EAMT master’s student Otto Iivari’s ambisonic work “Weightless” won the second place in the International Sonosfera Ambisonic Competition (ISAC) 2023 in Pesaro, Italy. The awards ceremony and the final acousmatic concert will take place on June 9th in Pesaro, Italy, in the Sonosfera deep listening theatre.
Given the very high number of candidates from 26 countries, the outstanding artistic and technical quality of the submissions, the non-standard 3D-audio listening venues needed for the evaluation of each piece, the preliminary, intermediate and final anonymous selection was for the jury extremely difficult and competitive. 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
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, among whom all the organizers of this ISAC-2023 competition. 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. Learn more: https://isac-pesaro.github.io/
Otto Iivari’s works have been internationally recognized several times before: in the fall of 2022, “Thở” was recognized with a gold medal at the VI European Student 3D Audio Competition, the same work won the audience’s favorite title at the “Audio mostly” conference. In spring of 2022, the work “Dunes” was mentioned at the 15th International Destellos Electroacoustic Composition Competition in Argentina.
Otto Iivari’s compositions “Thở” and “Weightless” can be heard in an ambisonic sound environment at the concert exam for graduates of electroacoustic composition on June 2 at 7 p.m. in the EAMT black box.