July 8, 2018
Christine Tavolacci
André Cormier's Piling Sand - Piling Stone 4
Flutist Christine Tavolacci returns to Automata with the west coast premiere of Canadian composer André Cormier's immersive 96 minute work for flute, electronics and video Piling Sand - Piling Stone 4.
Piling Sand—Piling Stone 4 (2011) is the fourth of seven volumes that make up a series of large-scale works that explore music unfolding on both the small and large scale. To achieve this, the performer (in this volume solo flute) plays through a highly strategize ninety-minute score, and is recorded in six-minute segments, which loop and layer fifteen times. As the piece progresses, the live sounds intermix with the recorded layers that are output with loudspeakers. Stratum of sound emerge during the course of the performance, increasing in density and complexity, yet always controlled. After ninety-minutes, once the performer has played the last note, the end result is a six-minute resonating sculpture-like recording of all the fifteen layers. At this point the live performance is over, however, at the same time beginning its second formal incarnation as a standalone reverberating sonic entity. The Piling Sand—Piling Stone series uses sound and performance to create the illusion of time folding onto itself. - André Cormier
Christine Tavolacci is a Los Angeles based flutist, composer and educator specializing in contemporary and experimental music. She has traveled across the United States and Europe to study and perform, and has been involved in the premieres of many new works, including those by Alvin Lucier, James Saunders, Michael Pisaro, Chiyoko Slavnics, Carolyn Chen and Catherine Lamb. Christine is active as a soloist, improviser, curator and chamber musician both in California and internationally. She is co-founder and co-director of Southland Ensemble, as well as a member of the Dog StarOrchestra and
Gurrisonic. Her playing has been released on Orenda Records, Slub Music(Japan) and Tzadik.
André Cormier’s work has been presented in Canada, the US, Europe and New Zealand. He has written for solo, small and large chamber ensembles, as well as music for opera, dance and collaborative work with visual artists. His works have been commissioned from a variety of artists in Canada, the US and Europe. In 2004 he founded Ensemble Ordinature and has since served as artistic director. He produced their debut recording of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, which is featured on ubu.com and was favourably reviewed in UK new music magazine The Wire. Along with violist Mieka Kohut and artist Donna Kelly, Cormier co-founded CO•LAB, a multi-disciplinary collaborative project.
In 2008 he launched Éditions musique SISYPHE (emsis.ca) a music publishing house focusing on experimental music. Cormier is an Acadian, originally from Moncton NB, and has lived on the west coast since the early nineties.