Mixing art forms for a new sound. | Photo by Steve Raegele

New Work & Kubrick Études, a premiere piece for piano and turntables paired with an earlier work for piano and glitch (film and soundtrack), will be presented by Vancouver New Music at The Annex on Mar. 12. The performance features composer Nicole Lizée on electronics and film manipulation, New York City-based turntablist Paolo Kapunan aka DJ P-Love and Vancouver pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.

Kubrick Études is part of an ongoing collection of glitch-based pieces that delve into the worlds of iconic filmmakers, the first work in the series being 2010’s Hitchcock Études.

“The piece manipulates piano ballads from the 1970s and 1980s, for which Paolo [Kapunan] and I share an affinity,” says Lizée.

Kapunan is a long-time friend and collaborator whom Lizée met at McGill in Montreal, where she received her Masters of Music in Composition. Lizée only recently met her pianist, Iwaasa, and this is their first time working together.

“After hearing amazing things about Iwaasa’s playing, I wanted to work with her on this project. I’ve incorporated turntables into a number of contexts – orchestra, duo with cello, small chamber groups, opera. Each context informs and transforms both the turntable writing and ensemble writing,” says Lizée, who created a combination of specifically pianistic material and turntablism.

Fed by the sounds

Turntable experimentation. | Photo by Chris Hutcheson

As the daughter of an electronics collector, salesman and repairman, Lizée was surrounded by technology and its malfunctions.

“The sounds and visuals (i.e. glitches) produced by these machines made an enormous impression on me,” she says.

Lizée wanted to capture their beauty and integrate them with live music, including classical, metal, new wave, psychedelia and turntablism styles.

“I became fixated with music styles that didn’t necessarily belong together,” explains Lizée. “It always seemed natural to me for aspects from seemingly disparate art forms to coexist. They interweave to create different sound worlds and perspectives, and are ultimately a personal expression.”

Lizée defines her work as psych-classical, classical noir, glitch classical or damaged classical. She says that the words ‘classical,’ ‘contemporary’ and ‘modern’ are antiquated and devoid of any real meaning. When asked what kind of music she writes, Lizée says she makes up genres, which she claims is much more fun, and creates a sense of curiosity in the listener.

A stoichiometric art

Lizée says her influences are diverse, as she has been surrounded by a wide array of art forms and genres.

“If I’m building a new piece using components of preexisting material – vinyl, film, etc. – I’m not going to create a piece that sounds like the one that has been sampled,” says Lizée. As the French chemist said, ‘in art as in nature, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.’ Lizée says she uses these sources, or vinyl and film moments, as instruments, and each sound or visual is captured in time, a singular and distinctive instrument.

“The artists who have made the greatest impact on me were risk takers and are those who have sucked me into their worlds that changed my life,” says Lizée.

She loves to lose herself in other artists’ works or visions, even to the point of what she deems obsession, regardless of the art form: Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, the earliest video games, M.C. Escher, Ligeti, Alexander McQueen, the Rosemary’s Baby soundtrack, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast.

“All of these are arresting works that made a lasting impression. My hope is for the audience to be affected in even a smidgen of a similar way,” says Lizée.

For more information, please visit www.newmusic.org.