Ctrl c has been performed in Brussels, Corfu, Goms, Gwangju, Knoxville, Leicester, Leuk, Milan, Saragossa and Sheffield…

In 2016, I was asked by Ben Gaunt to produce an acousmatic re-mix of his existing instrumental piece 16th Century Horror, for flute, oboe, and piano, and was provided with pristine recordings of the work’s three movements along with stem recordings of the individual instruments.

I began by lightly processing and developing these recordings in ways that would maintain clear and unambiguous references to Gaunt’s original piece. In this way, I hoped to remain true to the idea of a remix. As I worked, however, I increasingly found myself nudging materials in directions that I wanted to explore, and this started to force a separation between Gaunt’s music and my own. As I struggled on, the constant nudging gave way to more extreme acts — pushing and pulling, bending and breaking — until all references to 16th Century Horror were, unfortunately, severed. A few, brief hints of the instrumental origins lurk throughout, but ultimately there is little that connects Ctrl c with Gaunt’s work. As is often the case, things apparently ‘copied’ are all-too-often unique.

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Ctrl c was realized in 2016 at the composer’s studio in Sheffield (England, UK) and premiered on April 7, 2016 during the Instrumental vs Electroacoustic: Remixing Contemporary Classical Music conference produced by the Institute of Musical Research at The University of Sheffield (England, UK). The piece was commissioned by Ben Gaunt, who proposed the idea of a remix and kindly offered up his work to make this a possibility, with support from the Institute of Musical Research (UK). Ctrl c was awarded a Nomination at the 9th Destellos Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2016).