The Star News (February 2006)

Mike Olson’s Sound Art

By Britt Aamodt

Minneapolis composer Mike Olson will be presenting a program on the technique and production of sound art 6 pm, Monday, February 12, 2006, at Handke Center. The free lecture will explore how computers are used to edit and combine sound fragments into musical compositions.

The artist, who is also the founder of the Intuitive recording studio on Pillsbury Avenue in Minneapolis, will discuss his sound art pieces—“Short Black Winter”, “What They’re Doing” and “Dick & Don”—accompanied by graphics which visually represent his computer-based technique.

Self-taught on the keyboard, in the eighties Olson enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where he studied theory and performance under Lloyd Ultan, Paul Fetler and Eric Stokes. He went on to receive several commissions, including work with New York choreographer Rosanna Gamson and the Guthrie Theater, where he was able to combine his interests in musical composition and technological innovation in the production of sound pieces.

“I’ve always been into electronic music,” Olson said. “In the seventies, I was a keyboardist in rock and jazz fusion bands. That’s when sequencing on computers was getting popular.”

Olson calls his latest work the next step in the “natural evolution” of his art.

In 2005, he received a McKnight Fellowship to hire and record Minnesota instrumentalists, recordings that he would later “harvest” for musical fragments and build into a symphony.

The proposed five-movement symphony, when it is completed, will be an assemblage of these fragments, rearranged and modified to suit Olson’s musical vision.
Though sound art pieces don’t require the composer to understand musical theory or how to work with musicians, “you need talent, a sense of musicality and a good ear” to make a good sound art piece, said Olson. Familiarity with computers is a given.

As part of the fellowship, the artist has taken on a yearlong, statewide lecture tour, the Elk River program falling at the tail end of the series.

“Usually I get positive audience feedback,” said Olson. “But there was this one man who just didn’t get it. He said, ‘So, you take and make music out of that?’ I said, ‘No, that’s the music.’ He said, ‘It sounds like the orchestra tuning up.’”

Olson has plans to make his symphony available for download once complete. Tentatively titled “Incidental,” he projects a late 2006 completion.

Journalist

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