We’re Listening with EMW: Kristi Allik’s Innovations in Music Technology

VINCENT TEETSOV

In November 2019 at WE: Global Learning Centre, Ensemble U performed for Latitude 44 and Estonian Music Week audiences with scenes of Marimetsa Raba (Marimetsa Bog) displayed on virtual reality headsets. It was a one-of-a-kind live music moment for many, and has prompted the question: “Where else can we find technological innovation like this in Estonian music?”

A thorough answer to this question could easily require several more festivals and conferences, but one individual who exemplifies this pursuit of new ideas and intellectual expansion is Estonian-Canadian composer and music educator Kristi Allik. Kristi has created at least 55 performed and recorded compositions since 1975, for a broad range of instruments. This includes music for keyboards, English horn, violin, percussion, electro-acoustic instruments, and orchestras with soloists. “Lend Me Your Harp”, a chorus and chamber orchestra piece from 1981, sets the scene for the beginning of the Kalevipoeg epic. Her music continues to be performed by the next generation of classical musicians, including pianist Jana Luksts.

Kristi is Professor Emeritus of Queen’s University School of Music, having taught there from 1988 to her retirement from teaching in 2013. Through the Electroacoustic Music Studios and the Computer Laboratory for Applications in Music (CLAM), she has championed electronics and a broadened sonic palette for musicians and sound artists.

Sound art and music often exist in a impermanent way. Notes are played and dissipate apart from the way they move us as listeners. But delving into her career, you will inevitably encounter her technological explorations with Skyharp. Created in 1990 with multimedia artist Robert Mulder, it was an instrument that bridged shape and sound.

The concept of Skyharp was to use video signals to create music. Movements within the video frame were analyzed by software, interpreted for dynamic data, sent to a computer to create sound, and then played back through a chorus of 13 to 16 specially-designed speakers. When the instrument was premiered in July 1991 at Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area near Kingston, Ontario, it relayed the movements of an 80 year old (at the time of the debut) elm tree at the edge of a marsh. Each branch had a different tonal and rhythmic quality.

They were onto something with this invention. Subsequently, the Cloud Harp (or “Keplerian Harp”), was invented by Nicholas Reeves and the NXI Gestatio Laboratory at Université du Québec à Montréal in 1997. Cloud Harp utilizes an infrared laser and reads clouds for sound data, as a CD player reads the bottom of a disc.

With Skyharp, as well as several projects before and after, Kristi and Robert embarked upon a harmonious exchange of ideas and invention. For instance, at the February 2000 performance of Skyharp: Ghost Tree at Koffler Gallery, Robert used software to translate the choreography of Canadian dancer Holly Small into sound. This choreography reflected footage of the old elm tree in 1994 and 1998, before and after an ice storm caused devastating damage.

Kristi Allik is a perfect example of the intrepid Estonian-Canadian musical and technological advances that Estonian Music Week and Latitude 44 are all about. Keep watching for updates on Instagram and Facebook – you’re bound to find artists pushing the boundaries in all ways possible!

Photo used with permission from Kristi Allik