Audiosketch is a Chamber Made podcast created and produced by Roslyn Oades. Roslyn created a series of art dates with artists about their practice, with conversations particularly referencing how they have been listening at this moment in time.
Credits
To discover more about Hildegard Westerkamp’s extensive body of sound works, including links to full recordings, visit her website here.
Hildegard was part of theWorld Soundscape Project with R. Murray Schafer which you can learn more about here.
Hildegard Westerkamp is a founding member of the World Forum of Acoustic Ecology, of which you can learn more about here.
The personal art-crush Hildegard cited was Tina Pearson and her sound work Music for Natural History (created with Paul Walde) which you can learn more about here.
Our Audiosketch podcast title music is by Fia Fiell. All in the Same Room, is from Fia Fiell’s 2018 album of the same name, which you can find on Bandcamp here.
Transcript
{Signature title music by Fia Fiell}
Welcome to Audiosketch, a Chamber Made podcast dedicated to innovative artists working across performance, sound and music. I’m Roslyn Oades and I’m joining you from the lands of Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, also known as the City of Melbourne. In this episode, we pick up the second half of our great conversation with pioneering composer, radio artist and acoustic ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp, who joins me from the West Coast of Canada. Hildegard’s career spans near on 50 years of artistic practice. She was part of the World Soundscape Project with the late R. Murray Schafer, she produced and hosted the radio program Soundwalking in the late 70s and was a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. Let’s pick up the conversation where we left off…
Roslyn Moving from silence to noise. A noisy composition of yours. I’d like to play an excerpt from Harbour Symphony.
Hildegard Yeah, that’s really different.
Roslyn This is actually the first work I heard of yours.
Hildegard Oh really?
Roslyn Which is a strange way to come to your work. But it’s the first work I was played of yours. And it blew me away. I love the epic nature of this concept. Can you tell us about this particular work and how you came to make it, because it seems a little bit incongruous to the other work in some ways. Although I can also see the parallels?
Hildegard Yeah. Yeah, it was commissioned by the organisers of the EXPO 86 in Vancouver. We had built the Canada Pavilion, which is this big building with sails in the harbour. And they wanted to do an Opening Ceremony for that. The idea of the Harbour Symphony came from St. John’s, Newfoundland, on the East Coast of Canada. Every second year, there is the Sound Symposium. And during the Sound Symposium, they invite participants for every day at noon to compose a seven-minute harbour symphony for their harbour. It’s a small harbour that will have anywhere from four to seven boats in it. Big ones, like freighters. So, you’re invited to compose a piece for those kinds of horns. And that had happened for a few years before, already. And so that’s where this idea came from. Somebody in the organising committee had this idea, why don’t we do a harbour symphony in Vancouver, but make it much larger scale. And somehow, I got this commission. And it was scary. I had never-
Roslyn I bet. So much to coordinate.
Hildegard Well, there was a coordinating committee.
Roslyn Oh good.
HildegardThere was someone who was from the harbour authorities. There was someone who was familiar with the shipping community. And the way I started was, I need to record some of these horns that are going to be there. So, I went around to meet the fishing community and the tugboat community, and I managed to...