Tutor wins top prize in ambisonics competition

MA Sonic Arts course tutor Professor Nikos Stavropoulos has won first place in the International Sonosfera Ambisonic Competition (ISAC) 2023 in Pesaro, Italy. The awards ceremony and the final acousmatic concert will take place on 9 June in Pesaro, Italy, in the Sonosfera deep listening theatre.

The competition had around 100 entries from 26 countries, making the preliminary, intermediate and final anonymous selections very competitive. The jury had to consider the outstanding artistic and technical quality of the submissions, as well as the non-standard 3D-audio listening venues needed for the evaluation of each piece.

The results were as follows:

1st prize: “Khemenu” by Nikos Stravropoulos
2nd prize: “Weightless” by Otto Iivari
3rd prize: “ní nán” by Wey Yang
1st mention: “Scène aux champs” by Jean Marc Duchenne
2nd mention: “La porta nel dado” by Jakob Gille

Professor Stavropoulos’ work in ambisonics and electroacoustic music features in a number of modules that he is delivering in the MA in Sonic Arts, where he shares his techniques and ideas with students. The work, composed at the LSA ambisonic studio and the Institute of Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) in Zurich explores novel ways in working with ambisonic technology. He said:

The ISAC competition is based on an idea of Eugenio Giordani, emeritus professor of Electroacoustic Music Composition at the Conservatory G. Rossini of Pesaro, who imagined a competition for the Sonosfera in early 2020 just before the first wave of the pandemic. Eugenio passed away due to Covid-19 on April 4th 2020. As Director of LEMS (Laboratorio Elettroacustico per la Musica Sperimentale founded in 1971) for more than 40 years, Giordani has been the master and inspiration of several generations of electroacoustic composers. Together with David Monacchi, Eugenio was the promoter of SPACE (Soundscape Projection Ambisonic Control Engine), the first 21.1 full-periphonic studio and listening venue in Italy, a facility built specifically for 3D-audio production and music composition, opened to the public in 2013.

ISAC competition is thus permanently dedicated to Eugenio Giordani, whose work and tools in musical informatics, sound engineering and aided electroacoustic composition still inform current practices of composers and sound designers on a local and global scale.

You can find out more about studying MA Sonic Arts at Leeds Beckett by visiting the course page.