Sonia Paço-Rocchia‘s practice isn’t an easy one to pin down. Her various guises include composer (of both ensemble and electronic pieces), sound artist, installation artist, bassoon improviser, and she can also be seen performing using metal objects and electronics. What unifies her work across this large range of activity is a deep-seated fascination with the materiality of sound. One often tends to think that this sort of music and sound-work is intellectual in nature; the outgrowth of a scientific outlook. Paço-Rocchia’s music says otherwise. Although her pieces and performance feel investigative and phenomenological at their core, they lead listeners along paths of wonder and discovery, eliciting all manner of unfamiliar sensations. CMC Presents is thrilled to be sharing one of her web-based interactive pieces, Ne, as part of Multilocation.
From Sonia / This artwork is hosted on the unceded Indigenous lands of the traditional territory of both the Kanien’kehá:ka, “Mohawk,” and the Anishinabeg, “Algonquin,” peoples and was created on the traditional territory of the Omàmìwininìwag (Algonquin), Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk), Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ and Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga (Haudenosaunee) people.
Ne is a sonic, visual, poetic net art interactive piece. We suggest using a computer with external speakers for the piece if avaialable.
Sonia Paço-Rocchia is an improviser, composer, sound artist, installation artist, maker, live coder, and live electronics musician. Her work has been presented all over North America and Europe. Sonia Paço-Rocchia’s research is about sounds, timbres, and forms as ways to communicate the abstract. Through composing, she broadens the variety of sonic possibilities either using new techniques, live electronics, invented instruments, found instruments or automated instruments. Most of her work with form have a visual/theatrical aspect as well as choices given to the players.
She wrote a series of pieces for solo instruments with live electronics, several pieces of chamber music sometimes with live electronics, and pieces for bigger ensembles including a piece for 32 bassoons (Hommage). She also wrote for non-conventional instruments, such as bus-cards, slinky, bicycle, saws and her invented instruments such as Helixphone, Stemsaw, Metal Harp, Tube Long, Cube and including some automated instruments as the automated saws, automated tubes and automated helixophones.
Sonia is a talented improviser. She uses a myriad of sound-makers, invented and automated instruments, voice and mostly bassoon, along with live electronics. She plays solo and in various ensembles including ZZCC, Bullshit Filter, VibraLib and the London Improvisers Orchestra. As a coder and maker herself it is not rare that she incorporates new technologies into her work such as original real-time processing, automatons, web art, interfaces, and digital instruments. She writes generative music that she aims to mimic her own improvised music, either for installations or on the web.
CMC Presents Multilocation is generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The SOCAN Foundation, FACTOR, The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Foundation. This presentation is also supported by The McLean Foundation and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.
