School of Music, University of Victoria

AUDIO+

Biographies

Aventa

Based in Victoria, British Colombia, the Aventa Ensemble is one of the leading contemporary new music ensembles within Canada. Founded in 2003 under the artistic direction of Bill Linwood, the acclaimed ensemble regularly commissions Canadian and international composers, and has presented premieres of over 100 works both in Canada and while on tour internationally (Australia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, United States), including British composer Gavin Bryars’ opera, Marilyn Forever, and the multi-media work Strange News by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin.

At AUDIO+, the ensemble director will test two binaural (3D audio) headphone monitoring conditions while rehearsing with the musicians for the composition, VOI (rex), by French and Montreal-based composer Philippe Leroux.  

Dr. Eliot Bates

Dr. Eliot Bates is an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research concerns topics related to audio technologies, modular synthesis, critical organology, architectural acoustic design, and music in Turkey. Committed to social science and ethnographic methods, Dr. Bates incorporates an experimental practice-led research design, whether that entails his ongoing studio-based audio engineering work, collaborative recordings featuring the 11-stringed oud, or solo Eurorack performances for the New York Modular Society. Dr. Bates has served as either performer, composer, or audio engineer to more than 80 albums produced in the USA, UK, and Turkey, as well as several TV series and feature films.

In addition to a robust body of journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Bates has published three books in his field. In 2018, with Dr. Samantha Bennett (Australian National University), he co-edited Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound (Bloomsbury Academic), a collection of essays on the intersections of music and technology from leading thinkers in music, audio engineering, anthropology, and media. Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul’s Recording Studio Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an ethnography of contemporary studio music production in an effort to investigate the emerging milieu of Anatolian ethnic music, while Music in Turkey: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2011) draws on Dr. Bates’ extensive fieldwork to situate Turkey’s diverse musical sounds within their respective social contexts and political modernity.

Dr. Eliot Bates is part of the organizing committee of AUDIO+, bringing his expertise to the DIY synth building workshop where he will mentor participants alongside GCEMS members.

Ky Grace Brooks

Ky Grace Brooks is a PhD candidate in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) in Montreal, Quebec, supervised by Dr. Ilja Frissen, Martha de Francisco, and Dr. Jonathan Sterne, and funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. They are conducting an interdisciplinary research project linking tacit knowledge and gender performativity in professional audio practices. Brooks is a member of the AES’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee, and along with Carolina Rodriguez Escobar and Mariana Mejia, they chair the newly minted Montreal chapter of SoundGirls, an international organization whose mission is to create and promote a supportive community for women in audio and music production. In 2019-2020, Brooks collected data and conducted statistical analyses as research assistant on Dr. Amandine Pras’ SSHRC-PEG survey in partnership with the AES. The survey findings are published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (Brooks et al., 2021).

At AUDIO+, Brooks will present on DIY aesthetics and culture, and lead a noise music jam to conclude the DIY Synth building workshop. They will also be a panelist on the “Rethinking Signal Flow: Gender, Audio Education and Professional Development in the Recording Arts in Canada” session.

Graemme Brown

JUNO award-winning mastering engineer Graemme Brown has owned and operated Zen Mastering for over twenty-five years first in Vancouver and now in Gabriola Island, British Colombia. Brown has worked with JUNO-winning artists Andy Milne and Dapp Theory (2019 Jazz Vocal album of the year), Old Man Luedecke (2011 Traditional Folk album of the year), and Jim Byrnes (2011 Blues album of the year). In 2003, he mastered 32 multi-channel SACDs for Concord Jazz as part of their 30th anniversary series of remixed classic albums; including the world’s first Hybrid SACD/Enhanced CD Poncho Sanchez Out of Sight. Brown’s other work includes the DSD transferring for Chick Corea’s Grammy winning SACD Rendezvous in New York and the DSD transfer and SACD authoring on the Grammy-winning SACD, Britten’s Orchestra. A regular visiting faculty member at The Banff Centre, he has presented workshops for students at the University of Lethbridge (2019) and the University of Victoria (online, 2020).

At AUDIO+, Brown will argue for human-powered audio mastering, and will highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of automated mastering systems, using materials taken from the Student Mixing & Re-Mixing Competition to demonstrate his mastering process.

James Clemens-Seely

James Clemens-Seely is the Senior Recording Engineer at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta. Overseeing the Audio Post and Audio Recording Practicum programs in Banff, James is responsible for overseeing over 100 concert, album, film score, and live stream recordings annually.  Before moving to Banff, he taught Technical Ear Training in McGill University’s prestigious Sound Recording graduate program, and has been visiting faculty at McGill, the University of Lethbridge, and the University of Victoria among others.  James’s engineering credits include two Canadian Screen Awards for best music, and albums nominated for several Junos and a Grammy.  From storage lockers to symphony halls, James has worked with garage bands, singer songwriters, nearly every orchestra in Canada (in addition to the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras), electronic music artists, and everything in between.  

At AUDIO+ James Clemens-Seely will demonstrate his approach to surround recordings of large ensembles during the rehearsal of VOI (rex) by Philippe Leroux performed by Bill Linwood and the Aventa Ensemble.

Eekwol (born Lindsay Knight)

The Garden City Electronic Music Society

The Garden City Electronic Music Society (GCEMS) has been active in Victoria, British Colombia (BC) since October 2015. Formally incorporated as a BC non-profit Society on February 7th, 2017, GCEMS is dedicated to the advancement of electronic music, related media arts, and the technologies used within these artforms. The society aims to advance education by providing structured learning activities such as courses, instructional seminars, and workshops about electronic music and technology, and by providing opportunities for artists to publicly exhibit, present, or perform their works, or develop their crafts or skills in conjunction with these learning activities. Past partnerships between the University of Victoria and GCEMS include workshops and concerts by two female electronic and experimental music pioneers, namely Suzanne Ciani and Hildegard Westerkamp.

At AUDIO+, GCEMS members will lead a workshop where participants will have the opportunity to build a custom-designed synthesizer module named Shadow Box, which will teach them the basics of circuit design and soldering.

Dr. Ladan Golshanara

Ladan Golshanara holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of New York at Buffalo, and is a former member of two winning teams involved in AI hackathons. Dr. Golshanara brings an impressive depth of experience in machine learning to Tonz, a music technology start-up that she co-founded with Duncan MacConnell in Montreal, Quebec to create next-generation audio processing software tools designed to support musical learning, practice, recording, and songwriting. Dr. Golshanara’s research interests and experience include database theory and implementation, swarm intelligence, and machine learning.

At AUDIO+, Tonz-founders Dr. Golshanara and MacConnell will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art approaches that they are using to design and develop software plug-ins for music production. They will also participate in a roundtable and public Q&A session.

Jocelyn Greenwood

Jocelyn Greenwood is both the president of the highly successful Canadian record label, Cordova Bay Records based in Victoria, British Colombia, and bassist for the alternative rock band, Jets Overhead. Formed in 2003, Jets Overhead released three studio albums and was nominated for the New Group of the Year award at the 2007 JUNO. With more than twenty years of history, Cordova Bay Records is home to multiple gold and platinum records and artists who have received many regional and national distinctions, including five JUNO nominations.

Jocelyn Greenwood will be judging the Student Mixing & Re-Mixing Competition at AUDIO +, a session where the audio work of students from the University of Lethbridge and the University of Victoria will be assessed by industry professionals.

Heather Kirby

Heather Kirby is a Mastering Engineer and Audio Educator. She owns and operates her studio “Dreamlands Mastering” in Prince Edward County (ON) where she works with artists to complete their creative visions and prepares their music to be unveiled to listeners. As an educator, Heather has been teaching sound and music production courses to undergraduate and graduate students with RTA School of Media (X University, Toronto) since 2013.

At AUDIO+, Kirby will be a panelist on the “Rethinking Signal Flow: Gender, Audio Education and Professional Development in the Recording Arts in Canada” session.

Duncan MacConnell

Duncan MacConnell graduated from the Bachelor of Music and Computer Science at the University of Victoria, British Colombia. After completing an MA in Music Technology from the New York University in 2017 and working professionally as a software engineer for mixed reality audio and artificial intelligence at Microsoft for two years, MacConnell co-found the music technology start-up Tonz with Dr. Ladan Golshanara in Montreal, Quebec to create next-generation audio processing software tools designed to support musical learning, practice, recording, and songwriting.

At AUDIO+, Tonz-founders MacConnell and Dr. Golshanara will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art approaches that they are using to design and develop software plug-ins for music production. They will also participate in a roundtable and public Q&A session.

Margaret McGuffin

Margaret McGuffin is the Executive Director of Music Publishers Canada, Chair of the Board at Work in Culture, and a member of the Advisory Board for MusiCounts in Toronto, Ontario. McGuffin’s expertise draws on a love of digging into research and policy development related to the creative industries, and far-reaching experience with music industry trade organizations and collective management organizations. In 2019, McGuffin founded the Women in the Studio program, a career development program for women in music technology.

At AUDIO+, McGuffin is a panelist on the “Rethinking Signal Flow: Gender, Audio Education and Professional Development in the Recording Arts in Canada” session, and will help contextualize research on gender-, class-, and race-based disparities in the music industry.

Max McKinnon

Max McKinnon is a 4th Bachelor of the Digital Audio Arts program in the Music Department at The University of Lethbridge. Since Fall 2020, he has indexed and edited video data collected in West African recording studios as a research assistant for Dr. Amandine Pras’ SSHRC-funded partnership. With hopes of studying entertainment law after his undergrad, he is always eager to find opportunities to expand his portfolio.

At AUDIO+, McKinnon will lead the roundtable discussion for the Global Music Production session. 

Kirk McNally

Kirk McNally is an associate professor of Music Technology for the School of Music at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and a sound engineer specializing in popular and classical music recording, as well as new music performances using electronics. McNally has worked with national and international recording artists in studios in Toronto and Vancouver, including REM, Bryan Adams and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. With funding from a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, McNally’s research explores the diverse ways recording engineers and producers communicate with musicians, both verbally and through their use of technology to manipulate sound, to better understand how they create the music we know and love in our everyday lives.

Kirk McNally is a co-founder of AUDIO+ events that he is hosting at the University of Victoria for the 2021 edition. His contributions include the coordination of the next generation audio processing session, DIY synth building workshop, and the student mixing/re-mixing competition.

Leonard Menon

Leonard Menon graduated from the Digital Audio Arts program at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. He is now a first-year student in the graduate Sound Recording program at McGill University and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) in Montreal, Quebec, funded by an AES Educational Fundation. An up-and-coming researcher in audio, Menon received the Chinook Summer Research Award and the Sakamoto Award for Digital Audio Arts Research and Development in April 2020. As a research assistant of Dr. Amandine Pras, he contributed to the Virtual AES Vienna workshop titled, “Remapping the Model of Studio production Techniques” co-chaired by Dr. Pras and Dr. Paul Thompson (University of Leeds-Beckett, UK) in June 2020. He also presented a research paper at the 149th AES Convention in October 2020, entitled: “Click-to-Music Ratio: Using Active Headphones to Increase the Gap” (Menon, 2020).

At AUDIO+, Menon will test the second prototype of his Active Binaural Headphone system that uses KLANG technology for 3D spatialization, during the rehearsal of the composition VOI (rex) by Philippe Leroux performed by Bill Linwood and the Aventa Ensemble.

Dr. Abdoulaye Niang

Dr. Abdoulaye Niang was awarded a PhD with distinction at the University Gaston Berger (UGB) in Saint-Louis, Senegal in 2010 for a thesis entitled, Social integration and professional insertion of young b-boys though the hip hop movement in Dakar. His prior affiliations and visiting sessions as a guest lecturer include Cape Town University, Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and Harvard University. Currently, Dr. Niang is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the UGB. His research interests include youth, social change, social movements, music and creative industries, the use of information and communication technologies, social uses of digital technology, identities, urban cultures, and the theories and methods of the social sciences.

At AUDIO+, Dr. Abdoulaye Niang will present his research on African Rap, Politics, and Identity at the Global Music Production session, and participate in a roundtable discussion with the sessions other presenter, Eekwol (Lindsay Knight). 

Annelise Noronha

Annelise Noronha is a freelance recording producer, composer, and educator based in Toronto, Ontario, with an extensive and diverse background in the music industry. Noronha worked as an audio engineer for artists such as Ansley Simpson, Blue Rodeo, James Brown, Jennifer Lopez, Phil Dwyer, and Oscar Peterson (among many others). Her impressive portfolio also includes long format mixing, digital editing, and cast recording experience for movies and television projects by Atom Egoyan, David Hyde, and others. Noronha has been a panelist for the Toronto AES event Diversity in Audio in May 2020, and a featured guest on the Sisters of Sound podcast in October 2018.

As a highly successful recording engineer, producer and artist, Noronha will bring a multi-faceted perspective on gender-, race- and class-based discrimination in the field of music production to the gender panel at AUDIO+, in addition to delivering the keynote address.

Dr. Amandine Pras

Before joining the University of York in the UK as leader of the MA in Music Production, Dr. Amandine Pras was an Assistant Professor of Digital Audio Arts at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta for four years. There, she designed the West African Audio Network funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant that aims to enhance Western African audio engineers’ access to professional training and international network. Since graduating from the Advanced music production program at the Paris Conservatoire, Amandine has worked as a freelance audio engineer and producer on projects ranging from free and alternative jazz, classical and popular music, through to electroacoustic and experimental music, with artists as diverse as the ARC Ensemble, Jim Black, Luciane Cardassi, Nels Cline, Quatuor Bozzini, Subhajyoti Guha, Andy Milne, William Parker, and Satoshi Takeishi. Her PhD thesis that she conducted at McGill University and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) in Montreal, Quebec focused on the varied practices of creating musical recordings in the digital era. Also, the last of her two postdoctoral residencies at the New School for Social Research in New York City was an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural case study in West Bengal (India) with renown improvisers from the New York alternative jazz scene and from the Kolkata North-Indian classical music scene. In disseminating the research findings, she directed a 50-min video documentary A Home Away From Home that she presented, among others, at the 2018 World Film Festival in Montreal.

Committed to find solutions to de-gender and decolonize the field of audio, Dr. Pras is a co-founder of AUDIO+ events. Her contribution to the 2021 edition includes the coordination of the global music production session, the gender panel, and the ensemble conductor study with Leonard Menon’s second prototype of the Active Binaural Headphones.

Marcela Rada

Before being appointed as full-time instructor in the Digital Audio Arts program at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Marcela Rada taught music production at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario, and at Interlochen Center for the Arts, Michigan. She holds a Bachelor of Music with a major in Digital Audio Arts from the University of Lethbridge; a Master’s Degree with an emphasis on Music Production, Technology, and Innovation as well as a postmaster fellowship in Academic Technology from Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. Her master’s thesis focused on immersive audio and its application to 360 videos for Virtual Reality and social media platforms. Rada has several years of experience as a sound engineer recording, editing, mixing, and mastering audio for independent artists. She has worked across music genres as well as symphony orchestras, film scoring sessions and ensembles. At AUDIO+, Rada will be a panelist on the “Rethinking Signal Flow: Gender, Audio Education and Professional Development in the Recording Arts in Canada” session.

Jordan Shier

Jordan Shier is pursuing an Interdisciplinary Master degree in Computer Science and Music at the University of Victoria, British Colombia, supervised by Dr. George Tzanetakis and Kirk McNally, with funding from McNally’s SSHRC Insight Development Grant. He completed his BSc in Combined Computer Science and Music at the University of Victoria in 2017, and was a 2016-2017 recipient of the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award for his computational analysis of percussion sounds. Shier’s research has been published in the proceedings of the 143^rd and 148^th AES conventions (Shier et. al, 2017, 2020), and his paper, “Manifold Learning Methods for Classification and Browsing of Drum Machine Samples,” co-authored with McNally, Dr. Tzanetakis and Ky Grace Brooks is published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (2021).

A representative of the next-generation of audio-engineer scholars, Shier will present his research about automatic programming of synthesizers using machine-learning and AI approaches at AUDIO+.

Allison Sokil

Allison Sokil is a PhD candidate supervised by Dr. Jeff Packman at the University of Toronto, Ontario, and funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC). Interested in intersections of popular music, sound studies, music technology, and identity politics, Sokil investigates multifaceted understandings of silence, space, and affect in the North American recording industries. Her dissertation examines the resonance of gendered hums in Canadian production and recording environments, critically engaging with the discourse and practices that emphasize women, transgender, and gender non-conforming recordists’ absence and minimize their contributions to the field.

At AUDIO+, Sokil will host a panel titled, “Rethinking Signal Flow: Gender, Audio Education and Professional Development in the Recording Arts in Canada” with scholars, producers, engineers, and executives, who will present their programs and approaches to advance audio education for women, transgender, and gender-non-conforming producers in Canada.