sound:

photograph © Biffa

Pete Stollery

Pete Stollery (born Halifax, UK 1960) studied composition with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, UK. 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 and most of his works are available on CD. 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 Sao Paulo): Vox Magna (digital music) was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Musica Nova 2003 competition and was preselected for the Concours de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges 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 currently Reader in Composition and Electroacoustic Music and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios 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 is chair of Sonic Arts Network, the national organisation supporting electroacoustic music and sonic art in the UK, of which he has been a board member since 1985.

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.

• website link for Pete Stollery: www.petestollery.com
• events with Pete Stollery in previous sound festivals
• other artists and composers involved in sound 2008