Örjan Sandred is back at EMS once again working with the Stenhammar Quartet. Sandred is a Swedish-Canadian composer and is since 2005 a Professor of Composition at the University of Manitoba in Canada where he founded Studio FLAT – a studio for Computer Music research and production. He taught composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm 1998-2005. In 2016 he was a DAAD visiting professor at Hochschule für Musik Detmold in Germany. He was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2022. In 2023 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Sandred has composed a series of pieces that include live electronics. Each piece focuses on a specific characteristic, for example “Ice Fog” for alto saxophone, piano and live electronics uses saxophone multiphonics as a starting point for sound synthesis, or “Mimétisme” for percussion, live electronics and live video processing uses contact microphones and video cameras to create a counterpoint between visual and aural stimuli. He has also composed music for Wave Field Synthesis spatial audio (“Konzert für Konzerthaus” for the concert hall in Detmold, Germany) as well as music for symphony orchestra and various chamber music constellations. Many of Sandred's pieces are the result of his search for new methods of composition, notably his interest in Rule-based Computer Assisted Composition techniques.
This year, Sandred is composing a piece for string quartet and live electronics. The piece is a commission from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York for the Stenhammar Quartet. They meet a few times during the year to test ideas and technology and at EMS they will work with live interaction and electronics. Sandred has for a long time written pieces with live electronics in various forms, and a special interest has been developing computer-aided composition. In this particular project, he wants to test letting algorithms from A.I. participate in designing the electronic part live during the concert, letting the computer listen to the musicians and adjust certain structures according to what it hears.
Sandred's music is available on the CDs "Sonic Trails" (2020) and "Cracks and Corrosion" (2009).