School of Sound 2001

LARRY SIDER is the Director and co-founder of the School of Sound with Diane Sider. He studied Radio-TV-Film at Northwestem University (Chlcago) before coming to London in 1976 to work with Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey on Riddles of the Sphinx, a relationslùp that continued through many of their features and documentaries. Since then he has worked extensively with Keith Griffliths and Koninck Studios, editing and sound designing with the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles, The Comb, Institute Benjamenta), Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space, Dwelling Spaces) and Simon Pummell (Secret Joy, Rose Red, Blinded by Light). His work crosses between documentary, drama and animation as evidenced in projects that include The Brother With Perfect Timing, about the jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (directed by Chris Austin); the prize-winning animated short Death and The Mother (directed by Ruth Lingford) and My Mama Done Told Me, a documentary about romance and torch songs (directed by Elizabeth Taylor-Mead).

He is a regular lecturer at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Royal College of Art, the, the London Institute and the National Film and Television School in addition to giving seminars on sound and post-production to industry professionals, here and abroad. He has contributed to the periodicals PIX, Framework, Vertigo and Filmwaves.

Currently he is taking part in the EU-funded LISTEN, a research projected on audio-augmented environments, along with the GMD (Bonn), the Kunstmuseum Bonn, AKG, IRCAM and the University of Austria.

KIRSTY MALCOLM has over sixteen years experience in television and films, combining producing with research. She has worked extensively in documentaries and drama, specialising in co-productions. Her credits include the feature film Darkness Covers the Earth (Antenne 2/NDR/RTP); Round IX, coverage of the Documenta art event (illuminations for Channel 4); The World of Geo (Bertelsmann for BBC/Discovery; for four years she chaired sessions for the European Association of Animation Film (CARTOON). Recently she co-produced The Score, a documentary directed by Michael Grigsby for BBC 2 and the Arts Council of England’s ‘Sound on Film’ series.

Her most recent projects include researching a Channel 4 documentary series on the Vichy regime for Nicolas Kent and Oxford Films. She has been the consultant researcher on a 5-part series, History of the Vietnam Wars, for an MDR/ARTE/ARD/Canal Phis co-production. In 2000-01, she was the Senior Field producer and researcher in Germany for Charles Guggenheim’s GI Holocaust for WNET/PBS.

This is her fourth year overseeing the School of Sound event.

LOUIS ANDRIESSEN was born in Utrecht in 1939 into a musical family. His father Hendrik, and bis brother Juriaan were established composers in their own right. Andriessen studied with bis father and Kees van Baaren at the Hague Conservatory, and between 1962 and 1964 undertook further studies in Milan and Berlin with Luciano Berio. Since 1974 he has combined teaching with bis work as a composer and pianist. He is now widely regarded as the leading composer working in the Netherlands today and is a central figure in the international new music scene.

From a background of jazz and avant-garde composition, Andriessen has evolved a style employing elemental harmonie, melodic and rhythmic materials, heard in totally distinctive instrumentation. His acknowledged admiration for Stravinsky is illustrated by a parallel vigour, clarity of expression, and acute ear for colour. The range of Andriessen’s inspiration is wide, from the music of Charles Ives in Anachronie I, the art of Mondriaan in De Stijl, and medieval poetic visions in Hadewi.jch, to writings on shipbuilding and atomic theory in De Materie Part I. He has tackled complex creative issues, exploring the relation between music and politics in De Staat, the nature of time and velocity in De Tijd and De Snelheid, and questions of mortality in Trilogy of the Last Day.

Andriessen’s compositions have attracted many leading exponents of contemporary music, including the two Dutch groups named after bis works De Volharding and Hoketus. Other eminent Dutch performers include the Schoenberg Ensemble, the ASKO Ensemble, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Schoenberg Quartet, pianists Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland, and conductors Reinbert de Leeuw and Edo de Waart. Groups outside the Netherlands who have commissioned or performed his works include the San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Inter Contemporain, Icebreaker, the Bang on a Can Ail Stars, and the California EAR Unit.

Collaborative works with other artists include a series of dance projects, the full length theatre piece De Materie created with Robert Wilson for the Netherlands Opera, and three works created with Peter Greenaway: the film M is for Man, Music, Mozart, and the stage works ROSA, Death of a Composer and Writing to Vermeer, premiered at the Netherlands Opera in 1994 and 1999 respectively. A new collaboration with filmmaker Hal Hartley, The New Math(s), is to be broadcast on 1V this year and is receiving live performances at the Barbican in London and the Bergen Festival. Nonesuch Records has released a new series of recordings of Andriessen’s major works, including the complete De Materie and most recently ROSA, Death of a Composer. (Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes)

CARTER BURWELL was bom on November 18th 1955 in New York. He shot to prominence in 1985 mainly due to his partnership with the writer / director team of Ethan and Joel Coen. They gave Burwell his first job in film score-writing on their movie Blood Simple. Since then he has collaborated on six more of their films – Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. Burwell has also struck up a successful collaboration with director Michael Caton Jones for whom he has written scores for Doc Hollywood, Rob Roy and The Jackal. In the last 15 years he has written music for more than 45 films in various genres.

Burwell’s interest in music was sparked by a friend who taught him to improvise blues in high school. As a fine arts majorat Harvard, he continued this growing attachment to music by playing piano whenever he could. When he was about to graduate, he joined a band for fun and was discovered in a club by the sound editor of Blood Simple.

Since then his talent for bringing emotion to the screen has been sought after for large and small pictures alike.

Burwell’s style is unconventional. Employing traditional orchestras, he writes very untraditional music, often incorporating touches of contemporary styles such as jazz or heavy metal, and quiet, sombre instrumental sequences using guitar or piano. His music is characterized by gripping but simple melodies and is usually not complicated. It has the ability to portray pain and dark colours yet his scores are also noted for their romantically mournful tunes, often juxtaposing a sense of intimacy and loneliness. It is this fascination with contrasts, this intuitive dance between light and dark, humor and tragedy, that makes his scores singularly remarkable works of art.

DAVE COOPER left school at the age of eighteen having gained A levels in English and Sociology and immediately went to work for his local radio station. This was only a temporary position, but allowed him to gain a valuable insight into the world of broadcasting and advertising.

In 1983, he was employed by Magmasters Sound Studios in the position of “runner/tea-boy”. At the time, Magmasters was the premier London recording studio₁serving the advertising industry, and, during the eleven years that Cooper worked there, he progressed from the lowest ranks to the position of Sound Mixer. Everything that Cooper learned during this time was through “on the job” experience and he was fortunate to be trained by some of the best sound engineers in the industry.

In 1994, he joined Grand Central Studios as Joint Senior Engineer. By this time the industry had completely changed, not only in the style and complexity of the commercials but also the technology which had progressed in leaps and bounds. No longer did engineers mix to a projected 35mm visual, using film sound rolls – now everything had become digital. State of the art audio work stations and fully automated mixing desks were the norm. This new technology allowed engineers to move from beingjust “mixers”. Their title became “Sound Designer” whereby they actually created a complete sound track from nothing, using samplers, keyboards, harmonisers, effects processors and massive libraries of sound effects.

During Cooper’s seventeen years in the business, he has been fortunate enough to engineer many exciting and high profile campaigns. His most memorable project was working alongside Ridley Scott, assisting on the 1984 campaign for Apple Computers. Since then, there have been several award-winning commercials such as the highly-acclaimed Levi’s 501s, the often-censored campaign for Orange and Apple Tango and the memorable Pepperami (it’s a bit of an animal) commercials.

ln the past twelve months, Cooper and the engineers at Grand Central have created the sound on many of the major advertising campaigns that are currently, or have recently, been aired on UK network television and radio. These include the series of Volkswagen ads featuring documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield; the Line One commercial with sound design reminiscent of a William Orbit-style music track; and, the BBC’s acclaimed Future Generations, promoting their children’s programming, in which Cooper recreated the style of sound tracks from many of the famous BBC children’s programmes, from the early days of Muffin the Mule and Bill and Ben, through Blue Peter and Doctor Who, to present day shows like The Borrowers and Teletubbies.

MYCHAEL DANNA has been scoring fil.ms since his 1987 feature debut for Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing, a score which earned Danna the first of his nine Canadian film award nominations. His work with Egoyan continued through six features, including Exotica (1994), where Danna was able to incorporate his interest in Middle Eastern and South Asian music. His fascination with combining non-Western sound sources with electronics, minimalism and manipulation is pushed to a further limit in Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra (1997). Danna’s work with Ang Lee on The Ice Storm (1997), used native American flute player Dan Cecil Hill in concert with The Evergreen Gamelan Ensemble to portray the forces of nature at play under the suburban 70’s of Connecticut. A very different sonic world was explored in John Greyson’s feature Lilies (1996), where Danna wrote a Latin vocal mass with Gregorian and other early music influences; performed by England’s premier male choir, The Hilliard Ensemble.

Danna also scored Regeneration (1997), a film by Britain’s Gillies MacKinnon based on the Pat Barker novel of the Great War, as well as Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997), which portrays the parallel story of the Pied Piper with the ney playing of Hossein ‘Omoumi and early music ensemble The Toronto Consort. For Joel Schumacher’s 8mm (1999), Danna combined percussion, woodwind and vocal music he recorded in Morocco with western orchestra. His latest scores are for Ang Lee’s Ame can Civil War epic Ride with the Devil, Atom Egoyan’s Felicia’s Journey, and James Mangold’s Girl Interrupted, which features the glass percussion and woodwinds of the Glass Orchestra He also served for five years as composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto. Before that, he completed an undergraduate degree in music composition at the University of Toronto, winning the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship.

STEPHEN DEUTSCH has had his concert music performed by eminent artists, including the Medici Quartet, David Campbell, The Gaudier Ensemble, Andrew Ball, The London Mozart Players and many others. He has composed over thirty scores for film, theatre, radio & television. His many collaborations with the playwright Peter Barnes include the Olivier Award winning play, Red Noses (1985) and the feature film Hard Times (1994). He has significant expertise in the fields of Electronic Music (incl. sampling and synthesis); 20th century music techniques; the composer in the marketplace; and issues having to do with film, tv, broadcasting and related subjects.

Prof. Deutsch was educated initially in the United States (initial training – Julliard Preparatory Division; BMus – SMU; MA – San Francisco State College). After settling in Britain he attended the Royal College of Music where he was engaged in electro-acoustic composition under the direction of Tristram Cary. ln 1971 he and two partners established Synthesizer Music Services, Ltd., an electro-acoustic studio in London.

At Bournemouth University, he is Professor of Music Design. ln 1992 he founded the University’s PGDip/M.A. in Electro­ Acoustic Music for Film & Television (now MA in Music Design for the Moving Image). This course, the first of its kind in Europe, is designed to equip post graduate professional composers with the skills necessary to engage in writing music for film, tv, radio, and other multi-media packages. He has trained over 35 composers, some of whom have since provided music for feature films, television and computer games.

In connection with this innovative course, Prof. Deutsch has been able to develop unique methodologies which enable musicians not only to compose film music, but to enter the theoretical arena of film music at the highest level. His internet discussion list, music-and-moving-pictures, plays host to leamed discussions involving some of the most eminent film-musicologists on three continents. Since October, 1997 he has led a new course at the University, an MA in Sound Design for the Moving Image.

Prof. Deutsch has served on the Board of South West Arts and is currently a board member of Southern Arts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His recent lecture for that body on Music & Technology: the Composer in the Age of the Internet was well received and was published in the RSA Journal in July 1996 (as well as on the Web Page of the Digital Music Studio at Bournemouth University). He is a founding Director of Sound Music Design, Ltd., a company specialising in the provision of music and sound design for the film & broadcast industries. He is included in the Panel of Assessors for the Arts Council of England Arts for Everyone Lottery Fund.

GERHARD ECKEL is a composer and researcher interested in the use of new technology in the fields of sound art, music composition and music performance. As a research scientist at GMD, the German National Research Center for Information Technology, he is involved in the development of virtual environment applications which closely integrate auditory and visual simulation. In his music installation work he concentrates on using virtual environments as performance spaces allowing the audience to navigate open music compositions in an intuitive way. He is the initiator and coordinator of the LISTEN project, an artistically motivated research project on immersive audio-augmented environments funded by the European Commission ‘s IST Programme. Besides these technologically challenging projects, he keeps in touch with more traditional forms of musical expression such as improvisation and sound installation work in natural acoustic spaces. The main focus of his artistic and scientific work is on the sensual experience of sound and its relationship with the other senses. Gerhard Eckel has worked at major computer music centers including the Utrecht Institute for Sonology, IRCAM, and ZKM. He has been composer in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1995 and 2000. His works include sound tracks for experimental animation films, live electronic pieces, tape compositions, sound installations, virtual music environments, sound sculptures, and improvisation pieces.

His scientific interests include acoustics, auditory perception, sound synthesis and processing, as well as media and cultural theory with a focus on the relationship of art and technology.

DICK FONTAINE was one of the first filmmakers to introduce the techniques of Direct Cinema to UK television in the Sixties, making ground breaking films with the Beatles and Jean Shrimpton. He developed the essay film with Norman Mailer (Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?), James Cameron (Temporary Person Passing Through), James Baldwin (l Heard It Through the Grapevine) and others, and has also made award-winning experiments with the reflexive camera like, Double Pisces, Scorpio Rising. As well as collaborating on fiction projects with his partner, he has produced a wide range of music films with the likes of Kathleen Battle, John Cage, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Johnny Rotten, Ornette Coleman and Afrika Bambaataa.

Dick bas taught at The School of Visual Arts and NYU in New York He has also given workshops, seminars and masterclasses in colleges across the UK and the USA. He joined the National film and Television School (UK) as a full time tutor in March 1995 and is now Head of Documentary Direction.

DR KERSTEN GLANDIEN was bom 1953 in Germany and studied Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art History at the University of St.Petersburg, Russia. She worked at the Technical University Dresden, at the Music College Dresden (1977-1982) and as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Aesthetics and Art theory of the Academy of Science in Berlin (1982-1989). Her fields of expertise span the aesthetics of Architecture, Design and Music. From 1984- 1988 she curated and run a highly acclaimed experimental cross-genre concert series in Berlin. In 1989 she moved to England, where she currently lectures in Postmodernism and Contemporary Visual Culture at Richmond-The American International University in London. She also works freelance in various countries as a writer and researcher in the field of new music and technology (Sound compositions, RadioArt, Improvisation etc.), and curates concert series and symposia to further and investigate these areas.

Recent publications include: Heiner Goebbels -Analysis of his Œuvre, in: Heister, Hanns-Wemer/ Sparrer, Walter­ Wolfgang (eds): Komponisten der Gegenwart (München: edition text + kritik, in preparation for 2001); Art on Air. A Profile of New RadioArt in: Simon Emmerson (ed), Music, Electronic Media and Culture (Ashgate, 2000); and, Against the Grain – Eisler re-discovered in Hanns Eisler. Archive zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bd.3. Stiftung Archive der Akademie der Künste (Hofheim: Wolke Publ.,1998).

MANI KAUL is a filmmaker, musician and painter who, since making his first feature film in 1970, A Day’s Bread, has produced a very persona! and innovative body of work fed by the two sources of eastern classical music and of art and aesthetics. These themes are particularly evident in the films Dhrupad and Siddeshwari and in films on art such as Mind of Clay. But, just as importantly, his approach has been enriched by a completely modern sensibility. Kaul has drawn from haiku poetry, the nouveau roman, Matisse, Bresson and Ozu. His later films – The Gaze and The Idiot – are from Dostoevsky. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Harvard University.

CHRISTINA KUBISCH was bom in Bremen in 1948. She studied music, painting and electronics. She performed concerts until 1980, and subsequently created sound installations, sound sculptures and work with ultraviolet light. She has received numerous grants and awards, such as the Award of the German Industrial Association (BDI), Heidelberg Artists Prize, and the Carl Djerassi Honorary Fellowship.

Since 1974 she has had solo exhibitions in Europe, the USA, Japan and South America. Kubisch has participated in international group exhibitions such as: Pro Musica Nova, Bremen (1976 and 1980), Für Augen und Ohren, Berlin (1980), Biennale of Venice (1980 und 1982), Gaudeamus Festival, Amsterdam (1984), documenta 8, Kassel (1987), Ars Electronica, Linz (1987), Steirischer Herbst, Graz (1987), Biennale of Sydney (1990), Biennale of Nagoya (1991), Donaueschinger Musiktage (1993 und 1997), Prison Sentences, Philadelphia (1995), Sonambiente, Berlin (1996), in medias res, Istanbul (1997), festival d’art sonor, Barcelona (1999), Klangkunstforum Parkkolonnad n, Berlin (1999), Sonic Boom, London (2000), Visual Sound, Pittsburgh (2001).

Christina Kubisch is a professor of Sculpture and Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Saarbrücken, Germany, since 1994, and a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin since 1997. She lives in Berlin.

She belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as magnetic induction to realize her installations. Since 1986 she has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound. Christina Kubisch’s work displays an artistic development which is often described as the “synthesis of arts” – the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other.

HANS PETER KUHN, composer and artist, was born in 1952 in Kiel, West Germany and now lives in Berlin. He has exhibited his sound and light installations in many places worldwide including; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Ars Electronica, Linz, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modem Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Artangel, London; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, P.S.l Museum, New York; Museum Boymans- van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Biennale Venice 1993; “Som Brasilia”, Brasilia, SoundArt 95 Hannover, Irish Museum of Modem Art, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Jüdisches Museum Berlin, World Cultural Heritage vülklinger Hütte and many other sites, museums and galleries. Since 1982, Kuhn has also created performance pieces that include sound as a main character which he has performed in many countries around the world.

Since 1978 he has collaborated with the American theatre artist Robert Wilson and composed music and sound environments for more then 30 productions in theatre, film and exhibitions, including Death, Destruction & Detroit I & II, The Man in the Raincoat, The Civil Wars, The Golden Windows, Alcestes, Orlando, Dr.Faustus Lights the Lights, Hamlet – a monologue, H.G, Saints and Singing, and many others. He also worked with theatre directors Peter Stein, Klaus Michael Gruber, Claus Peymann, Luc Bondy, Peter Zadek, Dieter Dom, Anne Bogart and others.

Kuhn is acknowledged for his compositions for modern ballet with works for the British dancer / choreographer Laurie Booth including Requiair, Completely Birdland (Rambert Dance Co. London), Spatial Decay, River Run, Deep Field Line (Het Nationale Ballet, Amsterdam), for the American dancer Dana Reitz including Suspect Terrain, Lichttontanz, for the Japanese dancer/ choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi including Americium 225’89, for the Japanese dancer Junko Wada including Chidori-Crazy Heat, Who’s Afraid of Anything and Chidori II-A so? and for the German choreographer / dancer Sasha Waltz with Dialoge II and Karper.

He has created the sound score and composed music for several films. In collaboration with writers he created four Audio Art radio pieces. In 1985 Kuhn initiated a radio program for new music and audio art in Berlin which he hosted until 1990. Kuhn was guest professor at the Justus­ Liebig University in Giessen, Germany in 1996. Together with Robert Wilson he received the Golden Lion of the Biennale Venice 1993 for the installation Memory Loss.

BOB LAST has had an eclectic career, exploiting his expertise in music in almost every audio-visual medium. In 1978, he founded the record label “Fast Product”, launching, and subsequently managing, several of the major cult bands of the period including Human League, Gang of Four, the Mekons and Fire Engines. But he is best known for his work as a Music Supervisor in film and television. Last’s feature credits include Hackers, Backbeat, A Room for Romeo Brass, Little Voice, Butcher Boy, The Long Day Closes, and Orlando, Sally Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel. He has over twenty-four hours of television credits as music supervisor or sound designer which include Cardiac Arrest, Tales of the City, and Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on Your Collar. He has also been a music consultant to the Universal Music Group, Ernst and Young and other media companies.

From 1994-97, Last oversaw the production of The Century of Cinema, as Series Producer and Executive Producer of each episode. The British Film Institute’s world-wide documentary series featured 18 programmes directed by Scorsese, Godard, Oshima and Sen among others. And in 2000, Last was Executive Producer for Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz.

As an artist, Last has created video installations at Camerawork and the British Library in London, Smith’s Gallery (Stirling) and, for the 10th Fringe Film and Television Festival, at Edinburgh’s Collective Gallery. Current projects include films with directors Jim Gillespie, Terence Davies and Bombay-based film maker Dev Benegal, and the creation of Sell Out Pictures, a new guerrilla film making brand.

JAMES LEAHY is a film historian, critic and screenwriter. He’s also been, variously, a naval reservist, a builder’s labourer, a university lecturer, a chauffeur, and has worked in talcum powder and pork pie factories. He’s even sold bis blood to the hospital on which ER’s County General is based!

When co-authoring the original screenplay for Ken McMullen’s 1871, an official selection at Cannes in 1990. he researched ail aspects of Paris in the era of the Great Exhibition and the Commune, including its characteristic sounds. He’s subsequently collaborated on scripts with both Ken McMullen and Med Hondo; these, including the latter’s The Prince of Freedom (the story of Toussaint L’Overture and the Haitian slave revolution) are in development.

He studied anthropology, psychology and literature at Cambridge, and film, theatre and psychological anthropology as a postgraduate at Northwestern in Illinois. He also taught for some years at Northwestern. During this period he and a group of students shot direct cinema documentary footage of the rallies and meetings around the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and of the defendants. This was for the film on the Trial which Nick Ray (of Rebel Without a Cause fame) was trying to set up. lt was then that Leahy established bis reputation as the world’s worst sound-recordist, though some of his tapes were comprehensible, including one of a discussion between Nick and Timothy Leary in the back of a car travelling from the Federal Court Building to O’Hare Airport.

Leahy has led workshops on screenwriting and film history in Ghana, Bangladesh and Finland. Whilst Director of Film Studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, he was the first director of a film programme in the English-speaking world to invite Noël Burch in as a visiting teacher.

He’s contributed articles to The Guardian, The Independent, The Chicago Dai/y News, Mouie, Cahiers du Cinema in English, Sight & Sound, The Monthly Film Bulletin, South, Websters Microsoft Encarta, PIX (January 2001) and Cricket World, several of which have also published his photographs. One of the founding editors of Vertigo, he has just finished work on the new issue scheduled to appear in May 2001.

His Cinema of Joseph Losey was published in 1967, and Rediscovering American Cinema (co-authored with Bill Routt) in 1970. He has written on language in African cinema in the collection Protée Noire (Paris 1992, L’Harmattan) and in MOMI Education’s 1991 booklet After Empire: the New African Cinema.

 He has acted in various independent stage, film and video productions, including the London African Centre’s sell-out production of Ngugi wa Toiong’o and Micere Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, and recorded Irish poetry for a Basel Radio documentary on pubs and the craie.

PIERS PLOWRIGHT was born in London in 1937 and spent a lot of his childhood listening to the radio and going to the near-by Everyman Cinema, where he saw the classics of European, American and Asian cinema. After a time teaching in Borneo, Iran, and the Sudan, he joined the BBC in 1968, working first for the overseas service and then moving to the Radio Drama Department where he discovered the power of the radio documentary and feature. Since 1977 he has been making radio programmes about real people and events but which often make use of the techniques and structure of drama. He has also been much influenced by film and its use of sound.

Piers has won two Italia Prizes and a RAI prize for his radio documentaries and, most recently, a Gold Award for documentaries in the 1997 Sony Awards and ditto in 1998 for ‘Services to Radio’.

PAUL ROBERTSON has been leader of the world renowned Medici String Quartet for nearly 30 years. He combines an international concert career with his passion for exploring the basis of musical response through scientific research. His particular interest in the neurology of musicality led to the making of his recent highly successful TV series for Channel Four (U.K.), Music and the Mind.

Robertson is in constant demand as a speaker, sharing his remarkable insights at prestigious forums and conferences both throughout Europe and North America. He believes that there is a deep significance in the patterning of sound, which we call ‘music’. Such patterns reflect the profound relevance of neurological and physiological structures to education, management, and medicine. All three of these strands are increasingly reflected in his work.

In the field of education Robertson has addressed The Leaming Society Exchange at the Royal Society of Arts; the Northern Ireland Curriculum Council on Arts in Education and the SEAL Conference on The Sound of Leaming in Budapest. He has also given workshops and lectures in Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. He is currently Visiting Professor of Music (in relation with neurology) to the Department of Education at Kingston University, and Bournemouth University (U.K.). In spring 2000 he addressed the Royal Society of Arts on his research.

He presents compelling seminars on Management as an Art Form_ These are designed to share the powerful experience of direct musical inspiration, which offer valuable personal insights into the processes of organisational structure, development and change. In February 2000 he gave a presentation to the World Economic Forum in Davos. In January 2001 he repeated this with the Medici Quartet, sponsored by Lloyds Bank.

Tue growing awareness of the role that music plays in the healing process led to an invitation from the Academic Medical Centre of Amsterdam for Robertson to take part in the annual Anatomy Lesson lectures at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam followed by a performance with the Medici String Quartet. He also gives a regular series of lectures and concerts with the Medici String Quartet at the University Hospital of Geneva and in 1998 they presented a six-part series of lectures, concerts and workshops at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. His Music and the Mind presentations include the :first Annual Radio Authority Lecture; Tue King’s Fund; the Medical Society of London; Tue Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute; the Royal Society of Psychiatry; the American Society of Radiology; the Institute of Psychiatry in Copenhagen; the International Arts for Health Conference in Manchester and Vital Arts at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. In June 2000 Paul Robertson was a keynote speaker and the Medici Quartet gave a concert at the 2nd International Conference on Health and Design in Stockholm. http:/ /www.esws.co. uk/Robertson

NICOLAS ROEG was born in London in 1928, and developed an interest in cinema whilst at school. In 1947, at age nineteen, he had his first industry job as a junior at Marylebone Studios, dubbing English dialogue over French films. Mer army service, with stints as a stills photographer and unit projectionist, Roeg was hired in 1950 as clapperboy on The Miniver Story, which was shooting at MGM’s Borehamwood Studios. He worked through the technical ranks :first as a camera assistant then camera crew member before becoming a camera operator in 1958, on Max Varnell’s A Woman Possessed. As a camera operator Roeg worked on several other films for Varneil, as well as for Fred Zinneman on The Sundawners (1961) and as second unit photographer / director for David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He became director of photography on The Caretaker (1963), directed by Clive Donner.

Roeg established himself as a cinematographer, shooting films for, among others, Roger Corman (The Masque of Red Death in 1964), Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451 in 1966), John Schlesinger (Far From the Madding Crowd in 1967) and Richard Lester (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1966 and Petulia in 1968). Roeg’s entrée into directing came from his writing as well as his technical expertise. In the early 1960’s he wrote a story for a Stanley Baker thriller which was to become A Prize of Arms (1961). Roeg clirected his :first feature, Performance, with Donald Cammell, in 1970. Written by Cammell and photographed by Roeg, the film takes a dark look at the last days of a gangster on the run (James Fox) whose destiny and identity becomes inextricably linked with a has-been rock star (Mick Jagger). Strikingly different in content and style from the social realism films of the sixties, Performance heralded the beginning of a new-look British Cinema.

Performance was followed by Roeg’s solo directorial debut, Walkabout (1970), on which he was also director of photography. The film is a fatalistic story of two cultures which fail to connect. Set in the Australian Outback, it features Jenny Agutter and Roeg’s son Lucien, as two white Australian children befriended by an Aboriginal boy. He adapted a short story by Daphne du Maurier for Don’t Look Now (1973), a chilling essay in the supernatural about a couple who try to oversome the death of their small child on a trip to Venice. Next, Roeg directed David Bowie in the mesmerising The Man Who Feil to Earth (1975). Bad Timing (1979), proved controversial on its release, with its pathological love triangle (Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell and Harvey Keitel), and complex kaleidoscopic narrative.

Roeg’s work in the eighties and nineties met with a mixed critical and public acclaim. During this period Roeg directed Eureka (1983) starring Gene Hackman, Insignificance (1985), starring Theresa Russell as an unnamed actress (read Marilyn Monroe), who discusses the nature of relativity with an unnamed professor (read Einstein), in a New York hotel room. Other productions included Castaway (1986), Track 29 (1987) written by Dennis Potter, The Witches (1990), and Heart of Darkness (1994) with John Malkovich. Roeg was awarded a BFI Fellowship in 1994 and a CBE in 1996. His latest film is The Sound (2000), with model Claudia Schiffer, for the BBC’s Sound on Film series.

AMIE SIEGEL is a writer, video and filmmaker whose work is concerned with the architecture of place. Her first book, The Waking Life, was published by North Atlantic Books (1999, Berkeley, CA). She has given readings ofher poetry and experimental writings throughout the United States.

Siegel’s films and videos have shown at various museums and festivals including Filmforum LA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cinematheque Ontario, The San Francisco Cinematheque, Pacific Film Archive, Chicago Filmmakers, Anthology Film Archive and the Terra Museum of American Art. Siegel has received several awards and fellowships including a Princess Grace Film Foundation Award for her 1999 film, The Sleepers. Siegel received her BA from Bard College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently Assistant Professor of Film at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

DAVID TOOP is a musician, composer, writer and sound curator. He has published three books: Rap Attack (now in its third edition), Ocean of Sound, and Exotica (selected as a winner of the 21st annual American Books Awards for 2000). His first album, New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments, was released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975; since 1995 he has released six solo albums – Screen Ceremonies, Pink Noir, Spirit World, Museum of Fruit, Hot Pants Idol and 37th Floor At Sunset: Music For Mondophrenetic – and curated five CD compilations for Virgin Records – Ocean of Sound, Crooning On Venus, Sugar & Poison, Booming On Pluto and Guitars On Mars.

 In 1998 he composed the soundtrack for Acqua Matrix, the outdoor spectacular that closed every night of Lisbon Expo ’98 from May until September. He has recorded shamanistic ceremonies in Amazonas, worked with musicians including Brian Eno, John Zorn, Prince Far I, Jon Hassell, Derek Bailey, Talvin Singh, Evan Parker, Max Eastley, Scanner, Ivor Cutler and Bill Laswell, and collaborated with artists from many other disciplines, including theatre director/ actor Steven Berkoff, Japanese Butoh dancer Mitsutaka Ishii and writer Jeff Noon. As a critic he has written for many publications, including The Wire, The Face, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, Arena, Vogue, Spin, GQ, Bookforum., Pulse, Urb and The Village Voice. He has curated Sonic Boom, the UK’s largest ever exhibition of sound art, displayed at the Hayward Gallery, London, from April to June, 2000. Other recent projects include the composition of a soundtrack for Mondophrenentic (CD released by Sub Rosa, August 2000), a CD-ROM installation created in Belgium, and Needle In the Groove, a collaborative album with novelist Jeff Noon, released on Scanner’s Sulphur label in May 2000. ln January 2000 he exhibited the sound installation Dreaming of Inscription On Skin with Max Eastley at !CC in Tokyo. He is currently a visiting Research Fellow at the London Institute.