Ana-Maria Avram died on 1 August. The Romanian composer, pianist and conductor affiliated with spectral music was a frequent collaborator with composer Iancu Dumitrescu, with whom she was married. Avram was the co-conductor of The Hyperion Ensemble and artistic director of the Spectrum XXI festival which she founded to showcase innovative Romanian music.

Born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania, Avram studied composition at the National University of Music in Bucharest between 1980–85, and in 1992 she studied musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. In 1988 she joined The Hyperion Ensemble, the Bucharest based group specialising in contemporary composition and spectral music founded in 1976 by Dumitrescu. Avram composed around 130 works, including solo, chamber, orchestral, electronic and computer assisted music, and she released more than 25 collaborative albums with Dumitrescu on their label Edition Modern.

Avram explained the concept of spectralism to Philip Clark in The Wire 308: “Spectralism is not just a trend but a specific attitude towards sound,” she told Philip. “There isn’t one spectral approach, but many different viewpoints. Radulescu’s sound plasma, the music of the French spectralists and our music are often defined as post-spectral or hyperspectral: but above anything it is transformational music.”

In the same article she also expressed a love for the ambiguous nature of the old Moog synthesizer sound, adding that she and Dumitrescu tended to use old software “often abandoned by their creators, sometimes just to exploit one interesting little thing it can do well”.

Avram’s music has also been released by Electrecord, ReR Megacorp and other labels. The musicians she worked with include Kronos Quartet, l’Orchestre National de France, Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, L’Orchestre de Chambre de Roumanie, Radio-France, CCMIX, Ars Nova Ensemble and Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique Bourges.

Jez riley French and Pheobe riley Law will bring their Seeds & Bridges sound art series back to Hull following a six year hiatus. With eight events planned for 2017’s city of culture starting in October and running until March 2018, the series sets out to “give the new audiences in the city for contemporary art a chance to experience unique sound focused events from both established and emerging artists working with sound in various ways”.

Held at Humber Street Gallery, all events are free. They include an in-depth conversation between Jez riley French and field recordist Chris Watson, a female-only workshop, performance events incorporating sound, noise and technology; installations, and more. Participating artists include Chris Watson, Hanna Tuulikki with Lucy Duncombe & Nerea Bello, Emily Richardson, Rachael Finney, Ryoko Akama, Dawn Scarfe, Katy Bentham, Embla Quickbeam, Collectress, Heather Ross, Holly Jarvis, Andrew Jarvis and Yorkshire Sound Network for Women, and of course Seeds & Bridges hosts Jez riley French and Pheobe riley Law, with more to be confirmed.

Chris Watson in conversation with Jez riley French takes place on 5 October. More details to be announced soon.

London College of Communication’s Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice centre has put out an open call for papers and new sound or audiovisual works to be presented at a conference early next year. Called Large Objects Moving Air, the 2018 conference is a one day event “exploring the presence, agency and materiality of air from the microscale to macroscale, through both literal and figurative interpretations”, say its two hosts, Wire contributor Jennifer Lucy Allan and Matt Parker, both of CRiSAP. “What comes to mind when one thinks about air?” they continue. “Air is everywhere and nowhere. It is a carrier of frequencies, energies, vibrations, toxins, pollutants and blast waves. It supports life and is a site of communication. It is clouds and The Cloud. Who owns it? Can it be owned? Who or what are the agents in the transmission and circulation of air? How does it circulate and what circulates within it?”

Laura Cannell has been commissioned to write and perform a new work for bass recorder at the event, which will take place on 8 January 2018. Deadline for open call submissions is 15 September. For more information go to CRiSAP’s website.

New York ensemble Object Collection are bringing to London what they describe as their “opera-in-suspension” sourced from the complete live archive of Fugazi. As well as receiving its London premiere, the opera will also be released on record for the first time. Called It's All True, the work uses a series of Fugazi live recordings made between 1987–2002. Object Collection’s composer Travis Just and writer/director Kara Feely constructed their 100 minute opera for four performers, guitars and bass and two drummers from the incidental music, text and sounds found on those Fugazi recordings, be it unplanned feedback, pre-show speeches, audience hecklers or the noise of police breaking up gigs, rather than Fugazi songs and music proper.

“In Fugazi we always thought of our music as like hollering into a valley. Echoes might come back but we could never be sure what form they might take or if they would even be recognisable,” comments Guy Picciotto of Fugazi. “The work Object Collection has done using raw material from our live archive was one of those unexpected echoes. When they contacted us to have permission to use the material, we answered yes.

“When we heard back from Travis and Kara with a video recording of an initial rehearsal of It’s All True I didn’t really know what to expect,” adds Picciotto, “but I shared the link with the rest of the band to check out. Within days the four of us in the band were writing each other with bafflement and awe, ‘Have you watched this thing yet?’ All of us were both blown away and disoriented by the work – it was well beyond anything we had anticipated when agreeing to Travis’s early request.

“As for the text – a stitched quilt composed of our off-the-cuff stage raps (many of which utterly defy my memory and some which are as freshly present in my brain as yesterday) – to hear it delivered by these actors in a novel form of almost distanced hysteria at first really confused me,” he continues. “For us our between-song raps were a way to engage with the crowd as people in a shared space and precise moment, not just as consumers of a cookie-cutter event. Basically it was a way to avoid feeling like a jukebox in the corner. That was one reason we also never used a setlist, so that every night had that element of improvisation and response to that specific room. But of course the banter was sometimes just a way to buy time, to catch our breath, to mask tuning or equipment issues or just to entertain ourselves. Still, those raps were supposed to evaporate into the night air, but by taping them and making them available, we left a trail back. Object Collection took that trail and made it a script which solidified the ephemeral into something more concrete, a distillation of weird social history and politics as a residue that exists in even in the most seemingly random moments once they are boiled down.”

It’s All True was commissioned by the Borealis Festival, Bergen, where it premiered in 2016. It featured singers Catrin Lloyd-Bollard, Avi Glickstein, Daniel Allen Nelson and Deborah Wallace, plus Taylor Levine, Josh Lopes, James Moore and Brendon Randall-Myers on guitars, and Shayna Dunkelman and Owen Weaver on drums.

It will be released in vinyl, CD and download formats by Slip in October, complete with photography by Henrik Beck, and a fold-out double-sided A2 newspaper print featuring both performance text and sleevenotes. Slip will also release a 7" in September featuring “What's The Problem” from It's All True plus two extra tracks. Both are available for pre-order.

Meanwhile, the UK premiere of It’s All True will take place at London's Cafe Oto on 21 & 22 September. They will also perform between 2–25 February, 2018 at La Mama, East Village, NYC. Online subscribers can read a review of the Bergen performance of It's All True in Wire 388 and an interview with Object Collection’s Feely and Just in Wire 387.

On 4 August Frozen Reeds issue the previously unreleased Julius Eastman piece Joy Boy via Bandcamp, with all proceeds being donated to the Transgender Law Center. The release coincides with Bandcamp's charity fundraising day, when 100 per cent of the online store’s cut from sales will be given to the TLC.

Joy Boy follows last year’s release of Femenine which spared a renewed interest in the life and works of the late composer, who became celebrated through dedicated concerts, festivals and performances, as well as a new Otolith Group film The Third Part Of The Third Measure. Both pieces were recorded live on 6 November 1974 at Composers Forum in Albany, The Arts Center at the Academy of the Holy Names.

“I have been sitting on this completely unreleased Julius Eastman piece since preparations for the release of Femenine were underway last year,” states Ian Fenton of Frozen Reeds. “The piece was performed immediately before Femenine at the same concert,” he continues. “It's “named Joy Boy and, like Femenine, is performed by The SEM Ensemble. The two pieces together didn't fit on one CD (just a minute or two too much) and so I made vague plans to release the shorter one later, but nothing really happened and I've gone ahead with other new projects since then.

“So, when I heard about this Bandcamp initiative, the idea of making this piece available popped up once again. It seemed a great way to get the music out there, and promote an excellent cause at the same moment.

“It's already available to pre-order and all proceeds it generates on Friday, both for Bandcamp and ourselves, will be sent to Transgender Law Center. For our part, this also includes any proceeds from pre-orders.”

The fundraiser runs for 24 hours on 4 August starting at midnight (PT). In the UK that's 8am on 4 August.

Unconscious Archives will host its first festival this year. The project, which was founded in 2011 by Sally Golding to explore the dialogue between audiovisual and sound art, will present a ten day event and accompanying exhibition. Run in partnership with the Austrian Cultural Forum London, it has a special Austrian focus.

The exhibition, called Emotion + Tech(no)body, features Audrey Samson, Benedict Drew, Stephen Cornford, Graham Dunning, Christine Schörkhuber, Ulla Rauter, Reni Hofmüller and others, and it runs from 20 September–17 November; a live event called Compositional Constructs takes place at London’s Cafe Oto on 24 September, featuring Myriam Bleau, Mariska de Groot, Leafcutter John and Dawid Liftinger; Haptic Somatic at Corsica Studio on 28 September features Ziúr, Yaxu, Phantom Chips, Spatial, Laurie Tompkin, Marta Forsberg, Billy Roisz, dieb13 and Chloe Frieda. In addition, Close-Up Film Centre will present Narrativize on 30 September featuring film, digital arts, performances and Q&As including Esperanza Collado, Jörg Piringer, James Holcombe, Secluded Bronte Trio with Jonathan Bohman, Adam Bohman and Richard Thomas, and Hannah Catherine Jones aka Foxy Moron.

“This is the first time Unconscious Archives are operating on such a large scale, growing from single events to three key events,” states festival director-producer Golding. “I founded it when I moved to London from Australia after co-running OtherFilm Festival there. Originally UA was more dedicated to exploring the dialogue between expanded cinema and sound art – through performances by artists working in either programmed on the same night. It's evolved to not be so focussed around expanded cinema/live av – rather to focus on 'liveness' and emphasis performativity in AV and sound art/experimental music.”

Tickets can be found at the Unconscious Archives website.

This autumn London Islington’s Union Chapel will host a special three day festival that issues a challenge to musicians and audiences alike to rethink the organ. The festival has commissioned a number of artists to compose new works for the chapel's organ, which was built specifically for the space by Henry Father’ Willis in 1877, and is the only organ in England with its original (and functioning) hydraulic bellows. Their one mandate is to “release the organ from its traditional roots”. Composers include Tim Hecker, Phill Niblock, Mira Calix, Emily Hall and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and the festival will feature performances by Low, Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie of Stars Of The Lid, Claire M Singer, Gordon Monahan, James McVinnie and London Contemporary Orchestra And Choir.

“To have the opportunity to build on the organ’s rich history and bring it to the attention of a new generation of artists feels important,” says composer and festival curator Claire M Singer. “It may not be the most portable of instruments, but like any other it deserves a life. It deserves that life to be continued and its music to be developed, and that’s what I’m trying to do over three days with Organ Reframed.”

Organ Reframed will run from 13–15 October. You can watch a video of Singer performing at the Chapel, below:

Boiler Room TV has announced it’s going to stream a rare film about Finnish label Sähkö. Shot on 16mm by Jimi Tenor in 1995, the untitled work was dubbed Sähkö The Movie by the label's fans, and it’s a hard to find item only available as a VHS tape originally released by Blast First Petite.

The 44 minute film features footage of Tommi Grönlund – who founded the label in 1993 in Turku – as well as Mono Junk, Hertsi, IFÖ and the late Mika Vainio, while they variously work in the studio, hand-press limited edition vinyl or perform live.

Sähkö The Movie will stream on 10 August. In the meantime you can watch a trailer below:

2018 will see the launch of Camp, a residency series based in the thermal spa town of Aulus-les-Bains in the French Pyrenees. Housed in a renovated 19th century hotel, each course in the series will run for five days. Subjects include: Modern Composition with Gavin Bryars; Environmental Sound Recording with Chris Watson (now sold out); Deep Listening, Meditation & Laughter with Laraaji; Composing For Film with Jozef Van Wissem; and Experimental Composition & Performance with Eli Keszler. Each course will cost £1119, not including flights, but James from Fuse Art Space confirms over email that those fees cover “all tuition and activities, accommodation, catering (yes, including booze), and unlimited use of our facilities”. And he confirms that on site facilities include “Pro-Tools studios, digital editing and production suites, an arts library, rehearsal and performance spaces, fine art studios, a cinema, dark room... all free and technician-supported for participants throughout their stay”.

“We've been running Fuse Art Space for nearly four years,” he says, when asked how the project came about. “The level of work coming through is consistently really awesome. We wanted to take this pool of incredibly talented and innovative artists, musicians, writers, thinkers and activists and put them in an environment where they can act as catalysts for new ideas and artistic thought.

“We want to create a place where people can come and feel inspired, have a deeply creative experience, learn new ways of working at the leading edge of their artforms, form new groups and movements, make things happen,” he continues. “We want the work and developments that come out of Camp to pioneer new ways of thinking about music, art, film, etc.”

Some of the courses, such as the one run by Gavin Bryars, require an existing knowledge skill base from participants, while others are open to those with no more than an interest in the subject. All sessions will make use of what the landscape has to offer. Plus there’s a bursary scheme available via Camp’s various partners.

Camp has lined up future courses by the likes of Laure Prouvost, Ann Bean, Jana Winderen & Mike Harding, Christina Kubisch, Paulina Olowska, and others. Camp kicks off in April 2018.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise goes on release in September. Directed by Reto Caduff and Stephan Plank, the feature length documentary traces the history of Stephan’s father Conny through the viewpoint of the artists he worked with. It also examines the legacy the West German producer, sound engineer and musician left behind following his death at the age of 47. Ranging across progressive, avant garde, electronic and krautrock, Plank worked with artists such as Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Guru Guru, La Düsseldorf, Gianna Nannini, Michael Rother, Eurythmics, Les Ritas Mitsuko, Ultravox, and many others. He was also a regular collaborator with Cluster’s Dieter Moebius. Born Konrad Plank in Hütschenhausen in 1940, Conny died of cancer in 1987, leaving behind his wife, the actor Christa Fast, and son Stephan, then aged 13.

“I discovered his work in the early 80s when albums by Eurythmics or Ultravox, Les Ritas Mitsouko, Freur or by German new wave acts such as Ideal, Rheingold or DAF had the Conny Plank credit on the cover,” comments Reto Caduff via email. “Little did I know at that time of his earlier influence: that he brought Kraftwerk to the recording studio for the first time, that he was working with the band up to their “Autobahn” hit, and all his contribution to the krautrock genre and early electronic music. I only discovered really Neu! when the albums were reissued in the early 2000s. He really was a pioneer and his untimely death at 47 in 1987 only added to the legend.

“As a film maker I am very much interested in these kind of influential people who somehow never got the credit they deserved outside the cognoscenti. So out of my personal interest in the man I contacted his son Stephan Plank, who told me that he was already working on a film about his dad,” Caduff continues. “I wished him the best of luck with it but he suggested we meet and talk about a possible collaboration. We met in Berlin and quickly found a lot of common ground (my dad died in 1988, aged 49), so there was a connection beyond the music.

“To me, the idea of co-directing the film made a lot of sense since Stephan could approach the artists whom he met as a kid in the studio (his home) differently than a regular documentary director. My hunch proved correct over and over again. Meeting the artists brought the memories and stories to a complete different level and enabled us to paint a very unique picture of this extraordinary artist behind the mixing desk. I also felt the timing was right since a lot of the people were still active.

“I hope we made a film that appeals to the fans who grew up with his music as much as to a younger generation interested in the genesis of electronic music,” he concludes.

In 2013, Grönland released Who's That Man: A Tribute To Conny Plank, a boxset featuring tracks Plank had engineered for Brian Eno, Psychotic Tanks, Fritz Müller and many others, a CD of Plank, Dieter Möbius & Arno Steffen performing live in Mexico in 1986, and a selection of remixes by Jens-Uwe Beyer, Phew, and others.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise will be released in both German and English language in September 2017