Pete Stollery biography

Pete Stollery (born Halifax, UK 1960) studied composition with Jonty Harrison. He now composes almost exclusively in the electroacoustic medium, particularly music where there exists an interplay between the original "meaning" of sounds and sounds existing purely as sound, divorced from their physical origins. In his music, this is achieved by the juxtaposition of real (familiar) and unreal (unfamiliar) sounds to create surreal landscapes. His music is performed and broadcast throughout the world. His music is published by empreintes DIGITALes in Montréal the solo DVD-A Un Son Peut en Cacher un Autre was released in 2006 and Scènes was released in 2011.

Shortstuff (digital music) was awarded Special Prize in the Musica Nova 1994 competition; Onset/Offset (digital music) was given an Honourable Mention at the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, 1996 and also the 1st Pierre Schaeffer Competition for Computer Music; Altered Images (digital music) won 2nd prize at CIMESP ‘97 (Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo); Vox Magna was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Musica Nova 2003 competition and was pre-selected for the 32nd Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art in 2005.

He has collaborated with a number of artists from all aspects of the arts, most notably sculptor Anne Bevan, with whom, along with choreographer Andy Howitt, he collaborated to produce the multimedia piece Sunnifa to great acclaim at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney.

He has also worked with sound designer Peter Key on a number of projects including Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, UK and Magna in Rotherham, UK.

He is Professor in Electroacoustic Music and Composition at the University of Aberdeen where he is able to guide school children, students and teachers in the creative use of technology in music education. He is also Artistic Director of discoveries - an occasional series of concerts in Aberdeen which aims to bring together electroacoustic works by school children and students to be performed alongside works by established composers from around the world.

He has been Chair of Sonic Arts Network, the national organisation supporting electroacoustic music and sonic art in the UK, for which he has been a board member since 1985; he was also editor of the Journal of Electroacoustic Music published annually by SAN. In 1996, along with Alistair MacDonald, Robert Dow and Simon Atkinson, he established the group invisiblEARts whose aim is to perform acousmatic music throughout Scotland and to promote Scottish acousmatic music to a wider audience, both in Scotland and abroad.


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