Information/Write-up
David Keane (1943–2017) was a composer, performer, educator, and writer whose work helped define Canadian electroacoustic music. Born in Akron, Ohio, he studied piano, trumpet, and double bass, wrote his first electronic piece in 1963, and immigrated to Canada in 1967 as part of a wave of young artists settling here in the 1960s. His first Canadian years were spent teaching in public schools, playing bass in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and lecturing at Simon Fraser University. In 1970 he moved to Kingston to join the Queen’s University School of Music, where he taught composition and double bass, founded the Electronic/Electroacoustic Music Studio, and served as its director until 1997, shaping a generation of Canadian sonic arts practice. He became a Canadian citizen in 1974.
Keane’s music characteristically combines live performers with tape and electronics, reflecting a long-standing interest in polyphony and in musical perception—especially the listener’s discovery, through repeated hearings, of subtle and complex transformational patterns. His catalogue spans dance, theatre, film, radio, installations, chamber and orchestral writing, and tape/electroacoustic works. Among representative pieces are Lyra (1978) for piano and tape recorder, an exploration of the piano’s formant and timbral constraints that contrasts percussive alterations of the instrument with long electronic crescendos; Elegy (1978) for double bass and tape recorder, commissioned by Belgian Radio and focused on the bass’s rich overtone spectrum; Evening Song (1978), setting texts by Toronto filmmaker Bruce Elder for soprano and tape in a quasi-spoken style; and In Memoriam: Hugh LeCaine (1978), a tribute to the scientist-composer whose pioneering instruments and research shaped Canada’s electronic music. These works were performed internationally, from the First Annual Festival of Electronic Music at the Music Gallery, Toronto (January 1979), to the Eighth International Festival of Experimental Music in Bourges, France (June 1978). His LP Lyra, recorded at the Queen’s University Electronic Music Studios, preserves several of these pieces and stands as a key document of the period.
Supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, Keane produced work for the National Film Board, the National Gallery of Canada, the CBC, the National Design Council, and the Ontario Science Centre, with additional commissions from France, the United States, and the Cuban Commission for UNESCO. He served as an adjudicator for the National Design Council, the Laidlaw Foundation, and the CBC, and produced music for both the CBC and the NFB. He wrote extensively on technology, pedagogy, and aesthetics in Canadian Music Educator, Computer Music Journal, Canadian University Music Review, Musicworks, Queen’s Quarterly, and other journals, and authored the classic Tape Music Composition (Oxford, 1980), one of the first systematic English-language guides to the medium.
As a builder of Canada’s electroacoustic ecosystem, Keane’s 1984 survey “Electroacoustic Music in Canada: 1950–1984” places the Queen’s studios among the country’s long-standing centres “in the limelight,” noting that Queen’s was the final beneficiary of Hugh LeCaine’s NRC-designed equipment and situating the studio alongside UBC, SFU, York, and McGill. In 1983 he helped found the Canadian Association of Electroacoustic Music, the national federation within CIME/ICEM, and his music earned international recognition at the Bourges competition. His work circulated through the national network of studios, concert series, and festivals—including the Music Gallery’s electroacoustic festivals begun in 1979—underscoring his role as both practitioner and advocate.
Keane was an Associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, and he is represented on dedicated albums—Lyra, Aurora (Electroacoustic Tone Poems), and Dialogics—as well as on compilations such as The Anthology of Canadian Music. His vinyl-era output was later gathered in a two-disc anthology issued in April 2023, drawing together Lyra (Music Gallery, 1979), Aurora (Cambridge Street Records, 1985), and his CAPAC “Portrait Musical” single, with contextual material from the original releases.
He passed away on June 20, 2017, after a long struggle with dementia and ALS. Colleagues and institutions remembered a prolific, generous artist-scholar whose Kingston base quietly radiated across Canada and abroad; donations in his name were suggested to the ALS Society of Canada and to the Canadian Music Centre.
-Robert Williston
The electronic portions of the compositions were recorded at Queen’s University Electronic Music Studios, Kingston, Ontario.
Side A was recorded at the First Annual Festival of Electronic Music, at the Music Gallery, Toronto, in January 1979.
In Memoriam: Hugh LeCaine was premiered at the 8th International Festival of Experimental Music, Bourges, France, in June 1978.
Liner notes:
Lyra (1978) is described by David Keane as “the result of the search for means to break away from the powerful timbre and formant characteristics of the piano. The formant problem is overcome by having the performer play exclusively on a single string, exploiting the timbral, accentual, and dynamic potentials of the single tone. The characteristic timbre is expanded by using the tape signals as divisi for the remaining strings in the place of the piano action, the pianist employing the keys only to release the dampers (for strings).”
The piece is an equally fascinating study in rhythm. A repeated pattern of 3/2/5/1/2/5 eighth notes underlies most of the piece. It is often inaudible due to the rhythmic counterpoint produced by the changing patterns of accent and timbre. On a larger plane, the tape sections separate four solo piano sections. These long, pulsating crescendos of electronic sound contrast vividly with the percussive alterations of the piano.
Some of the special techniques required for performance of the piece include (in order of their appearance) lute stop effects, tapping on the strings, hand and arm clusters, and harmonics produced by dampening strings with a finger.
Elegy (1978) is David Keane’s fifth work for double bass and tape recorder. The composer states that “the work exploits the wide range of sonorities available on the double bass, particularly the rich overtones that fall in the middle of the hearing range and have greater utility on the double bass than on other stringed instruments.” The tape part demonstrates the portion of lines performed on stage, while the double bass lines are performed as accompaniment of or in dialogue with the recorded material. The taped part centres around the pitch E and is framed by a low note chromatic descent and ascent. Lines derived and additions inspired by this material are incorporated into the remaining sections. Both the compositional and performing aesthetic — the solo explores the full range of the instrument and gradually incorporates more complex combinations against which tape and gradually accelerated pulses are contrasted — are intended to emphasize the physicality and expressive potential of the double bass.
The work was commissioned by the Belgian Radio Third Programme and was subsequently performed by the composer himself in a solo recital in January 1977. Subsequent performances include those for the Belgian Radio Third Programme, Brussels International Festival of Experimental Music, and with Ivan Valiante as soloist, at the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana, Cuba.
The performances on this side of the record were recorded at the First Annual Festival of Electronic Music, at the Music Gallery in Toronto, in January of 1979.
Evening Song (1978) is based on three short texts by Toronto poet and filmmaker, Bruce Elder. The stark contrast in imagery between, for example, beauty and ugliness are clearly communicated in the quasi-spoken vocal style. Sometimes the music directly reflects mood and meaning by exaggerations of vocal inflection, variations in texture, or tempo. The tape part has two distinct elements: a repeated rhythmic pattern of filtered white noise, and a secondary line of sine tones which is also repeated.
The words and ideas of Elder’s experimental text, “Sweet Love Remembered,” is drawn from the soundtrack of Elder’s experimental film Evening Song. The composer explains that the original footage of two female dancers in pas de deux is subjected to multiple processing and transformation techniques, and is edited in fine detail to bring out the subtle relations as well as powerful emotions between the two women. The words of the text, in combination with the visual material, create an ambiguity of the sexual focus, extending the issues dealt with both in the text and on the screen to universal application.
In Memoriam: Hugh LeCaine (1978) is a tribute to the scientist/composer whose legacy to electroacoustic music in Canada includes the design of many electronic instruments and the development of the first synthesizer in 1945. Written shortly after the accidental death of Hugh LeCaine in 1977, In Memoriam attempts “to portray my personal reactions to the events,” according to Keane. The work is written for tape alone and, “deep-framed, in purely musical terms, for a great scientist, artist, humanist, and friend.” The materials are a large, arch form, gradually building to climactic textural density, followed by a fragmentation and collapse.
LeCaine’s final demonstration tape, Triptody, is heard, which consists of layers of recorded piano notes, grouped in 1/8" triplets. Subsequent layers are transformed into a complex, polyphonic passage of ringing lines and resonance. The memorial tape re-enters as a coda. The decay and the pulses are sometimes lengthened to emphasize continuing presence of the ideas, which are the sonic correlation of the persistent creative qualities of the life they sound.
The composition was premiered at the Eighth International Festival of Experimental Music, Bourges France in June of 1978.
Joel Quarrington commenced his studies with Thomas Monahan at the University of Toronto where he was awarded the prestigious Eaton Graduation Scholarship whose previous winners include such distinguished artists as Clermont Pépin, Lois Marshall, and James Campbell. In 1976, Joel won first prize at the International Double Bass Competition in Geneva, Switzerland. He was also the top prize winner at the 1976 CBC Talent Festival and, in 1977, won top prizes in both the J.B. National Music Festival and the International Double Bass Competition in Lausanne. He has appeared in concert and on television in Europe and North America.
Karen Skidmore is a graduate of Queen’s University where she was a Stanley Dunlop Scholar in music. She has been a frequent soloist with the Pro Arte Singers and the Chalmers Singers of Kingston and has sung principal roles in numerous productions, including those of the Queen’s Musical Theatre, Kingston Musical Theatre, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. She has sung the principal female role in both the stage and television productions of The Devil’s Constructs, a chamber opera by David Keane with libretto by David Fanstone.
David Keane was born in 1943. He produced works for large and small instrumental and vocal combinations as well as electroacoustic scores, including three operas and much music for dance, film, and theatre. His works were performed throughout Canada, the USA, Europe, and Cuba. He received grants and commissions from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, the Laidlaw Foundation, the CBC, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Science Centre, and the National Design Council. He acted as adjudicator for the National Design Council, the Laidlaw Foundation, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and produced music for both the CBC and the National Film Board. He was an Associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers, and a founding member of the International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music. Beginning in 1970 he taught at Queen’s University in Kingston, where he founded and directed the Queen’s Electroacoustic Music Studios. His record Lyra was recorded at the Queen’s University Electronic Music Studios.
Monica Gaylord studied at the Juilliard and Eastman Schools of Music. In 1970 she won the prestigious International Concert Artist’s Guild Award. Since then she has appeared as a soloist in major centres across North America and Europe. She has appeared as soloist with the Toronto Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, and others. She has made broadcasts for CBC, BBC, and several other European broadcasters. She was a featured performer in Soundstage Canada, a CBC television series, and she has also performed in numerous recitals on CBC Radio. She has recorded for the CBC, Nonesuch, Vox, CRI, Orion, and Columbia Records. She toured New York State with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s New Music Concerts, her appearance on that tour being one of two live televised performances as soloist with New Music Concerts. In 1976 she was a featured performer for New Music Concerts’ 1976 European tour.
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