Freely traversing borders and genres,
David Ogborn is a composer, guitarist and performer of electronic sound
and video. At the centre of his work is the combination of
traditional performance arts with electronic elements — whether these
be recordings of diverse outdoor environments around the world,
improvisations on a laptop or altered guitar, video projections
influenced by live musical gestures, or massive synthesized sounds on
immersive arrays of loudspeakers.
Emigrating to Canada from South
Australia as a child, Ogborn's earliest professional experiences came
as a guitarist in Winnipeg's thriving jazz scene. His
compositional mentors have included Michael Matthews at the University
of Manitoba, Yves Daoust at the Centre d'Arts Orford and Christos
Hatzis at the University of Toronto, where he completed a doctorate in
2006. His ongoing study of the life and works of Luigi Nono
has also been a formative influence — especially the Italian composer's
life-long insistence that music be a moment of challenge and
transformation with an impact on culture beyond the concert hall.
Ogborn's work is performed across
Canada, the United
States and Europe by a diverse and expanding group of virtuoso
musicians and ensembles, including the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the
Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, New Adventures in Sound Art, and Tapestry New
Opera. His live electronic music for
Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis
was a special event at the Esprit Orchestra's 2007 New Wave festival,
and 2008's Opera On The
Rocks
(created with librettists Leanna Brodie, Dave Carley, Lisa Codrington
and Krista Dalby) was a smash hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival, sold
out 11 of 13 Toronto shows, received 4 Ns (stars) from Now magazine, and
was included among the Toronto
Star's 2008 list of "boffo opera".
Ogborn teaches audio and interaction
technologies at
McMaster University (Hamilton) in the Department of Communication
Studies and Multimedia (in the undergraduate program in Multimedia and
the graduate program in Communications and New Media). He is
the president of the
Canadian
Electroacoustic
Community (CEC), an Associate
of the
Canadian Music
Centre, and a founding member of the
angelusnovus.net
(Toronto) and
holophon.ca
(Regina) audio collectives.
Recent Highlights...
04
Dec 2009, 8 PM: 60x60 DANCE CANADA @ Oscar Peterson
Concert Hall - 7141 Sherbrooke St. W, Montreal. Admission free.
21
Nov 2009, 2 PM & 8 PM: 60x60 DANCE CANADA @
Hexagram Blackbox (EV 0S3-845) - 1515 St-Catherine St. W, Montreal.
60 solo choreographies to 60 electroacoustic pieces by 60 Canadian
composers, each piece 60 seconds or
less in duration (and including Ogborn's Transients with Context),
with dance and music accompanied by live video projection of an analog
clock, spectrographic
images, and dance footage. Organized by Eldad Tsabary, Violaine
Morinville, Tim Sutton, and Rob Voisey.
03
Oct 2009 7 PM till 7 AM 04 Oct -
Appearing in two shows as part of Toronto's
nuit blanche:
a circuit I designed for Hilary Martin is the brain of 50+ kissing
robots
in
Public
Displays of Affection (with Hilary Martin, Pearl van Geest
and Neil Wiernik; location: Riverdale Farm Park, Sumach &
Carlton) and I'll be doing live sound spatialization for
Gordon Monahan's
Space
Becomes the Instrument (Massey Hall, a few steps east of
Shuter and Yonge St). Free admission to these and hundreds of
other all-night art events!
04-06
Aug 2009 - Coordinating the
Sound Travels Intensive
three-day sound art workshop (Toronto), and teaching
workshops sessions on MaxMSP for live electronic music.
01
July 2009 - Teaching digital audio and physical computing
(for multimedia productions) at
McMaster
University (Hamilton),
Department
of Communication Studies and Multimedia. Stay tuned
also for announcements about the newly launched
Cybernetic
Orchestra at McMaster...
13-15
Feb 2009, 8 PM -
Emergence,
for singing robot, electric guitar and live electronics premieres in
Hamilton, Brantford and Toronto thanks to the New Music in New Places
program of the Canadian Music Centre,
Hamilton Artists
Inc., the New Harbours Music Series, and the PC
Museum (Brantford).
08
Feb 2009, 3 PM - String
Quartet n. 2 - The
shadow-line premieres at the Mackenzie Art Gallery
(Regina).
29 Jan 2009, 8
PM -
holophon.ca
presents the
Canadian 60x60 mix at Bushwakker Brew Pub (Regina) with each minute of
the project diffused by one of 60 volunteer diffusion performers!
See
holophon.ca
for details!
August
2008 - Guest artist at New Adventures in Sound Art's
annual Sound Travels
festival, Toronto Islands. Chairing
Toronto Electroacoustic
Symposium 2008 on behalf of the Canadian
Electroacoustic Community (CEC).
2-13
July
2008 -
Back by popular demand!
Opera
On The Rocks
to be re-mounted during the Toronto Fringe Theatre festival.
For more information,
click
here to visit operaontherocks.ca.
08
May 2008 8 PM
- Premiere of new acousmatic mashups for the fifth anniversary of the
Deep Wireless Radio Art compilation CD. angelusnovus.net/Deep
Wireless translocal concert @ IndexG gallery, 50 Gladstone Avenue,
Toronto.
Get
the details here!
April
2008 - Editing proceedings of Toronto Electroacoustic
Symposium 2007 for publication in
eContact!, the online journal of the Canadian
Electroacoustic Community (CEC).
26
March 2008, 7 PM -
Street
Song n. 4
to be performed by Pauline Minevich (clarinet) & Monica Gill
(live
electronics) at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada.
Contemporary
Music For Clarinet. Bentley Chamber Music Studio.
Contact
the Banff Centre Box Office at 1-800-413-8368. For
Street
Song scores, software and recordings,
click here.
14-23
Feb 2008
- 2 short electronic operas featured in Tapestry
New Opera's Opera To Go, Toronto, Canada:
The Translator with
librettist Leanna Brodie and
Peace
of My Heart with librettist Dave
Carley.
Click
here to visit Tapestry's website for more information.
6-7
Jan 2008
-
Opera On The Rocks
debuts in Toronto,
Canada, to two completely sold-out houses. A collaboration
with an all-star team of librettists
(Leanna Brodie, Dave Carley, Lisa Codrington and Krista Dalby),
director Liza Balkan and 4 outstanding singers (Alex Dobson, Carla
Huhtanen, Keith Klassen and Jessica Lloyd) in an
unusual venue featuring Ogborn on live electronically modified
classical guitar. Thanks to the Canadian Music Centre's New
Music in New Places program for their support! For more
information,
click
here to visit
operaontherocks.ca.
09
Nov - 02 Dec
2007 Transatlantic Transient
tour - Concerts
in Belfast, Amsterdam (with Terri Hron), Berlin (with Terri Hron),
Hamilton (with Kristin Mueller-Heaslip) and Toronto (with Kristin
Mueller-Heaslip).
15
Nov 2007
- Public seminar on Canadian electroacoustic music at the
Technische
Universität Berlin, Germany.
3-7
Nov 2007
- Sponsored by the Forberg-Schneider Stiftung Foundation to participate
in a week-long course on the performance of Luigi Nono's works with
live electronics, at the Fondazione Cini, Venice, Italy, with artists
from the Experimentalstudio Freiburg.
21
Sept - 06 Oct 2007 - Village Theatre, Waterdown, Ontario
presentation of The Hobbit, featuring sound design by David Ogborn.
06
Sept 2007 6:30 PM
- Street Song n.4 (David
Ogborn) performed in recital @ Michigan State University, School
of Music, East Lansing, MI by Catherine Wood (clarinet) and Sam
Merciers (electronics).
09
August 2007 9 PM
- angelusnovus.net open-mic
night @ InterAccess Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto as
part of the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2007. Electronic, live
electronic and improvised music with a 15-speaker diffusion system. For
more information about the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2007,
click
here.
09
May 2007 8 PM
- World premiere of Ogborn's
rescoring of Fritz Lang's classic silent film
Metropolis, Esprit
Orchestra New Wave Festival, featuring Parmela Attariwala (violin),
Kristin Mueller-Heaslip (soprano), Scott Good (trombone) and Ogborn
himself on live electronics.
Click
here for details.