Bruce Pennycook

Pennycook, Bruce

Pennycook, Bruce. Composer, teacher, saxophonist, b Toronto, 5 Oct 1949; B MUS composition (Toronto) 1973, M MUS composition, theory (Toronto) 1974, DMA musicology (Stanford) 1978. He began his musical training with clarinet and saxophone lessons. Later on, he studied composition at the University of Toronto with Gustav Ciamaga, Lothar Klein and John Weinzweig, winning the Sir Ernest MacMillan Award/Fellowship awarded by CAPAC in 1973. He then went on to study musicology at the University of Stanford, Cal., under John Chowning and Leland Smith. Back in Canada, he taught at Queen's University (1978-87) where he founded a music and technology research centre. In 1987, he joined the McGill University Faculty of Music to teach computer music and the applications of electroacoustic techniques to live performance.

As a composer, he has shown an interest in a mixture of acoustic instruments and live electronics, as displayed in works such as Praescio I (1987), II (1988) and III (1988, recorded on 4-ACM 37-CD). Other compositions include If Carillons Grew Wings for tape (1975, recorded on Redwood ES-10) and Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein (1981) for soprano and computer-generated tape (recorded on Folk. FTS-37475). Pennycook wrote about the latter work in ' Speeches for Dr Frankenstein: an orchestral approach to music synthesis,' CUMR, vol 4, 1983.In 1987, the Kingston Symphony premiered a commissioned work, In Your Medium (1986) with soprano Carol-Lynn Reifel. As a saxophonist, Pennycook has performed in Canada, in the USA and in the Netherlands. He has published articles on computer music in specialized periodicals. He is a member of the CLComp and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and he is an associate of the Canadian Music Centre.