etc. He has been collaborating with several composers such as Thomas Kessler, Mesias Maiguashca, Wilfried Jentzsch and Rainer Bürck, with whom he toured the United States and Canada.

Martin Bürck
works as a free-lance musician and visual artist. As a percussionist he focused on working with gongs for several years, performing many solo concerts and projects for music and lyrics. Martin Bürck is constantly exploring the hidden internal sounds of various materials. For example, in a theatre project he produced fascinating sounds from the scrap metal of a factory. Other projects were designing a sound night, concerts in caves and a radio play. As a visual artist he has had several solo exhibitions and exhibitions together with other artists, including his sculptures, paintings and various objects.

TRIONYS WEB SITE

 
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