Gayle Young studied contemporary music at Toronto's York University, 1974-77, with David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum and James Tenney. In January 1978 Young presented the first concert of microtonal music composed for the columbine, a percussion instrument she designed and built using 23 pitches per octave in an expanded just intonation tuning system. Many performances followed, featuring this instrument in works that she and other composers have written for it. From 1979 to 1982 she was a consulting composer with the Structured Sound Synthesis Project, a pioneering graphic-interface computer music system designed by Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto. In 1980 she designed and built the amaranth, a 24-stringed instrument with a flexible tuning system. Her compositions have been broadcast and performed internationally and she has received several awards and commissions from national and provincial arts councils.
When Musicworks, a magazine dedicated to innovative and adventurous sound exploration, began publication in 1978 Young submitted articles about tuning systems, about electronic instruments designed by the Canadian electronic music pioneer and inventor Hugh Le Caine, and interviews with several composers including one about James Tenney. This was one of the first publications about this composer. In 1988 Young became editor of Musicworks magazine, after completing her book, The Sackbut Blues, Hugh Le Caine, for which she received grants from the Canada Council, the Secretary of State, and the Sir Ernest MacMillan Memorial Foundation. In 1999 she released a CD of compositions and demonstrations found among Le Caine's papers.
In 1978-79 Young composed three compositions for sculptural installations by Reinhard Reitzenstein. These works, with an accompanying book of photos, were released in 1980 on the LP According. Young's later works in sound installation, also co-created with Reitzenstein, extend her interest in the role of sound in the everyday environment and emphasize interactive sound exploration, as described in a chapter of the recent book Sonic Geography. She has curated several exhibitions of sound sculpture, including "Sounds of Invention" for the 1990 Newfoundland Sound Symposium and "J'écoute / I am Listening" for the Glendon Gallery at York University in Toronto, for which she produced a bilingual exhibition catalog on video. Her revised catalog essay for "Sounds of Invention" was republished by Artexte in the book S:on in 2004.
Several of Young's recent compositions use texts (usually about food: the recipe pieces) as a structural device allowing a degree of freedom to performers without reducing the complexity of the music. The text functions to determine rhythm and phrasing as well as timbre and dynamics. It also acts as a compositional algorithm to control transitions into different musical "gestalts" (different pitch organizations, for example) which are part of the overall structure of the composition. Her 2002 composition Fissure is the first in a series of compositions combining microtonal tunings with soundscape: in these pieces environmental sound is recorded through tuned lengths of tubing.
Email: [email protected]