Reconfiguring the Landscape

Persistence of Sound presents a new album from one of the world’s leading voices in electroacoustic music. Natasha Barrett is known internationally for her intense explorations of the movement of sounds through space. Whilst studying with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, Barrett worked with BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre), which led to a doctoral composition degree supervised by composer Denis Smalley.

Barrett has since established an international reputation as a composer of 3D audio and ambisonics. She treats spatialisation as a musical parameter, and told the New York Times, “I’m really concerned with the idea of tangibility. Sound is invisible, but we can do things that make you want to reach out and touch it.” Barrett describes her inspiration as coming from the immediate sounding matter of the world around us, as well as the way it behaves.

Barrett's works are performed and commissioned throughout the world, and have received a long list of prizes, including the Giga-Hertz Award and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards.