Five New Zealand composers have created new electroacoustic works for the custom-built SoundDome, a 25-loudspeaker instrument designed for composing with 3D space.
SoundDome Photo: Album Cover Art
The SoundDome brings to life a three-dimensional sound world previously conceivable only in the imagination of the composer. To put its capabilities into perspective, these days a typical movie theatre has Dolby Surround 7.1, which basically means 7.1 speakers. So imagine how much more creative a composer can get with an extra 18 speakers!
The five electro-acoustic works by John Coulter, Chris Cree Brown, David Downes, John Elmsly and Paul Smith have been released by Rattle on the new SoundDome album.
Composer John Coulter curated the album. He is also the brains behind the Dome's creation and admits he is 'obsessed with sound'. John explains more about the SoundDome in this video:
Here's a bit about each of the five works created for the SoundDome.
John Coulter - When the Sun Shines
John Coulter Photo: Supplied
It wasn't until his mid-40s that John Coulter recognised the wisdom contained in the farming-related ethics he grew up with, to appreciate what his father tried to share by exposing the family to life in the country. The saying 'make hay while the sun shines' reflects the notion that 'if you have an opportunity to do something, do it before the opportunity expires'.
Listen to When the Sun Shines by John Coulter
Chris Cree Brown - Transcendence
Chris Cree Brown Photo: Supplied
The title of this piece embraces both the world of dreams and the idea that every individual is connected to a Universal Consciousness. The work is Chris Cree Brown's attempt to touch on many questions regarding the nature of existence, to present two levels of human consciousness - the awake (alert) state and the dream state, more specifically, the Lucid Dream state.
Listen to Transcendence by Chris Cree Brown
David Downes - Signal
David Downes Photo: Supplied
This piece was inspired by a couple of areas of interest that David Downes started to explore during his time as Composer-in-Residence at the NZ School of Music. One is the sound of language, especially its intriguing fragmentary/fluid character, and the other is the voice as a carrier of representations of meaning and experience between inner and outer worlds.
Listen to Signal by David Downes
John Elmsly - Soundings
John Elmsly Photo: Darryl Foong
One of the pleasures of working in the SoundDome space for John Elmsly was to rediscover the life within environmental recordings, and to compose with these sounds and their implicit images and meanings. The location recordings used were mainly waves and flowing water, but a squeaky gate in warm summer air also contributed to John's "flying thoughts".
Listen to 'Twinkle', Movement III of Soundings by John Elmsly
Paul Smith - Logos
Paul Smith Photo: [Sound Dome https://sounddome.org/works/paul-smith.html]
As well as being a percussionist, composer, and film-maker, Paul Smith also practices as a fully qualified architect.
His work Logos uses sacred geometry and mediating ratios that derived from Paul's research into medieval cathedral design, and was composed with a fixed media track to evoke the acoustic properties of a physical cathedral space. The title refers to the human fixation with geometric proportion as a manifestation of the meta-physical, which the ancient Greeks called Logos.
The 8-metre SoundDome takes 4 days to erect and 1 day to set up and test the equipment with a team of 3 technicians.
