Put on Brian Eno’s Ambient 1 - Music for Airports and it will surely transport you to that very locale, to a time spent in transit or awaiting a loved one, and you won’t be quite certain how or why. If you let it play long enough, though, your mind will wander away from that place into a beautiful box of nostalgia, to be filled with the intermittent strikes of piano strings, synthesizers, memories and thoughts.
Eno, the iconic British musician and composer, isn’t coming to Vancouver, but a three-night festival dedicated to the ambient genre he popularized in the ‘70s is, courtesy of Vancouver New Music.
Hand-picked by VNM artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi, festival artists include Vancouver’s Michael Red (souns) and Scott Morgan (loscil), Winnipeg’s crys cole, Toronto’s Nick Storring, New York’s Marina Rosenfield, DJ Olive and FLUX Quartet (performing Morton Feldman’s classic String Quartet No. 1 from 1979) and more, offering a compelling definition of the genre and a glimpse at where the form is heading.
“Ambient music is a sonic environment that doesn’t draw specific attention to a particular narrative or vector of sound,” explains Magnanensi. “I don’t have a concrete definition, but my idea was to present a sort of snapshot of the state of ambient sound production involving Canadian and international artists who are doing some interesting work. To give a glimpse or possibledefinition.
“Brian Eno had a beautiful quote once,” adds Magnanensi. “He said, ‘I never thought of it as music as such. I thought it made a nice space to think.’”
Called Nomadic Streams and taking place at VIVO Media Arts Oct. 22-24, each night of the festival will see multiple artists performing transcendental, urgent and harmonious auditory scores as you sip wine or beer and explore where they take you. And while the genre is often be assumed to be reliant on software or sonic gadgetry, these artists are known for their soundmaking creativity, using instruments and techniques spanning everything from electronic cello and turntables to cassette tapes, field recordings and voice.
“It’s a way of thinking sound that is not so much about ego, or an idea of composition or ownership of idea,” says Magnanensi. “They are more related to the classical way of thinking, more ecological in their way of regarding sound: as an environment that can produce both healing processes, interesting connections, and new ways of thinking. So all the people that I invited represent in various ways that approach … sound as a place to think in.”
• Nomadic Streams: A Festival of Ambient Music takes place Oct. 22-24 at VIVO Media Arts (2625 Kaslo). Tickets start at $25; more information at VancouverNewMusic.org.
