The Rimutaka Tunnel goes to Montreal
PRESS RELEASE: STARTS
The Rimutaka Tunnel goes to Montreal
Trains sounds and historic film clips of the
construction of the Rimutaka
Tunnel will feature in a
concert on June 9 at the International Viola
Congress in
Montreal.
Composer Lissa Meridan was commissioned to write
a work for the Viola
Congress by Professor Donald
Maurice, Head of String Studies at the New
Zealand School
of Music, Wellington. ³The piece is called Tunnel
Vision,²
Meridan explains. ³ The live viola is
accompanied by an electroacoustic
track which uses sounds
sampled from my journeys on the
Wairarapa-Wellington
line. Historic film of the
construction of the Rimutaka Tunnel courtesy of
the New
Zealand Film Archive and video artist Emil McAvoy will
be
projected behind Donald as he performs the piece
"
Meridan will be involved in another musical project the
following day. She
will join Mike Donn from the Victoria
University School of Architecture and
Design to give a
presentation at the Architecture Music Acoustics
Conference
at Ryerson University, Toronto. She explains:
³Over the last six years
students from the School of
Architecture and Design and electroacoustic
composition
students from the Music Department have collaborated on
short
films featuring animation and music, in which the
architecture is the
central 'character'. Our presentation
will be based on the results of these
collaborations."
ENDS
Background:
Composer Lissa Meridan is
also Director of the Lilburn Electroacoustic
Studio at
the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University,
Wellington.
Electroacoustic music is music that is created
in the studio through the
manipulation and reworking of
sound samples taken from natural
acoustic
sources.