Episode 001 - Sarah Belle Reid - Trumpets and Synthesizers - Part 1
What a great way to kick off this podcast. In our debut episode, Sarah Belle Reid talks about her new album, Underneath and Sonder, how she interfaces her trumpet with electronics, her visceral performance style, using restraint in improvisation and so much more. This is part 1 in a two part interview.
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Sarah Belle Reid is a Canadian performer-composer, specializing in trumpet and electronics, modular synthesis, and alternate forms of graphical notation for composition and improvisation.
She is a co-developer of the Minimally Invasive Gesture Sensing Interface (MIGSI) for trumpet: an open-source, wireless interface that captures performance data and provides real-time extended sonic and visual control for improvisation. Reid has presented and performed with MIGSI at institutions and festivals around the world including Moogfest, Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), the International Conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2015: Brisbane, Australia), New Media Art & Sound Summit (NMASS 2017: Austin, TX), University of Oregon, UT Austin, and UC Irvine's Women in Music Technology Symposium (2016), among others.
As a composer, Reid’s work explores themes of time and memory imprints both in sound and physical performance—a fascination inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s writings on infrathin—as well as the integration of electronics, hybrid/new instruments, and found objects. Her compositions have been performed by renowned musicians around the world, most recently pianist Vicki Ray, Caution Tape Sound Collective (supported by Association of Canadian Women Composers and SOCAN), Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and Vinny Golia. In 2017 her composition “Flux” for amplified percussion quartet won the Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Percussion Quartet’s Next Wave Composer Initiative.
As a performer dedicated to new and experimental music, Reid has premiered over 40 works for solo trumpet, as well as multiple chamber and performance art pieces. She is a founding member of the trumpet/modular synthesizer duo Burnt Dot, dedicated to exploring open forms of spontaneous creation and electroacoustic collaboration. Additionally, Reid has worked with a wide range of musicians and ensembles in a broad range of musical genres and settings. Highlights include Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, David Rosenboom, Todd Barton, Liberation Music Orchestra, KREation Ensemble, Orchestre de la Francophonie, and the Montreal Symphony Pops Orchestra, Julia Holter, Adele, Avey Tare (Animal Collective), and Estrella TV.
As a scholar, Reid has studied with music technology leaders Dr. Ajay Kapur and Dr. Perry Cook, and published technical and theoretical papers on the subjects of interdisciplinary process and collaboration, musical interface design, and alternate methods of musical notation. Reid has been an invited speaker and guest artist at Stanford University, Hendrix University, University of Oregon, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Southern California, UC Irvine’s Women in Music Technology symposium, the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, and the international conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).
Reid received a Bachelor of Music in trumpet performance from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music and a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, where she is currently on faculty teaching music technology (Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence, and Design), and music theory.
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