Resources
Dame Evelyn Glennie
Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest orchestras and artists. Evelyn paved the way for orchestras globally to feature percussion concerti when she played the first percussion concerto in the history of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1992.
A leading commissioner of new works, Evelyn has commissioned over 200 works from many of the world’s most eminent composers. “It’s important that I continue to commission and collaborate with a diverse range of composers whilst recognising the young talent coming through”. Evelyn composes music for film, television, theatre and music library companies. She is a double GRAMMY award winner and BAFTA nominee. She regularly provides masterclasses and consultations to inspire the next generation of musicians. The film Touch the Sound, TED Talk and her book Listen World! are key testimonies to her unique and innovative approach to sound-creation.
Leading 1000 drummers, Evelyn had a prominent role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games which also featured a new instrument, the Glennie Concert Aluphone.
“Playing at an event like that was proof that music really affects all of us, connecting us in ways that the spoken word cannot”. Evelyn’s solo recordings currently exceed 40 CDs. These range from original improvisations, collaborations, percussion concerti and ground-breaking modern solo percussion projects.
Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and now has over 100 international awards to date, including the Polar Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. She was recently appointed the first female President of Help Musicians, only the third person to hold the title since Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Since 2021 she has been Chancellor of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland.
The Evelyn Glennie Podcast was launched in 2020 featuring popular personalities from the world of music, sport, television and academia. Evelyn is curator of The Evelyn Glennie Collection which includes in excess of 3000 percussion instruments. Through her mission to Teach the World to Listen she aims to improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening in order to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower.
Evelyn also has an online shop with music, clothing, jewellry and opportunities to meet with Evelyn in person
Holger Schulze (*1970) is full professor in musicology at the University of Copenhagen and principal investigator at the Sound Studies Lab (see below). He serves as co-editor of the international journal for historical anthropology Paragrana and as founding editor of the book series Sound Studies.
His research moves between a cultural history of the senses, sound in popular culture and the anthropology of media. He is a founding member of the European Sound Studies Association. Between 2012-2018 he was an associated investigator at the cluster of excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung: an interdisciplinary laboratory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; between 2008-2016 he was director of the international research network Sound in Media Culture, and between 2000-2009 he was a co-founder and the first head of department of the first European MA-programme in Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin.
He was invited visiting professor at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, at the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, and at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He served as a curator for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin and he produced radio features for Deutschlandradio Kultur. He writes for Merkur, Seismograf, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Positionen, Texte zur Kunst, taz - die tageszeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, der freitag.
The Sound Studies Lab - Field Research, Critical Analysis and Sonic Artifacts
The Sound Studies Lab was founded in 2011 by Holger Schulze.
The foundation phase of the lab was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.
The lab invites young and experienced scholars and artists to work on the sonic and sensory aspects of individual lives and in heterogenuous societies, cultures and historical eras. The projects at the lab operate in mobile, experiential and field-based research environments. The basic research strategies of the lab are therefore field research, critical analysis and the production of sonic artifacts. The research of the lab operates in permanent exchange, evaluation, collaboration and cooperation with international researchers and artists in the field of the sound studies.
The researchers and authors, the artists and designers of the Sound Studies Lab document their research processes and publish the results of their research projects on sound studies in a broad variety of formats: in research blogs, in articles for academic journals and art- or music-related magazines, in public lectures, presentations, conferences as well as in specialized workshops and university courses, in sound art installations and performances, in radio features or experimental sound art pieces.
https://twitter.com/soundstudies
Holger metioned this book during the interview: Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel by Karin Bijsterveld and Eefje Cleophas in English (9 Jan 2014)
Sam Auinger
Sonic Thinker, composer and sound artist. Born in Linz (Austria), lives and works in Linz and Berlin.
Together with Bruce Odland, he founded O+A in 1989. Their central theme is hearing perspective. They are known for their permanent sound installations in public space, which transform urban sound in real time, as in the works harmonic bridge MassMoca (US) since 1998 and Sonic Vista Frankfurt (D) since 2011. In 2009, they begin a discourse on the theme of Sonic Commons with an article in the Leonardo Music Journal, which questions the dominance of our visual culture in perceiving the world.
Since 2000 collaboration with the bassist and composer Hannes Strobl www.tamtam.berlin, and the urbanist and media artist Dietmar Offenhuber. http://www.stadtmusik.org/
Sam Auinger has received numerous scholarships and prizes, including the Culture Prize of the City of Linz 2002 and the SKE Publicity Prize 2007. In 1997, he was a guest of the DAAD’s Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme (berliner theorie) together with Rupert Huber. In 2008/2009, he was a scholarship holder at the Cité International des Arts in Paris and became the first city sound artist in Bonn in 2010. In 2011, he was featured artist at the Ars Electronica in Linz.
From 2008 to 2012, he was Professor at the UdK Berlin and Head of the Department of Experimental Sound Design in the Master’s Program in Sound Studies. From 2013 to 2015, he was an associate at the GSD in Harvard and, in 2017, a guest lecturer in the Art Culture and Technology program at MIT.
In addition to his artistic work, he collaborates with urban planners and architects, gives lectures and conducts workshops, and frequently participates in international symposia on urban planning, architecture, media, perception and sound.
Some of Sam Auinger's creative works
Harmonic Gate by O+A (Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland). This Sound Installation for Europaallee in Zurich, opened in September of 2020, is a long-term installation turning ambient city noise into a field of harmony. A humane gesture to the ears of the public in the new walking street at the heart of the city.
Berghain Bell: the song "berghain bell" of the installation "Eleven Songs - Halle am Berghain" by Tamtam (Sam Auinger/Hannes Strobl) sounded different for every listener when standing still or moving around the space. Video of visitors experiencing the sounds Video of visitors and the audio set up too
A look at four different landscapes and their auditory qualities for Sonsbeek 2020-24, an annual, international art festival which was titled 'Force Times Distancee on Labour and its Sonic Ecologies'. The video of the project is called 'xxxx_terrain - tools and experiments' "In the beginning, you can see how to hold the sticks to produce a good sound...."
A booklet is on this project, called xxxx_terrain, available to download
Sam's instagram account exhibits his growing collection of interesting spatial and auditory situations, or curious musical situations in our urban environments
https://www.instagram.com/samauinger/
Sam Auninger's website is https://www.samauinger.de