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the music of Benjamin Mawson

An evolving musical language that draws equally on sound objects found from our surroundings, from the balances of control with wild freedom in Afro-American, Balkan & central Asian musics and from Western classical traditions, where the symmetry of the Baroque and fluidity of late Romanticism have also left their mark.


currently developing. . . a platform for virtual performance of music composed in a digital studio.

During the past 15 or so years I have composed digital music that minutely simulates live performance on acoustic instruments but which is unplayable by human hands. A constant question has been how to cross the gulf between listeners’ experience of concerts and recordings. The spectacle of performance with its social rituals and formal artifice, the variation between different performances, unpredictability of even familiar music: these can’t be matched by listening to a recording: the separation between performance and listening to recordings is profound.

Music is now made that was impossible before digital technology but the digital listener’s experience is poorer than those hearing a live performance.

Mid 20th century and later experiments, with computers or speakers replacing performers, were still essentially just about sitting with other people in a room to listen to a recording.

Audiences remain unconvinced that these experiences are as compelling or meaningful as watching an accomplished soloist coax successive wafting bubbles of tactile sonic geometries from a strung wooden box or valve-stopped brass pipe.

I am working with colleagues in virtual acoustics research to change all this. . .

Zones of Intensities:    
Auditory Hyper-Reality and Virtual Music Performance   




and editing for 1st (virtual) performance. . .
      concerto for piano & string orchestra "n"


Recently completed. . .
      Latest music, released on SoundCloud including excerpts from CD "Credo":

      Four short convolutions:
     • a soundtrack to solitary dislocation
     • improvising with a Saxon shepherd
     • Obama's speech on the capture of Bin Laden reconstructed
      • Virtuosic Android Pianist Recital
     • 3-D plunderphonic from sampled medieval and modern sacred chant with piano, harp and string orchestra: an examination in motion of devotional music from many faiths.




for a list of compositions to date, including scores (pdf) and audio (mp3):   browse





©Copyright Benjamin Mawson 2011
http://benmawson.com