Stefan Christoff's Sounding Worlds plus guests (TBA) at the Orange Light

Sounding Worlds

A music + soundscape performance by Stefan Christoff

“Sounding Worlds” is an interactive sound project led by musician and community organizer

Stefan Christoff who shapes compositions that incorporate electronics, piano and soundscapes.

This initiative mixes musical elements with a series of curated field recordings contributed by

artists around the world. Aesthetically the musical foundation for “Sounding Worlds” is shaped

by ambient orientations and collaborative soundscape practices.

Technically the works are driven by a series of composed musical motifs that are built by

improvisation and notated melodies, creating the basis for complex scores that involve

instrumentation and field recordings.

There are important points of social orientation to this project.

“Sounding Worlds” is also deeply shaped by soundscape contributions by artists working in

different global geographies. In this context, Christoff composes works that are sonically

positioned beyond one specific locale, as diverse field recordings create auditory references to

multiple cities internationally.

In the pandemic context, Christoff is working remotely with sound artists globally to register this

historical moment. This project interacts with our collective international experience of loss and

grief driven by the pandemic, with the layers of global soundscapes that Christoff has curated

over the last months offering a set of unique sonic portraits speaking to resilience within a

diversity of collective social and political ruins in the now.

The “Sounding Worlds” process is based on active collaborations with artists who have recorded

soundwalks in their respective cities Beirut, Lebanon, (Jad Hajjar), Mexico City (Alfredo

Bojórquez), Puebla, Mexico (Dawn Marie Paley), New York City + Palermo, Italy (Joseph

Sannicandro), Sofia, Bulgaria (Angel Simitchiev), Freetown, Sierra Leone (Mohamad Cheblak)

and Skopje, North Macedonia (Toni Dimitrov).

In this light, this music project aims to creatively navigate sound across a multiplicity of spaces

on the Earth at this time of crisis, resilience and healing.

Moreover this music and soundscape project builds on Christoff’s active collaboration with

community radio projects globally. Specifically, the sonic elements involved, including voice,

music and field recordings also form the basis for radio broadcasts. The works will be broadcast

on CKUT 90.3FM in Montréal, CFRC 101.9FM in Kingston, Ontario, CKUW 95.9 FM in

Winnipeg, Radio Béguin (radiobeguin.com) in Lyon, France and Radio AlHara

(yamakan.place/palestine) in Bethlehem, Palestine.

In creating a layered auditory environment the compositions on “Sounding Worlds” aim to open

spaces for reflection and regeneration, ideals shaped by Stefan’s long-term engagement with

community-oriented artistic practices rooted in ongoing collaborations with engaged artists both

locally and globally.

“Sounding Worlds” is in essence a contemporary musical project speaking to this moment of

global urgency in creative ways.

Host or Publisher The Orange Light