STEFAN SMULOVITZ - Bow & Brush
One of the defining characteristics of Stefan Smulovitz's diverse artistic practice is his penchant for collaboration, especially across disciplinary lines. The award-winning technologist, composer, violist, sound artist, electronic musician, and improviser has worked with such legendary musical figures as Pauline Oliveros, Mark Dresser, John Oswald, Evan Parker, Uri Caine, Lori Freedman, Francois Houle, Peggy Lee and Paul Plimley. Commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and others, Smulovitz is also noted for his collaborative works in the theatre world (including Radix, Rumble, Boca Del Luppo), dance (Mascall Dance, Kinesis, Kokoro, Noam Gagnon), art installations (ECIAD, Interurban, GoldMoss), and digital media (Pierre Hebert, Matthew Talbot-Kelly). As leader of Eye of Newt he has created and performed over 100 live film scores since the ensemble's inception in the late 1990's. He's also the creator of Kenaxis, a widely used and expressive software platform for electronic music.
Smulovitz's investment in exploration of this kind is so potent that even his forthcoming album, Bow & Brush: 12 Scores of Nadina Tandy emerges from this same creative trajectory. The impetus for this project came when he was paired with visual artist Nadina Tandy in 2021 through a Vancouver New Music commissioning project entitled One Page Scores where visual artists were invited to create single-page graphic scores to be interpreted by a partnering musician.
It's easy to see what prompted Tandy and Smulovitz to continue their partnership beyond this initial phase. This first painted score (corresponding with opening cut "The Pier"), manages to resemble a landscape, nod in the direction of abstract expressionism, and at the same time readily inviting musical interpretation through its distinct vertical sections and evocative gestures. Smulovitz's response maps all of these attributes in its texture, style and choice of sounds. Underpinned by an aquatic field recording, he situates us in a place while unfurling swooping, reverberant string lines with various microtonal inflections amid sparse gong punctuations. It embraces the traditional alongside the abstract, soundscape alongside melody, and somehow inhabits a similar emotional register as its visual counterpart.
The album's other pieces are quite diverse yet consistent in their core materials, much like their respective scores. For instance, as Tandy's images pivot toward pure form, colour, and brushwork, Smulovitz follows with more electronically-generated and -processed sounds. Yet all the while he maintains the strong organic and instrumental foundation which matches the palpably human fluidity found in his collaborator's paintings. The works also each inhabit a durational scale that approximates the single page, with all but three of the tracks falling within the three to four-minute range.
Some of these miniatures pair electric string melodies with molten bubbles of synthesized texture, whereas others such as "Maple Seed Pods" and "Owl Watching" use digitally-diffused bowed sonorities as the basis for rich sonic environments. The striking score for "Quartz Veins" (as pictured on the album's front cover) is dominated by a large red, blue, and purple blotch, adorned with fine etched lines throughout and desiccated-leaf hued figures around the periphery. The music it elicited skews toward the ominous with plodding synth pulsations anchoring thick smears of distorted viola and dry, eerie whispers slicing through the air.
Not only does Bow & Brush offer a singular and beautiful extension of the graphic score tradition it's also a vivid portrait of one Canada's most intriguing composer-performers. Smulovitz's amalgam of instrumental improvisation, ensemble composition, and various exploratory electronicas is both incisive and accessible; flattered by repeated listening.
Specializing in improvised music, soundscape and composition Stefan Smulovitz has established himself as a major and chimeric force within Canada’s experimental music community. His unique applications of technology and sound processing have led to a vastly eclectic assortment of collaborations, ranging from renowned contemporary dance and theatre artists to theoretical particle physicists. Smulovitz's compositions have also been featured in a wide variety of film, music and performance festivals, from New York City to Puerto Vallarta to Beijing.
In 2010 he created a telematic LED-light-controlled conduction system called Polychora. and he has since led performances using Polychora across Canada including Groundswell (Winnipeg), Ensemble SuperMusique (Montreal), Orchestra Futura (Vancouver) and in Greece at Medea Electronique (Athens). In March 2014, Jeremy Berkman (trombone), Ariel Barnes (cello) and David Harding (viola) performed Polychora. Smulovitz currently teaches sound design at Simon Fraser University.
Vancouver-born Nadina Tandy (1962) has extensive experience in varied aspects of art and culture, since 1988. She earned a Fine Arts diploma from Langara College (Vancouver) and studied drawing and painting at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver). She also completed photography certificate studies at Concordia University (Montreal). Tandy has a broad exhibition history and her works are part of private and public collections throughout North America and Europe. Her work has been featured in print and on television and radio and she has also produced artwork for several book covers. She has produced and hosted cable TV shows and various info spots for CBC Television. She lives and works on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.
Her mixed-media works speak from an otherworld and subconscious, channeling primal forces of nature, acts of resilience and cycles of renewal. Paintings are layered through micro-macro natural patterns – scraped, drawn, scratched, erased, retraced – with objects obscured or revealed, and words and figures adding sub-context. Tandy is interested in process-making, manifesting deep connections to like-minded individuals and misfits, uncovering raw truth and unforeseen allure by taking a surrealist approach to concept, mark making and presentation.
