Yiorgos Vassilandonakis University of Virginia An Interview with Trevor McIntire Department of Music 112 Old Cabell Hall Wishart Charlottesville, Virginia 22903 USA [email protected] Trevor Wishart (see Figures 1 and 2) has carved sound properties, his philosophy, and his wit, as well a distinct niche as a composer, author, educator, as his programming abilities, having watched him vocal improviser, software designer, and practitioner tweak or rewrite software on the spot to improve of sonic art and digital music creation. Born in or update functionality. I met him again in Paris 1946 in Leeds, England, Mr. Wishart studied at a few years later, when I got the chance to work Oxford, the University of Nottingham, and the closely with CDP. This interview took place in three University of York, where he earned his doctorate separate sessions, the first of which was conducted in composition in 1973. He became involved in live in Paris in June 2006, over a meal between Mr. the early stages of electronic music, which he Wishart’s teaching sessions at CCMIX; the remain- has actively researched and developed ever since, ing sessions were concluded over telephone and creating an impressive body of works that have electronic mail during the summer and fall of 2008. been commissioned by l’Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), the Paris Biennale, and the BBC Promenade Concerts. (See Table 1.) He has also been awarded prizes such as Early Years and Socio-Political Context the Giga-Herz Grand Prize at Zentrum fur¨ Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), the Golden Nica at the Vassilandonakis: Most of your work has been as an Linz Ars Electronica, the Gaudeamus Award, and the independent composer. How have you managed to Euphonie d’Or at the Bourges Festival. Mr. Wishart pursue a career without the support of a teaching is also known for his works involving the human post or even a major research institution? voice, including improvisations using extended vocal techniques, as well as his musical theater Wishart: There seem to be ways for a performer pieces. Specializing in sound metamorphosis, he is of contemporary music to make a living in big a principal contributor to the Composers’ Desktop metropolises like London, Paris, or Berlin. But these Project (CDP), a set of software tools for multi- venues and their audiences seemed remote from faceted sound transformation. Mr. Wishart has the world I grew up in. And anyway, it seemed developed and maintained Sound Loom, a user that composers who were not performers needed an interface for CDP, since 2000. academic post to financially support their work. Further contributions include his books On Sonic Vassilandonakis: They still do. Art and Audible Design,aswellashisSounds Fun books of educational games, which have been Wishart: Absolutely, though it also depends on translated into Japanese. (See Table 2.) Mr. Wishart where you are. There are still places with remnants has held residencies in Australia, Canada, Holland, of financial resources for independent composers, Germany, and the United States, and at the Univer- though not many. At the time I was starting out, sities of York, Cambridge, and Birmingham. He is an the Arts Officer for our local region (Yorkshire) was honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York. a great supporter of the new medium known as I first met Trevor Wishart in June 2003 while “performance-art,” and many well-known perform- attending a summer program in Electronic Music ing groups moved to the region to live and work. at the Centre de Creation´ Musicale, Iannis Xenakis Much of their experimental visual work happened in (CCMIX), in Paris. I was struck by his knowledge of the street or in small-town, small-scale venues (the now-defunct “Arts Labs”). I worked with several of these artists while I was still a doctoral student Computer Music Journal, 33:2, pp. 8–23, Summer 2009 at York, and I was inspired by the idea of making c 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. your way in life by taking work out “on the road” 8 Computer Music Journal Figure 1. Trevor Wishart Figure 2. Presenting a performing at the Krikri seminar at the Trieste Festival in Ghent (2006). Music Conservatory in Trieste, Italy. and being judged in front of a real audience. So I was lucky to find a niche for myself staging what I committed, in a youthfully idealistic way, to ideas called “environmental events” (we’d probably call of taking art out of the usual contexts and into the these “site-specific events” today), and multimedia community, without any realistic notion of how shows like Son et Lumiere` Domestic,whichwere this might be achieved. In particular, the death given Arts Council support as “performance art.” of my father while I was still a student made me I should also be honest and say that, without my reconsider what I was doing as a composer. The wife’s support, the first ten years of my independent post-Xenakis type orchestral work I was writing career would have been impossible, as I came from (based on seven intervallically distinct tone-rows a poor family with no resources to back me up. and random number tables) seemed irrelevant to his life, working in a factory in an industrial town, and Vassilandonakis: You have an academic composer’s this is what first inspired me to buy a tape recorder background, and yet your career has focused mainly and go out recording the sounds of industry around on electronic music. Was there a point at which you the region with some vague idea of making a piece consciously renounced or gravitated away from the of music out of it. traditional academic path? How did you make the transition to electronic music? Vassilandonakis: How familiar were you with the electronic genre of the times as you went in to Wishart: I was a student during the ferment of the manipulate those recordings? Was that project late 1960s and early 1970s when lots of alternative completed successfully? ideas were in the air. My friend and roommate went off to found Uncareers, an alternative approach to Wishart: Most of my university training had been entering the “real world” of employment. I became focused on composers in the instrumental tradition, Vassilandonakis 9 so although I had come across the electronic works see this unbridgeable gulf between improvisers and of Xenakis, Stockhausen, and Berio, and I knew of composers (especially studio composers) that some the existence of musique concrete` , I had no existing musicians seem to want to erect. models to relate to when I began my studio work. Vassilandonakis: Yet there are some fundamental I eventually generated the piece Machine...an differences in these two ways of musical creation. Electronically-Preserved Dream, which combined Since you have also been active as an improviser, those industrial recordings with semi-improvised how does one inform the other in your own thinking? sound materials for singers or speaking voices and cutups of media clips and of my own voice in a Wishart: It’s good to improvise (I still do live radical ad hoc approach I called “music montage.” vocal performances with no more electronics than a microphone and amplifier), but it’s also good Vassilandonakis: How did it feel to have access to to spend time working over materials in a very all these new studio tools back then? intensive way, making decisions about long time- Wishart: Working with sound in the studio was scale relationships which are not so accessible in a revelatory experience for me. With my strong the heat of a live performance. I’ve done some academic background in composing, and a particular pretty exciting live vocal performances, but I interest in musical form, it was shocking to discover would never have come up with the “ocean” that sounds had their own agenda; one couldn’t just sound transformations in Imago in a live situation. transfer idealized notions of proportions to the pre- Curiously, it can be the unpredictability of the recorded sound-materials one had collected. They studio work that leads to discoveries that are not seemed to have a life and demands of their own. I going to happen in the live situation: A complex have to admit that I find mathematics beautiful, and patch applied to a complex source often leads to I read mathematics books for entertainment, but sound results which can’t have been foreseen. Many musical beauty is more than mathematical form, of them are average (or just plain uninteresting), but as it also has to function effectively in time, unlike you can take the best of the unforeseen results and a mathematical argument. I’m always concerned apply a new, unpredictable process, leading to new therefore with shaping materials in a way consistent sounds from which you can make a choice, and so with their particular nature. on. This process of progressive selection (weeding out) and development is not easily applied in a live Vassilandonakis: . a fact that can throw out all situation. pre-composition calculations at times. Vassilandonakis: It must have been hard to follow Wishart: Absolutely. An obvious example I often this approach of “slow improvisation” in the analog use is that a sound-morph usually has to take a studio with tape machines and filters, in the sense certain minimum time to register with the listener. that it takes so much physical work to realize these There’s time required to recognize the initial sound, processes, and it is a long time before you can listen time to recognize the final sound, and time to accept to what you’ve done.