Artistic Vision

The artistic vision of the soundaXis festival is to explore the interaction, mutual definition and shared fundamentals between music and other forms of expression and artistic practice. This vision is expressed through creating major festivals that provide a platform for an ongoing interdisciplinary effort with new music as the vital link between modes of creative cultural composition and expression.     
    
The soundaXis festival aims to:

• increase the audience for new music, by imaginative programming and publicity
• challenge common perceptions about new music
• provide opportunities for artists taking part in concerts presented by NMAP to be seen by virtually all the new music presenters in Toronto
• provide performance opportunities for artists from other provinces and from outside Canada
• provide greater visibility for artists based in Toronto

The initial festival, in June 2006, explored the interaction, mutual definition, and many shared fundamentals between music and architecture. Situated at the seam of the two art forms is acoustics, which added a third facet for artistic investigation.
The 2006 festival focused on three artistic goals:

1. fresh discovery of the intimacies of music and architecture
2. exploration of fundamental ideas that permit translation from one art form to another
3. animating the city, more specifically Toronto, as an acoustical landscape.

Concerts and events took place in 'traditional' and non-traditional spaces. The festival  challenged expectations and known 'truths' about sound and space. As such, soundaXis placed concerts into non-concert spaces – the city's places.

For a full description of soundaXis 2006, click here.

soundaXis 2006 was a great success at all levels. All the participants responded fully to the theme, all the concerts were artistically successful, and attendance exceeded expectations. The festival gave the new music community in Toronto a sense of community, and thus strengthened the community.

The focus of soundaXis '08 is to develop the basic theme of the initial festival, and explore connections between music, materials and textures. These connections can be considered as operating alternatively at the physical and conceptual planes, and involve exploration of the following:

1. the physicality of music and how it is emboddied in material realty,
2. the relationship between performance, materiality and embodiment,
3. the materials and acoustic qualities of sound itself as the basis of     compositional material, and
4. the intimate embodied relationships that are produced through listening and performance.  

This provides a platform for programming works of composers whose work is about or concerned with materials: composers who explore the acoustic properties of sound itself (rather than syntax) as the basis of compositional material, the 'sound inside the sound', the physics of music, extended sound possibilities of musical instruments and new musical instruments, electronic music, microtonal and improvisational music. Featured composers include Giacinto Scelsi, Georges Aperghis, James Tenney and John Cage. Improvised music is also be featured. The world of percussive sound is explored in Cool Drummings – an international festival of percussion presented by Soundstreams Canada in collaboration with soundaXis. Deep Wireless (created by New Adventures in Sound Art) will explore the aural dimensions of radio. 

As part of the soundaXis '08, NMAP will present five concerts. These concerts respond to and reinforce aspects of the festival theme.

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