In my initial months as President of WFAE, I've devoted my energies to a fundamental pursuit: attentive listening. Listening to my colleagues on the WFAE Executive, listening to the Board representatives of our affiliates, listening to the members of our network. Therefore, I’d like to extend an invitation to all those who aspire to contribute to the advancement and recognition of Acoustic Ecology as a pivotal discipline in comprehending the intricate dynamics surrounding our planet's sustainability. We are eager to learn more about the topics that interest you in this field, the events you are organizing, the courses you are offering, the research projects you are involved in. We are also interested in understanding the acoustic concerns in your geographic areas, as well as your expectations and needs in this domain.

To facilitate this exchange, a comprehensive survey crafted by Dr. Mickey Vallee of the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE) will soon be circulating, a cornerstone in our quest to present a vivid and current depiction of our global community.

Further initiatives are on the horizon. We will soon relaunch the publication of our journal, Soundscape, which is being rebranded Acoustic Ecology Review in a new publication partnership with Simon Fraser University. The journal will launch in September 2023 with a special edition featuring the WFAE 2023 Conference Proceedings edited by Milena Dromeva and Lindsey French. Special thanks to Jesse Budel for his administrative support with the new digital platform.  Acoustic Ecology Review will be calling for guest editors and special
edition for 2024-2025. Please reach out to the journal editor Leah Barclay
(lbarclay@usc.edu.au) with any questions.   

Additionally, we intend to renew our website and offer continuous, up-to-date and relevant information, along with a global map of acoustic ecologists around the world. Let us know if you feel you can contribute to this endeavor. We would greatly appreciate your active participation.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Claude Schryer, our valued treasurer, who recently vacated his position on the Executive Board. His dedication, availability, knowledge, and precious contributions have made him an essential member in the core decisions of this network. We are currently seeking someone to fill his position – more details about this opportunity here.

Happy listening,

Raquel Castro

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology is saddened at the loss of respected teacher and composer Susan Frykberg, who passed away in Whanganui, New Zealand on Friday, April 7, 2023. She was 68 years old.

Several obituaries for Susan have been published on the WFAE website:

• Hildegard Westerkamp, Wendelin Bartley and Tina Pearson shared their memories of Susan for the Association of Canadian Women Composers (ACWC) and the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE)
• Cat Hope, Susan's PhD supervisor, wrote an obituary for Susan in Australia's CutCommon Magazine
• the earsay music label published a commemoration of Susan on their website
• The Whanganui Chronicle also published an article at her passing, acknowledging the importance of her home country of New Zealand, and especially of Whanganui as a spiritual home.

To contribute your own memories of Susan's life and legacy, please contact WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel at secretary@wfae.net

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology is saddened at the loss of Susan Frykberg, who passed away in Whanganui,  New Zealand on Friday, April 7, 2023. She was 68 years old.

Susan was a much loved and active member of the acoustic ecology community, and was instrumental in the founding of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and delivery of acoustic ecology courses at Simon Fraser University.

Cat Hope, Susan's PhD supervisor, wrote an obituary for Susan in Australia's CutCommon Magazine, reproduced here with permission:

"Susan Frykberg was an electronic music composer and sound artist whose music practice became an increasingly spiritual one. A citizen of both New Zealand and Canada, she lived most recently in Melbourne where she was a key part of the music scene over the last 10 years. Frykberg composed more than 80 musical works during her life, including music for acoustic, theatre, and religious settings in addition to many electroacoustic works. For her, music was an expression of her creative, intellectual, and spiritual life, and she was involved in key electroacoustic music scenes wherever she lived. She passed away in Whanganui, New Zealand from a terminal illness, amongst her family.

Born in Hastings, New Zealand, Frykberg undertook her undergraduate music studies with a minor in Theatre at the University of Canterbury, where she focused on computer music. Over time, she studied with composers such as John Rimmer, Barry Vercoe, Barry Conyngham, Barry Truax, and took classes with Iannis Xenakis and John Cage. She moved to Toronto, Canada in 1979 where she worked as a freelance composer, collaborating on the Structured Sound Synthesis Project with Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto, with the Canadian Electronic Ensemble and the composing collective Gang of Three. A key work from this period is Transonances (1984), a 50-minute piece characterised by voices subjected to and augmented by a range of treated and synthesised sounds. These were soundworlds she would return to throughout her life, as she sought a way to address what it meant to be a human continually augmented by technology.

In 1986, she moved to Vancouver where she completed a Masters Degree in Electroacoustic Composition at Simon Fraser University. She taught Acoustic Ecology there for several years, immersing herself in what was the centre of soundscape studies at that time, working alongside Hildegard Westerkamp and others. This period would profoundly influence her approach to composition and life thereafter, and she remained in close contact with her colleagues after she moved back to New Zealand in 1998. There she undertook studies in Classics and Theology at the University of Otago, and a five-year hiatus from composing ended in 2002 with the notated a cappella vocal work Virgin Mother, performed by Baroque Voices for RNZ Concert. She moved to Melbourne around 2014.

Frykberg’s music has been performed around the world in radio, concert and academic settings. Key works include Astonishing Sense of Being Taken Over by Something Far Greater Than Me, (1998) from the Astonishing Sense album released on Canadian label Earsay. Featuring violinist Nancy DiNovo, it is a beautiful, deep, and haunting piece that makes part of her extraordinary Audio Birth Project, a collection of works based on interviews with women about giving birth, including her sisters and mother, whose voices feature alongside cello, violin, piano, and soundscapes processed via a wide range of electroacoustic techniques. Women were often at the centre of her works – both conceptually and practically. The project was widely acclaimed, with articles in international publications such as Computer Music Journal, eContact and SplendidZine, and went on to be programmed as part of the 2008 Congress for the International Alliance of Women Musicians in Beijing, China.

More recently Frykberg was the lead composer and librettist for the multiplatform opera by Matthew Sleeth, A Drone Opera (2015-2020), commissioned by Experimenta, Melbourne and premiered at Arts House. The opera developed into a film that was shown at the Sydney International Film Festival (2019), an installation at Carriageworks (2019), Sydney and went on to be shown at Ars Electronica, Austria in 2020. In the words of her close collaborator and vocalist in the opera, soprano Judith Dodsworth, the work was a commentary on our tenuous and complex relationship with technology and its ability to simultaneously seduce and menace us, where the main dramatic thrust focused on the increasing distancing and ‘outsourcing’ of modern warfare as drones are employed to carry out the butchery1. Into what could have become a very stark landscape Frykberg brought reverence, wonder, compassion, and humanity2. Dodsworth remembers Frykberg as constantly curious, searching for connection and meaning, always reaching out to share ideas and collaborate with extraordinary warmth, humour and generosity of spirit3. 

Theatre was often a feature in her work. Machinewoman (1985) uses dance, movement and live saxophone, with pre-recorded sound emanating from a portable sound-system as part of the performers costume. Her improvisational group Let The Art Sing (2010-2012) combined instruments from different cultures with electronics that interacted with works of art in various regional galleries across New Zealand. She saw music and theatre as one entity functioning to transform the people within the society.



Frykberg’s other contributions to music are notable. She was a founding member of two core international organisations: the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and the World Forum of Acoustic Ecology, and and received an Honourable Mention in the International Alliance of Women Musicians New Music Competition in 2014. She produced programs about electroacoustic music for Radio New Zealand, and documentaries about Canadian composers for the Canadian Broadcasting Commission program Two New Hours. Her written publications include MusicWorks, Organised Sound, the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, a range of conference proceedings and a forthcoming co-authored chapter with Dodsworth in the upcoming volume The Composer, Herself: Contemporary Snapshots of the Creative Process edited by Linda Kouvaras, Natalie Williams, and Maria Grenfell. She wrote an academic teaching text entitled Dimensions of Acoustic Communication, on which she based a series of workshops held for the public in Melbourne in 2019. In addition to her teaching in Canada, she also taught in Melbourne at RMIT and Box Hill TAFE.

Susan commenced her PhD in Music Composition at Monash University in 2018, completed shortly before her passing. I had the pleasure to be the supervisor of her project on spirituality and electronic music, alongside Professor Constant Mews. She was working on a range of new compositions exploring the nexus of spirituality and electronic sound, including chants with electronics she had devised together with A Drone Opera collaborators Dodsworth and Hamish Gould. She was also developing larger scale electronic works that examine her own life through time, sounds created in space and the theories of the sixth-century music theorist, philosopher, and theologian Boethius, exploring a wide range of iPad applications for sound synthesis and editing. Other university graduate students note Frykberg’s enthusiasm to collaborate and support others, as someone with a genuine interest in others4, passionate and generous5, kind and caring6.

It is important to acknowledge these wonderful contributions Susan Frykberg made to music worldwide, and their impact closer to home. Whilst this summary by no means considers all her achievements, as I met Susan later in her life, I hope this provides some insights to the importance of her work. The staff and students at Monash University will miss her joyous contributions. We are lucky to her wonderful, adventurous music to remember her by."
​
Additional commemorations will be published on the WFAE In Memoriam page for Susan.

To share your own memories of Susan here, please email WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel on secretary@wfae.net

Dear WFAE Members and Acoustic Ecology community,


We are excited to announce that the final keynote speaker for the upcoming WFAE Conference, ‘Listening Pasts, Listening Futures’ in March 2023 is Claude Schryer.


Claude Schryer (1959, Ottawa, he/him) believes the arts, in the context of decolonization, can play a much more impactful role in shaping our collective future and has dedicated the rest of his life to this vocation. He is a franco-ontarian sound and media artist and arts administrator of european ancestry. He holds a MM in composition from McGill University and was actively involved in the acoustic ecology and electroacoustic music communities in the 80’s & 90’s. From 2000 to 2020 he held management positions at Canada Council for the Arts in Inter-Arts and as a strategic advisor. He currently produces the conscient podcast on art and the ecological crisis. He describes his artistic aesthetic as ‘an exploration of the liminal space between reality, fantasy and spirit’. He is also an environmental activist who volunteers with the Sectoral Climate Art Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE) (chair of the board and member of the Mission Circle) and regularly gives workshops, facilitates meetings, and participates in panels and presentations on art and the ecological crisis.  He is grateful to the Gesturing Towards Decolonized Futures collective and the Facing Human Wrongs course for guidance in his learning and unlearnings. He is a zen and qi gong practitioner, son of Jeannine and Maurice Schryer, husband of Sabrina Mathews, father of Clara Schryer and Riel Schryer. 


Schryer was a founding member of the WFAE at its inception at the 1993 ‘Tuning Of The World’ International Conference in Banff, Alberta. He joins Amanda Gutierrez and David George Haskell as a keynote speaker.


We also note that the conference Call For Presentations deadline has been extended to 15 October 2022. More information on the conference, registration fees, and CFP can be found on the WFAE website.

Dear WFAE Members and Acoustic Ecology community,

This post is a reminder that it is now two weeks until the close (October 1) of the Call for Presentations for the upcoming WFAE Conference in March 2023.  More information on the conference, registration fees, and CFP can  be found on the WFAE website.

We are also excited to announce the next of our keynote speakers, David George Haskell.

David Haskell is a writer and a biologist. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken, explores the story of sound on Earth. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, he illuminates and celebrates the emergence, diversification, and loss of the sounds of our world, including human music and language. The New York Times selected the book as an “Editor’s Choice”. His previous books, The Forest Unseen and The Songs of Trees are acclaimed for their integration of science, poetry, and rich attention to the living world. Among their honors include the National Academies’ Best Book Award, John Burroughs Medal, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, Iris Book Award, Reed Environmental Writing Award, National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, and runner-up for the PEN E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Haskell received his BA from the University of Oxford and PhD from Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Guggenheim Fellow, and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, USA. Find him at dghaskell.com and on social media @DGHaskell (Twitter), DavidGeorgeHaskell (Instagram and Facebook).

Haskell joins Amanda Gutierrez as a keynote speaker.

Dear WFAE Members and Acoustic Ecology community,

This post is a reminder that it is now three weeks until the close (October 1) of the Call for Presentations for the upcoming WFAE Conference in March 2023.  More information on the conference and CFP can be found on the WFAE website.


This post also features several announcements related to the conference.


We are pleased to announce Amanda Gutierrez as one of our keynote presenters. 
A member of the new WFAE affiliate, REA_MX, and one of the Directors of the World Listening Project, Gutiérrez explores the experience of home, belonging, and cultural identity by bringing into focus details of everyday practices whose ordinary status makes it particularly hard for us to notice their key role in defining who we are. Gutiérrez uses a range of media including sound art and performance art to investigate how these conditions of everyday life set the stage for our experiences and in doing so shape our individual and collective identities. 
Approaching these questions from women’s perspective continues to be of special interest to Gutiérrez, who completed her MFA in Media and Performance Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently elaborating on the academic dimension of her work developing her Ph.D. studies in Arts and Humanities (HUMA) at Concordia University in Canada, studying the field of aural technologies in connection with Gender Studies in the urban context.  For more information, visit http://www.amandagutierrez.net/ 


We are also delighted to note that Jacek Smolicki will be Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Centre of the Arts, and will lead a pre-conference workshop on Wednesday, March 22.


Lastly, the 2023 WFAE conference fees are as follows, grouped under three categories:
Registration, with lodging at the Atlantic Centre for the Arts:

• Full fee (3-day attendance, accommodation & meals inclusive) – $650.00 USD
• Early Bird / WFAE Member Rate – $550.00 USD
• Verified Student/Need-based Rate – $400.00 USD

Registration, with no lodging at ACA (accommodation to be sought by delegates)

• Full fee (3-day attendance + lunch) – $275.00 USD
• Early Bird (3-day attendance + lunch) – $210.00 USD
• Full fee (single day attendance + lunch) – $125.00 USD
• Student fee (3-day attendance + lunch) – $100.00 USD
• Student fee (single day attendance + lunch) – $50.00 USD

Please note that recommendations for accommodation close to the conference site will be provided upon registrations opening.

​Registration, virtual conference

• Virtual attendance (3 days, incl. registration to Discord community channel) –  $50.00 USD
• Virtual attendance (single day, incl. registration to Discord community channel) – $20.00 USD

Registrations for the conference will open on January 6, 2023.

Dear WFAE Affiliate and Individual Members,

I write to inform you of the upcoming 2022 WFAE Annual General Meeting, which will be held on Saturday 7 May at 12:00PM GMT/UTC (translation to your own time zones can be done at TimeAndDate.com).  

Following a successful online AGM last year, the meeting will be held on Zoom.

Additionally, with the recent review and ratification of the WFAE Bylaws, the Executive positions – President, Vice-president, Secretary and Treasurer – are now elected at each AGM by the general membership.

Position descriptions, drawn from the Bylaws, are as follows:

• The President shall be responsible for the general and active management of the affairs of the WFAE, and shall preside at all meetings of the WFAE and of the Board.
  
• The Vice-president shall, in the absence of the President, perform the duties of the President and shall perform such other duties as shall from time to time be determined by the Board. Should the office of President become vacant between elections, the Vice-president shall assume the vacancy and continue through their rightfully-elected term.
  
• The Treasurer shall have custody of the funds and securities of the WFAE and shall keep full and accurate accounts of all assets, liabilities, receipts and disbursements of the WFAE in the books belonging to the WFAE and shall have deposited all monies, securities and other valuable effects in the name of and to the credit of the WFAE in such chartered bank, trust company or any other financial institution, or in the WFAE of securities, in such registered dealer in securities as may be designated by the Board from time to time. The Treasurer shall disburse, or authorise the disbursement of the funds of the WFAE as may be directed by proper authority taking proper vouchers for such disbursements, and shall render to the President and directors at the regular meeting of the Board, or whenever they may require it, an accounting of all the transactions and a statement of the financial position of the WFAE. The Treasurer shall also perform such other duties as may from time to time be directed by the Board.
  
• The Secretary is responsible for all administration concerning the minutes of meeting and sending notices for meetings. Areas of supervision for the Secretary include:
  ● WFAE public image (website) maintenance and updates
  ● WFAE mailing list maintenance and archiving
  ● Secretary replies to physical and electronic correspondence
  ● Contributing ideas & vision
  ● Special projects
  ● Co-admin of WFAE social media
  ● Keeper of the archives (Archivist)
  

To register your interest in attending, please fill out this Zoom registration form.  To optionally make nominations for WFAE Executive positions, please fill out this Google Form.

An agenda will be sent in due course.


Thank you for your consideration, with kind regards,

Jesse Budel
​WFAE Secretary

The WFAE has been undertaking a review of its Bylaws, last ratified in June 1998. Following a consultation period, the finalised amendments are to be voted upon by WFAE membership. Given the international reach of the organisation, voting will be coordinated via an online Google form at: https://docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLSdfCI31gZe.../viewform....

Members of WFAE Affiliate Organisations and WFAE Individual Members are eligible to vote.

Each amendment is arranged sequentially under its relevant section of the Bylaws, accompanied by an explanation (in parentheses) of changes to each clause and a simple 'yes' or 'no' response for members to cast their vote.

For further context, the full Bylaw Review document is available here: https://docs.google.com/.../18bGb7Wt1xuNFSbwRl4kb.../edit...

As per current bylaws (9.2), each amendment requires an "affirmative vote of two-thirds (2/3) of the members" to be approved.

There are 30 amendments for consideration, which should take between 10-20 minutes to complete. Voting will close on 20 February 2022.

Thank you for your participation, with kind regards,

​Jesse Budel
WFAE Secretary

The WFAE is delighted to announce that SVARAM has been accepted as its first Associate Member.

SVARAM, based at Auroville in Tamil Nadu, India, brings together the rich tradition of Indian Music and Craft and international ­academic musicology, sound studies and research, contemporary design and innovation with the unique spiritual, futuristic aspiration of Auroville and its experiment of Human Unity.

Having participated over the years in the World Listening Day and thematic sound events and walks, and a co-created performance between Aurelio, (Svaram’s founding executive) and WFAE President Eric Leonardson in the Chicago Arts Center a few years ago, SVARAM is looking forward  to create more awareness and activities in their local context in Tamil Nadu and South Asia about soundscape studies, bioacoustics and sonic activism.

​The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology is saddened at the loss of Raymond Murray Schafer, who died at his home in Southern Ontario on Saturday, August 14, 2021. He was 88 years of age and is survived by his wife and mezzo-soprano, Eleanor James. 

Schafer leaves us with many invaluable gifts, a legacy of music, ideas, and literature for us to examine and celebrate. He will be remembered as one of Canada’s most influential composers and ‘father of acoustic ecology’. 

​Obituraries have been published by the CBC, New York Times, Times Colonist, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.

Many friends and colleagues in the Acoustic Ecology community have shared their memories of Schafer:

• Sabine Breitsameter dedicated this opening of Hörweg Groß-Bieberau in the memory of Murray Schafer, on 29 August, 11 a.m., with the mayor, local bank director and the general public. On August 17, she spoke on Deutschlandradio and on SWR.de
• Claude Schryer shared his memories of Schafer for the Peterborough Currents: ...Some people call Schafer a ‘renaissance man’. He certainly was an exceptional artist, educator and a visionary. He not only opened our ears to the world but also expanded our minds about what it means to be here and now, in this place. I am grateful for Murray’s immeasurable contributions to the arts and sciences.​
• The Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology made a post entitled Celebrating The Legacy of R. Murray Schafer: Canadian Composer, Author, Music Educator and 'Father of Acoustic Ecology' Dies at 88
• Carol Ann Weaver: There are few people whose lives and impact have mattered so much to me as R. Murray Schafer.  When I was in my early 20s, teaching composition at a college in Virginia, his small books, including When Words Sing, gave me windows/avenues into sound that changed my life, and hopefully lives of all I was able to reach.  Since then, I met him in various places.  Many decades later, when I was in my final year of teaching at University of Waterloo/Conrad Grebel University College, I was able to invite him to the Sound in the Land — Music and the Environment conference/festival which I led.  We will all remember his presence — stately, presenting his truth in wisps, words and manners that transcended his being.  This was surely the last public presentation venue for him.  We are so grateful he graced us with his presence.  Eric Leonardson, Sabine Breitsameter, Rae Crossman, Wendalyn Bartley, Eric Powell, Matt Griffin, and so many others shared in this wonderful event.  Thank you Murray for changing our world;  thank you for helping us to listen!
  
  Carol also wrote to Eleanor James on behalf of CASE,
  
  Dear Eleanor,
  
  I am writing to you personally, and also on behalf of CASE (Canadian Association for Sonic Ecology), extending all of our most sincere condolences on the recent passing of Murray.  He was an original signatorie of the first legal CASE document, and likewise has inspired organizations such as ours to spring up all around the world. In our most recent CASE meeting on Wednesday, August 18, we went around the circle, each of us saying what we found so moving about Murray — his life and work.  I wish you could have been on that Zoom to hear all the lovely things said.
  
  This is your personal loss, but it is also an enormous loss for the entire sonic community around the world.  He has changed the world and the ways we listen to and think about the world.  A person like him comes around once every several centuries, and then leaves a large trail for the rest of us to follow.  I cannot begin to mention all the ways he has mattered to the sonic, musical and environmental worlds we all inhabit.
  
  His writings have profoundly shaped our outlook on life, and his projects (Wolf, and others) have focused our attention on the natural world.  His wealth of compositions continues to inspire, challenge, and fill us all with the beauties and mysteries of this amazing planet we call home.
  
  He has changed my life ever since I read his little books such as When Words Sing and then, later on, The Tuning of the World, plus his essays about sound and silence.  His stunning piece, Princess of the Stars, still has me totally transfixed since hearing it at a lake near Toronto in 1982.
  
  I had met him many times and been part of his workshops.  But it was his and your presence at the Sound in the Land Festival/Conference at University of Waterloo in 2014 that simply blew me away!  While he was not able to present all of his ideas verbally, you were there to assist him and allow his voice to be heard!  It felt like sacred ground where you and Murray walked among us.  We respected you so very much for the role you played in allowing him to grace our festival, and attend every single event!
  
  I thank you, personally, for helping him to continue his life work as you have done.  You, along with him, are some of the most inspiring persons I know!
  
  So, I send you my love, and the love of all of us at CASE, as we say goodbye to this man, Canada’s most prominent, most important, and most influential composer, who shaped us all immeasurably.
  
  Love,
  Carol (for CASE) 
  
  Carol has also been working a tribute piece to R. Murray Schafer entitled 'Silence to Silence — Remembering Murray' with texts by Rae Crossman, Canadian poet and close friend and colleague of Schafer in the Wolf Project.  The work will be performed by Inshallah, a unique, community-based choir in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, conducted by Debbie Lou Ludolph. The piece will start and end in silence, incorporating Carol’s field recordings from natural areas in Ontario, and will include whispered and spoken vocals, as well as singing.  Ludolph’s words about the choir describe the focus of the piece: “Inshallah seeks out songs that can un-make our human-centric ways and widen our view to see our deep connectedness to all of creation as a wholeness out of which we seek to live our lives.” A more fitting tribute to the life, work, spirit and impact of Schafer could hardly be found!  The work is tentatively planned for an April, 2022 premiere in Waterloo, Canada.

• Helen Dilkes: I am sad to hear the news of Murray's death. 
  
  What a presence he has been in our lives and work. We, the AFAE, brought him to Australia for Acoustic Ecology: An International Symposium, in Melbourne in 2003. It was so momentous to get him here. In his gentle but pointed way he let us know how reluctant he was to come all this way, and how he had had to shovel one metre of snow off his driveway to even leave his house! He walked through the education workshops I had organised at a Melbourne primary school, with material he had pioneered and was so familiar with. He walked and listened with us in our local bush environments.
  
  What a thrill it was for Nigel and I, and others, to be invited to his house after the Sound Escape: A conference on acoustic ecology, in Peterborough, Ontario, in 2000. Murray gave Nigel a copy of his 'Tuning of the World' with an inscription that included 'In memory or our time together at Indian River'. I know that he was then beginning to recognise the work Nigel was doing for the acoustic ecology community.
  
  My soundscape work with children at that time had Murray's principles in mind, and Nigel's whole professional life as a sound designer had a purist intent that was informed by Murray Schafer's approach to sound and listening. So much to say, about a life.... 
  
  
• Helmi Järviluoma: In the autumn of 1991, I heard from popular music scholar Philip Tagg that R. Murray Schafer is by no means a trembling old man – so often we assume of gurus in our fields – but he continues to be active around the world talking and holding Ear cleaning workshops. I also got my Schafer's address. This was the beginning of the correspondence, which has continued –  not very often, but nonetheless – until about 2013, when he fell ill, and there was no longer a reply to my letters. In 1991, however, the answer came, in a form I did not expect: I wrote a letter, and Schafer replied with a cassette to which he had dictated the answers aloud, in a beautiful calm style. I spelled out, pruned and translated the interview. Schafer was happy to give the impression of luddite. In the early 1990s, computers and emails didn’t interest him, and not really after that. He said: “you can also send me a fax: to the shop next door, where I can pick them up every now and then”. He practiced handwriting as an art, so letters were written in beautiful handwriting, usually with an ink pen, beneath which was a lavish autograph. Schafer revealed that he was unusually annoyed that people were calling or sending faxes (email was not common then) asking for a prompt response and only because they themselves were helplessly late with their requests. He should have interrupted what he himself was doing and taken action. Therefore, he did not easily reveal his landline number, and the cell phone had not yet been “invented”. So, he smiled at his beard and said that he deliberately maintained the image of himself that he could only be contacted by sending the right letters. In this case, he can read the letter in complete peace, think about the answer, reply within a week and the letter travels in different means of transport to the other side of the globe for a week. I have to admit that when I got into the stranglehold of email itself, I envied and admired that kind of attitude. I think this would be the cure for the torment of constant interruptions, inability to concentrate that torments many of us. The culmination of the visit of Schafer in 1992 – the first but definitely not the last that I organised – took place in Lapland, where I had taken him and his companion on holiday in the middle of the forest, to my brother's cottage. He writes about this in his memoirs, especially about the memorable car crash, The police wolf dog reportedly barked throughout our trip in the back of a police car, from Kemijärvi to Rovaniemi. The best of Schafer's courses in Finland  (he has indeed had several of them) were precisely these long, multi-day courses, which allowed time to delve into making drama with the help of mere sounds. Murray always remembered to be complaining and worried about the fact that after a good start, the soundscape people had not “produced proper research”. That would be sorely needed. This is when, with his genuine support, I started to draft the first plans of the large European project Acoustic Environments in Change. But that is a completely different story. The Finnish school of soundscape studies owes very, very much to the imaginative mind, friendliness, and constant support and help of Murray Schafer. He is greatly miss by the whole of Finnish soundscape community. We send our warmest condolences to Eleanor James, the rest of Murray’s family, and his closest ones. He will never be forgotten.
  

• Tadahiko Imada: 
  
  In memory of R. Murray Schafer: the only composer who pursued music for all:
  
  It's been a few years since composer Hildegard Westerkamp informed us about R. Murray Schafer's Alzheimer. On August 16, 2021, five days after receiving an email from Schafer's partner, mezzo-soprano Eleanor James, saying, "Murray seems to be on the last leg of his journey home to God – to the Love,” the CBC announced Schafer's death to the world.
  
  As a Canadian composer, Schafer understood better than anyone the negative effects of the so-called logo-centrism of Europe. Although visually perceived landscapes and scenery had already been verbalized and become part of the "world" since ancient times, auditory space did not exist until Schafer proposed the concept of soundscape in the 1960s. The miracle of music and language was generated from the sonic environment. The West, which has taken for granted the autonomy of "music," however, has silenced the auditory space and human ecology. In his book, "the Tuning of the World," Schafer made clear the closeness of soundscape to composers from Handel and Haydn to Debussy, Ives, and Messiaen, but he also urged music teachers not to train children to make silent surrenders in front of the great "works of art" of dying composers.i Schafer states that if all children begin to play the piano at the age of, say, six, then by the age of ten half of them will be playing. By the time they are ten, half of them have stopped...By the time they are twenty, it is only one percent. So in this case, what the teacher wants is not true music education, but for producing the next Glenn Gould. To Schafer, this is a bad kind of music education, and he thought that music education should be for everyone.ii Training a second Gould to play the "Goldberg Variations" is an important mission for conservatories and academies that train "performers." "No one will be left behind," which is the mantra of the recently popular SDGs, for example. However, the education here is rooted in the manners of "Only geniuses will be left behind.” There are composers who emphasized soundscape, such as Satie, who introduced "noise" into "music," Russolo, who made "noise" into "music," and Cage, who used Zen and the I Ching to give "noise" a "musical" time axis. They fought against the ghosts of the nineteenth century concepts, such as "genius," "originality," and "art," and their concern may have been to break away from "nineteenth-century music," but not music education for all. Schafer, on the other hand, was a rare composer who focused on the on-going work that children will create in the future and its public nature. The United Nations adopted the SDGs in 2015, more than 40 years before Schafer's perspective was directed toward all children.
  
  All of my private conversations with Schafer will never fade from my memory: In 1995, Schafer was invited to participate in the Suntory Hall International Composition Commission Series, produced by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, He also gave a lecture at Keio University in Tokyo, and I returned temporarily from Canada, where I was studying, to serve as his interpreter. The following is a private conversation we had on that occasion: He said, “The Canada Council provides a large amount of money every year to the opera house. I do not understand why Canada should contribute to the Italian arts. If they gave me the same amount of money, I would compose a work that is unique to Canada.” Children's unique on-going works, magically created by the traffic of soundscape, may have a different direction than the accumulation of quantitative training. ​
  
  
• Molinari Quartet: It is with deep sorrow that the musicians of the Molinari Quartet learned about the passing of their dear friend and great composer R. Murray Schafer last August.
  
  The 25th season of the Molinari Quartet will therefore begin with a concert, entitled 'Tribute to Schafer' on October 15 at 7 :30 pm at the Montreal Conservatory of Music, 4750 Avenue Henri-Julien in Montreal. Given the great reputation of Schafer, the concert will also be live streamed.
  
  Since the foundation of the Molinari Quartet in 1997, Schafer’s music has always been at the heart of the repertoire of the Quartet. The Molinari has also largely contributed in the expansion of Schafer’s quartet cycle by commissioning or premiering no less than 5 new quartets. As soon as 1999, Schafer wrote his 7th quartet for the Molinari. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration, which ended with his 13th Quartet, Alzheimer’s Masterpiece that Schafer wrote for the Molinari after his diagnosis of the terrible sickness. It was to be his last composition.
  
  For the Tribute to Schafer concert, 4 of the 5 quartets that were written for Molinari will be performed: Quartets no.7, with soprano Aline Kutan, Quartet no.10 Winter Birds, no.12 and no.13 Alzheimer’s Masterpiece. The concert will also feature a short excerpt of Schafer’s Labyrinth, during which the musicians will play excerpts of 4 different quartets on beautiful cinematographic images produced by Barbara Willis-Sweete. Eventually, Schafer’s Labyrinth will be a live performance of all 13 quartets over the film.
  
  More information on the performance is available at https://quatuormolinari.qc.ca/en/event/a-tribute-to-r-murray-schafer/

​More tributes will be shared as they become available.

To contribute your own memories of Schafer's life and legacy, please contact WFAE Jesse Budel at secretary@wfae.net