BIO

362wds

Anne Bourne Tkaronto Toronto/ Tiohtià:ke Montreal, sound artist/ composer. Seasoned in international performance, recording, songs, film, dance and intermedia installation, Anne improvises microtonal cello, voice, piano and field recording into electroacoustic soundfields. Anne imparts the listening practice and text scores of Pauline Oliveros independently, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and in institutions of higher learning, centred as distance faculty and advisor for Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer, NY. Anne’s listening and sounding, choral improvisation events, an experience of collective creativity, and listening walks, in symbiotic listening attunement, accumulate choral sound fields as peace activism. Recent Sound Art : Divers Electroacoustic composition in 4 channel surround with tone chorus and solo bass trombone. Learning Endings Patty Chang artist, Astrida Neimanis writer, Aleksija Neimanis wildlife pathologist, Neuberger Museum, NY 2023 ; soundfield nearshore spatialized sound installation 15.2 surround, electroacoustic composition with field recordings, with sculptures of the underground rivers by Striped Canary Confluence composer spatial design with Tom Kuo, diffusion / mix with John Gzowski, commission The Bentway 2022 Honours: Emily Harvey Foundation Artist in residence, Venice, IT, 2026; Polaris Heritage Award, 2025, for Jane Siberry, Speckless Sky, (1985) electronic keyboard accompanist/ arranger; Diamond Record 2026, for Five Days in July, Blue Rodeo/ Sarah MacLachlan (1993) cello improviser voice; Chalmers Foundation Arts Fellowship, shoreline 2019-2026. Recent recording From Where you Came Kara Lis Coverdale, Smalltown Supersound , Oslo Norway 2025. Recent Publication: Bodies of Sound Becoming a Feminist Ear, editors Irene Revell and Sarah Shin, Silver Press, UK 2024 Rare recent cello performances Horse Sings from Cloud composer Pauline Oliveros, solo cello with instrumental ensemble, Pique Festival Drone Day Ottawa 2025; [m]other composer/ solo cello/ voice, Anne Bourne 6 dancers chorus, choreographer/ producer Kimberley de Jong, live film projection Philippe Léonard (GSyBE) Galerie, Université de Montreal 2024; Fathoming Lithium Sediment of Pearl ecoacoustic composer, solo cello with fixed media audio Anne Bourne and live image mix Daniel Tapper TRANZAC Toronto 2025; Fathoming Lithium Sediment of Pearl Munich remix AV version, Radio Amnion Listening Party, Munich DE 2025; Kara Lis Coverdale From Where you Came release, Anne Bourne cello and voice, Doug Tielli trombone, Kara Lis piano, electronics, pump organ, 918/ Music Gallery, 2026.

BIO II

804 wds

Tkaronto Toronto/ Tiohtià:ke Montreal based sound artist/composer, improvising cellist/vocalist, mentor facilitator, consultant. Anne listens for the geopoetics of shorelines, spectral wave patterns of water, and the pleasing dissonance of collective sound creation.

Seasoned in international concert touring and recording, in song and contemporary music, Anne is ubiquitous as a facilitator, improviser, interpreter and performer. Recordings she participated in received Junos; Gold status in the US; Polaris Heritage award 2025; and Diamond status in Canada, 2026. Anne received individual and collaborative awards for her composition and improvisation, for dance and film. Anne has improvised with Andrea Nann, tUkU, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, Susie Ibarra, Eve Egoyan and Mauricio Pauly, Fred Frith, and Pauline Oliveros. Anne improvised voice and cello in the 1997 film the Sweethereafter by Atom Egoyan, starring Saraah Polley, which was a success at the 50th Cannes film festival winning three prestigious awards: the Grand Prix (Grand Jury Prize), the FIPRESCI Prize (International Critics' Prize), and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Anne is emerging as a composer of electroacoustic environments invited by Emily Harvey Foundation to an artist residency in Venice 2026 to write and compose and research rights of nature with Pietro Consolandi. Anne composes emergent streams of microtonal cello, voice, piano, field recordings, in interdisciplinary collaboration with those who stand for the wild. She premiered two audiovisual works at the IICSI IF festival. And created spatialized environmental sound installations with artists Striped Canary US, The Bentway, 2023; Learning Endings Patty Chang US, Aleksija Neimanis CA/SE, and Astrida Neimanis CA Neuberger Museum 2024. Anne leads Listening and Sounding events to accumulate choral sound fields as peace activism, with a low draw on electricity, Listening in the Daark Pique Festival 2025, and Listening Walks in environmental attunement, as in Care for the Stranded by Learning Endings, Henry Gallery Lincoln Pk West Seattle.

Deep Listening® Teaching and Oliveros Performance Experience

Composer James Tenney, invited Anne to perform with Pauline Oliveros, in a telematic concert connecting Paris, Toronto, and Oliveros at the Kitchen, NY, in 1994. Anne continued to improvise with Oliveros, premiering Primordial/Lift, in 1998, Oliveros, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, and Andrew Deutsch. And all subsequent performances in NY, at Issue Project Room;, Huddersfield UK, with International Contemporary Ensemble until Los Angeles at USC One Archive 2017, with performance recordings on ToTE and TAIGA. Anne refined a listening practice attending many years of Oliveros’ Deep Listening Retreats in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and was one of les six to be awarded Deep Listening® Certificates in 1998 to carry Oliveros' listening practice and text scores.

Anne founded Sounding Difference : the text scores of Pauline Oliveros as an experiential non narrative sounding and listening collective, produced at the Music Gallery, by Artistic Director David Dacks. She performed or facilitated the text scores of Oliveros independently most recently at the Sound and Poetry graduate seminar, for poet Eric Schmaltz, Dalhousie University, Halifax 2026; and previously with Care for the Stranded; cetaceans, scientists, and eachother, Learning Endings, The Henry Gallery, Lincoln Park, West Seattle; Damrosch Park Lincoln Centre NY; Park Avenue Armory NY,; Royal Geographical Society London UK; Ontario College of Art and Design, OCADU Totonto; Emily Carr University of Art and Design ECADU, Vancouver; York University, Marcus Boon graduate seminar; COHDS/Acts of Listening Lab Concordia Montreal; Kilowatt Festival Bologna IT; Theatre Galpon, MM_MMM, Geneva CH; Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA Toronto; Geopoetics Symposium, Cortes Island North Pacific Gulf, BC; VenusFEST Toronto; Debaser/ Pique Festival,Ottaawa; The School of Contemporary Art, SFU Vancouver, the FEELed Lab UBC Kelowna BC;, Arts Everywhere Musagetes Foundation; International Institute of Critical Studies in Improvisation, IICSI 2025. Anne was founding faculty Collective Composition Lab, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity 2017-2019, and remains online faculty and advisor to the Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer NY.

Anne began the practice of environmental attunement with Oliveros in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains 1994-2009. She collaborated with Hildegard Westerkamp on the electroacoustic composition for cello and 8 channel audio, exploring love, memory and sense of place. More recently Anne opened to ecoacoustic composition herself when she was awarded a Chalmers Fellowship, OAC, 2019-2026 for her shoreline project, a devotion to water, to rivers and to deep ocean. Her ocean research has been guided by TB21Ocean Uni since 2020, her field recording was initiated by renowned Irish ecoacoustic composer Karen Power. Anne explores sound fields and microtonal voice practices, the expression of elemental dissonance as beauty. Walking on shorelines, where light meets water and water meets land, on forest floors where the roots of trees entangle with mycelium and microbiomes. To listen deeply, for sonics as a living topographical map, as being in symbiotic evolution, to attune to the wave patterns of water. Anne holds a strong belief in the experience of collective creativity in choral improvisation, with the simple text scores of Pauline Oliveros, as a source for community and wellbeing, and the accumulation of soundfields as peace activism.

View Curriculum Vitae here

— Meant to represent a gradual rise in the earth’s resonant frequency, the piece starts with a low, rumbling tone produced with an oscillator…Four more performers — Ms. Oliveros on midi accordion; Jason Kao Hwang on violin; David Grubbs on electric guitar; Anne Bourne on cello — produced burbling, flitting figures and tiny melodic cells prompted by the score: a pair of star-shaped mandalas and a list of textual instructions, including suggestive terms like “anti-gravity,” “black hole,” “waves” and “particles.”

Primordial/ Lift , Issue Project Room, 2013 New York Times

Anne dives into the breach — The Wire 223

Anne has improvised with: Renko Ishida Dempster Pauline Oliveros David Grubbs Tony Conrad Susie Ibarra James Tenney Marc Sabat Michael Snow Nobua Kuboto Gayle Young Hildegard Westerkamp Gordon Monahan Ajay Heble David Mott Jesse Stuart David Prentice Tiina Kiik Marvin Green John Oswald Fred Frith Tom Cora Hans Reichel Rene Lussier Jean Derome Joane Hétu Scott Thompson Ellen Waterman Eric Lewis Lori Freedman Marilyn Lerner Maggie Nichols Roswell Rudd Darren Copeland David Gamper Stuart Dempster Joelle Leandre India Cooke William Barton Wilbert Dejoode Owen Pallett Aaron Lumley Rhys Chatham Matt Rogalsky Nicolas Collins Alvin Lucier Matt Brubeck Peggy Lee Ted Reichman Kenta Nagai Seth Cluett Suzanne Thorpe Theresa Wong Miguel Frasconi Ricardo Arias David Grubbs Tony Conrad Tanya Lukin Linklater Duane Linklater Brandon Valdivia Meriheini Luoto Lina Allemano Karen Ng Philippe Melanson Christopher Willes Germaine Liu Christopher Williams Joanna Mattrey Claire Chase Vijay Ayer Rajna Swaminathan Ganavya Rebekah Heller Ryan Muncy Daniel Lippel Ross Karre Fritz Hauser Linda Jankowska Alice Purton Gary Stewart Trevor Mathison Dubmorphology tUkU Tom Kuo Juliana Venter IONE Denis Schuler Margrit Schenker Céline Hänni Anna-Kaisa Meklin Félicia Atkinson Eve Egoyan Mauricio Pauly Jonathan Leidecker Silvia Tarozzi Stephen Vitiello Patty Chang Astrida Neimanis Anjeline de Dios Hanna Sybille Müller Kara Lis Coverdale

Improv hero Frith holds forth

— Greg Quill Toronto Star 2007

How did you get first involved with Anne Bourne and John Oswald, and what attracted you to them?

Anne was suggested to me as a cellist by (Canadian movie director) Peter Mettler when I recorded the music for his film The Top of His Head in Montreal in 1988. At the time, she was in Jane Siberry’s band. We hit it off right away, and I really enjoy her playing and her approach to improvising is simple and deep. I think I’m always drawn to players who have a foot firmly in the rock world – it’s where I come from and has less pretentious baggage attached to it when it comes to “improvising.”

I met John through a mutual friend, Henry Kaiser, I guess back in the early ‘80s. I’ve always been very interested in his work in all of its manifestations, and of course I always welcome a chance to continue where we left off. John’s not as well known as an improviser, and that’s also attractive, because he’s a tremendously intelligent and resourceful player, but doesn’t have a particular shtick that I’m aware of, so every time we play it’s a new challenge.

What’s the connection with Owen Pallett and Wilbert de Joode? Is this an unrehearsed one-off, or has the five-piece ensemble worked together in the past?

It’s an adventure. I know Wilbert’s work and I love it, Owen I’ve never met but I know he’s worked with Anne. It’s nice to combine known and unknown quantities. In any case improvisation is never rehearsed, is it? When you practise improvising, you improvise. In that sense maybe every concert is also a rehearsal for the next one. So we’ve actually all been rehearsing for years!

“This is Anne Bourne, she is a cellist, keyboardist, vocalist and composer whose work in pop, rock and experimental music makes her Toronto's most ubiquitous secret weapon. Bourne is a gifted improviser who has worked with electronic art music pioneer Pauline Oliveros. She's an important figure in the city's avant-garde scene but also your go-to if you need a beautiful cello line in the sweet spot of your latest chamber pop masterpiece. She is fucking great. — NOW Magazine, Allison Outhit, 2016

— Some of the selections grew monotonous to the point of exhaustion, but could be appreciated as exercises in concentration in the absence of strong acid. An altered state could also have made it easier to enjoy the hour-long improvisation between Pauline Oliveros and Anne Bourne that followed. Though virtuosity and creativity were extended through their instruments, the fascinating bursts of minor-key carnival dementia and note-less sputtering seemed to prevent anything resembling melodic development. —XAVANT 2007 Exclaim!

Chalmers Fellow, Anne explores the nearshore, for elemental equanimity, deep ocean and the plural soundfield, composing in attunement to the spectral wave patterns of water.

Walking on the Littoral — I began by perceiving through the presence of walking, pressing footsteps as inquiry, Noticing the surface wave patterns of water, illuminated into the SUBAQUEOUS, as a perception of time. Chalmers Arts Fellowship OAC 2019-26

My epiphany is that light does not only possess the upper range of frequencies but mingles around the pulses and sustains of sound in the subaudible range, just as sound embraces and expresses through the frequencies in the higher range that are perceivable despite the subtle nature of their gentle vibration. What is always wonder is that some frequencies like moonlight are only there to make other frequencies audible ..

Shoreline

In 2017 I experienced a continuous flood on Ward’s island where I lived off shore Toronto in Lake Ontario.. Green fields became ponds, water birds arrived to nest, ducks swam across parkland, white egrets appeared like spirits unexpectedly around corners. An atmosphere of be prepared to lose everything swamped us. The grating incessant sound of generators on blocks near the shore pumping out crawl spaces, the raw hands of those filling burlap sandbags received bowls of warm soup and fresh bread. I was one who made hot food, to brign to the WIA community building. In the year that followed I was awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship to go out into the world to walk on shorelines to understand sea level rise globally. I visited sought out voice practitioners near bodies of water as well. in the fishing village Stykkisholmur, Iceland. I recorded myself whaling for 6 hours in the Library of Water, with my arms wrapped around the life sized crystal pillars of melted glaciar water, offering life. I spent time in the Loire Valley in France in a yurt and practicing Presence Harmonique, with David Hykes, the unique choral overtone singing he devised while in residence at St John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan over ten years. No relocated to France , I sang with this group for a week and the sound will never leave me. In Ireland I practiced field recording with the Irish composer Karen Power who taught me how to record the ocean. ‘You can’t separate the wind for the sea Anne’ she told me. But she also showed me how one could receive sound from several focal points all with a different result and then my perspective became geometrically focused like a sound lens. I spent many hours on the shores of Cork on the north Atlantic deciphering the waves, crouched down beside rocks to capture the lapping.

After the overtone singing retreat with David Hykes, in Paris, by the Seine I met my friend Silvia Tarrozi the violinist who studied with Eliane Radigue for two years to develop the OCCAM technique on violin, and we flew to Bologna. The river in Vignola was dry. Sylvia ‘s son Romeo taught me to make handprints with mud on the rock surfacces. Then after a few days of conversation and experience together in her home with Massimo, founder of the AngelicA festival , who played for me rare Stockhausen – Sonntag aus Licht, I flew to Sardegna and on the plane received a missive from the person I was supposed to meet that he could not be there but had to travel to Venice because of a family matter, but he had reached out to a singer that I could meet in the mountains . It wasn’t until that point that it occured to me I didn’t speak any Italian, not in the assuption that english would be understood as much as I understood language in a sese perception way like sound. I then heard from an American anthropologist he knew on a Fulbright year, that she had secured an invitation for us to a private festival for the village of Bortigali, Santa Maria 'e Sauccu, Holy Mary of the Elderberry Bush. It was dark when my gps directed me to a field in the mountains of Nuoro. I called my hosts and they said it was common to be directed by sattelite to the old road, and drove down to meet me. Feasting and dancing ensued. I had a wonderful interview with the Concordu Tenore singing ensemble of Bortigali in a round stone nuraghe. My friend was not there that day but the neice of the director , who had approved my questions in advance spoke french . So I would ask the questions in French and she would translate into Italian , but I asked them to respond in their Bortigali dialect . They seemed confused why I would not understand . I explained I felt the intonation different when they were translating internally from their mother tongue, if I were to listen to the answers as sensation. And so we proceeded with — Can you describe the first time you saw the ocean . Do you have a favourite song you sing, they mentioned most often Stabat Mater. Can you describe the face of someone you love listening to it . The questions became disassembled and they would describe the face of someone they love, most often the mother, watching them the first time they saw the ocean.

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— Can you imagine listening for the wave patterns, the unbalanced histories, the symbiotic futures, in tectonic currents, the shifting sands, the micro species, the complex vibratory resonance of deep ocean? Walking the shoreline, listening to sonic topography of the littoral, sensing wave patterns, and the harmonious difference when water touches land. Attending the multi-species sound field, I listen to the ways people sing near bodies of water. — Anne Bourne

LEARning Endings: Care for the Stranded

LEARning Endings: Listening walkShop / with ocean side cello solo PUget SounD Lincoln Park, West Seattle 2022

in collaboration with Patty Chang artist US, Astrida Neimanis writer CA and Aleksija Neimanis wildlife pathologist

audience member testimonial

Your music is still going through my head and will continue to as I move through these days after Care for the Stranded. I want to share your music with others. It was such an amazing collaboration yesterday and was very special for all involved. Thank you so much. We don't often get to experience things like that in our world - something put together with so much care, thought and spirituality in a public space. Cathy Chutich, West Seattle

Deep Listening/ Environmental Attunement

Anne Bourne Artist/composer, improvising cellist/vocalist, mentor facilitator creative process consultant, listens for the geopoetics of shorelines, spectral wave patterns of water, and the pleasing dissonance of collective sound creation. Seasoned in international touring and recording, in song and intermedia performance, Anne composes electroacoustic environments, of emergent streams of microtonal cello, voice, piano, field recordings and acoustic instruments, in interdisciplinary collaboration with those who stand for the wild. Creating environmental installations with artists Striped Canary US, Patty Chang US, and Astrida Neimanis CA. Anne leads Listening and Sounding events to accumulate choral sound fields as peace activism, with a low draw on electricity, and Listening Walks in environmental attunement. Composer James Tenney, invited Anne to perform with Pauline Oliveros, in a telematic concert connecting Paris, Toronto, and Oliveros at the Kitchen, NY, in 1994. Anne continued to improvise with Oliveros, premiering Primordial/Lift, 1998, Oliveros, Tony Conrad and David Grubbs, and all subsequent performances in NY, recordings on ToTE and TAIGA. Anne refined a listening practice attending many years of Oliveros’ Deep Listening Retreats in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Deep Listening® Teaching Experience Anne founded Sounding Difference : the text scores of Pauline Oliveros as an experiential non narrative sounding and listening collective, produced at the Music Gallery, by Artistic Director David Dacks. Anne has performed or taught the text scores of Oliveros independently in places such as Sound and Poetry graduate seminar for poet Eric Schmaltz, Dalhousie University, Halifax 2026; Care for the Stranded Learning Endings, Lincoln Park West Seattle; the Lunar Opera Olliveros Damrosch Park Lincoln Centre NY; The Tuning Meditation Oliveros memorial, Park Avenue Armory NY; Geography of the Body, Royal Geographical Society London UK; Rock Piece, Oliveros, Ontario College of Art and Design, OCADU; Spatialized Sound residency Emily Carr University of Art and Design ECADU, Vancouver; York University, Marcus Boon ‘listening‘graduate seminar; COHDS/Acts of Listening Lab Concordia Montreal; Deep Listening® Kilowatt Festival Bologna IT; Homage to Oliveros MM_MMM, Geneva CH; Deep Listening® Museum of Contemporary Art , MOCA Toronto; Geopoetics Symposium, Cortes Island North Pacific Gulf,BC; Deep Listening® VenusFEST Toronto; Listening in the Dark, Debaser/ Pique Festival,Ottawa; The Text Scorres of Oliveros, The School of Contemporary Art, SFU Vancouver; Deep Listening® the FEELed Lab UBC Kelowna BC; Listening to Water Arts Everywhere Musagetes Foundation/ International Institute of Critical Studies in Improvisation IICSI; Deep Listening® founding faculty Collective Composition Lab, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Anne is distance faculty and Advisor to the Center for Deep Listening® Rensselaer NY; A recipient of the Chalmers Family Fund Fellowship , OAC, Shoreline Project , Anne explores sound fields and microtonal voice practices, walking where light meets water and water meets land, to listen, for sonics as a living topographical map, embody harmonious wave patterns of symbiotic evolution.

FRITH/BOURNE/OSWALD DEARNESS SPOOL SPLl16 CD by BILL SHOEMAKER THE WIRE 223 Toronto-based cellist and vocalist Anne Bourne does not have an iota of the iconic status of either guitarist Fred Frith or John Oswald - here on alto sax rather than plunderphonics - but she more than holds her own on this 1998 concert recording. Arguably, it is Bourne, an exponent of composer Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening methods, who centres the trio at the outset of “A Walk Is An Adventure", which accounts for 38 of the album's 45 minute running time. While Frith taps and scrapes his strings and Oswald swerves between textures, Bourne sings, sighs and bows to incite an initial calm. Frith responds with spectral slide work and Oswald with otherworldly cries and whispers.

For the remainder, it is Bourne, with gambits ranging from an agitated arco motif to plaintive vocalisations, who triggers transitions in this sprawling soundscape.

Still, Frith and Oswald merit equal credit for moving the music along with carefully accumulated and overlaid details. Both occasionally relegate themselves to the background, letting a timbre serve as a momentary template. When they step to the foreground, i t is done cleanly, with a clear bead on the open space they seek to fill, if only partially. To her credit, Bourne doesn't flinch when Frith and/or Oswald unleash their furies, but also dives into the breach. All three musicians come across as keen to blend with each other throughout the performance, even a t its rawest, noisiest moments. Subsequently, the main event is as well rounded as its structure is elusive. By comparison,

Three Hundred Ears And An Ocean and Lower Flower are a bit like the encores of a Cecil Taylor solo set - engaging but fragmentary, quickly jotted postscripts to a long, vivid letter .

Cherry Beach, Tkaronto, Dawn 9/12/2001, 8speakers installed in the colonnade of trees. seen through telephoto lens.

BIO 2026

Anne Bourne sound artist/ composer, mentor. Seasoned in international intermedia performance, recording and installation, Anne improvises microtonal cello, voice, piano and field recording into electroacoustic soundfields in attunement to water. Anne imparts the listening practices and text scores of Pauline Oliveros independently, and as distance faculty and advisor to Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer, NY. Anne’s listening and sounding events and walks engage symbiotic listening and accumulate choral sound fields as peace activism. Chalmers Fellow. annebournemusic.com/

BIO 2026

250 wds

Anne Bourne composer/ artist, composes electroacoustic compositions for multichannel spatial installations in collaboration with artists and writers, scholars and scientists who stand for the wild forests and deep ocean; creates emergent streams of piano, cello, voice, AV field recording, and text. Experienced in ceremony; international concert touring (Resilienze Festival, Bologna 2019, MMM_MM Geneva CH, 2020) with award winning collaborative recordings, dance theatre, and films. Anne is alumnae of sangre de cristo mountain deep listening ™ retreats; with early distance telematics experience, a creative sonics improviser with composer Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) (Primordial/ Lift); Faculty and Advisory Board at Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer NY; and Trustee for IONE (Pauline Oliveros Trust.) Anne imparts Oliveros’ text scores, leading environmental listening walks in collective empathic gesture, and the coalescence of sounding choral dissonance as beauty. A Chalmers Fellow Anne researches in the littoral sonic environment Anne is a participant at OceanUNI, TBA21/ OceanSpace, Venice IT; an affiliate of COHDS Concordia Montreal; Geopoetics Symposium, convened by poet Erin Robinsong, with keynotes Astrida Neimanis (Bodies of Water), indigenous scholar Dylan Robinson (Hungry Listening), and artist Cosmo Sheldrake (Wake up Calls), Cortes Island in the Pacific North West. In new creation research with Astrida Neimanis ( Bodies of Water ); filmmaker/ live projectionist Philippe Léonard (God speed you black emperor). Imminent vinyl release 2026 Radio Amnion Jol Thoms, UK; and current release with electronic composer/ producer Kara Lis Coverdale From Where you Came, Small Town Supersound 2025. An excerpt of Anne’s ‘soundfield memory restoration archive’ was adapted by editor Michael Nardone for Aural Poetics edition, OEI Sweden. Recent publications Bodies of Sound: Becoming the Feminist Ear, editors Irene Revell and Sarah Shin; A Year of Deep Listening, editor Stephanie Loveless. To imagine climate peace, Anne listens with footsteps as touch, composing in attunement to the spectral wave patterns of water. Anne’s daughter is named Willa. annebournemusic.com/

ARCHIVE View additional Biographies/ Dance and Film here

SELECTed PRESS

“...the music was transformed into a gently exultant, raga-like song of the earth for its last 30 minutes.”

— The New York Times Steve Smith, 2013

"…an earthy, unrestrained musical force who accompanies her cello with otherworldly vocalizing."

— CODA James Hale, 1999".

..While Frith taps and scrapes his strings and Oswald swerves between textures, Bourne sings, sighs and bows to incite an initial calm. Frith responds with spectral slide work and Oswald with otherworldly cries and whispers. For the remainder, it is Bourne, with gambits ranging from an agitated arco motif to plaintive vocalisations, who triggers transitions in this sprawling soundscape. Still, Frith and Oswald merit equal credit for moving the music along with carefully accumulated and overlaid details. Both occasionally relegate themselves to the background, letting a timbre serve as a momentary template. When they step to the foreground, it is done cleanly, with a clear bead on the open space they seek to fill, if only partially. To her credit, Bourne doesn't flinch when Frith and/or Oswald unleash their furries, but also dives into the breach. All three musicians come across as keen to blend with each other throughout the performance, even at its rawest, noisiest moments. Subsequently, the main event is as well rounded as its structure is elusive. ."

— The WIRE Bill Shoemaker, 2002

PREss

“ …the Agnes Etherington Art Centre housed two separate acts for the festival: Hannah Brown, an electronic composer, and Anne Bourne, an experienced cellist. The artists — though vastly different on paper — came together to showcase the importance of environment in sound.

Brown began the show, playing different beats, like buzzes and chirps, around the room to create an immersive environment. She played three of her songs, each changing the mood of the room. All three had a constant hum that nonetheless ranged in volume and depth. She used mostly electronic beeps, chirps, and rhythms on top of the hum to create an ensemble of so many natural sounds that I felt as if I was standing in an electronic forest.

Bourne followed the electronic landscapes with an emphasis on listening. While her entire set was improvised, it was impossible to know due to the comprehensive and cohesive tunes she played. Bourne picked her cello so that the natural tune of the instrument thrummed through the room. As she played with her bow, she would pull her fingers up and down the string or strum similar to a guitar to create the music. Alongside the cello, she would sing long notes that echoed through the room. Audience members frequently leaned forward to be closer to the beautiful tones. One of her songs was an improvisation accompanying one of Brown’s songs, a piece that was characterized as the collapse of a bee colony. Brown’s song buzzed with intensity as Bourne played seamlessly alongside.”

— Kayla Thompson, Queens University Journal 2016

“ Pauline Oliveros, in “Primordial/Lift,” engaged with a small ensemble in a lengthy process akin to collective meditation. Olivia Block, seated at a table filled with amplified gadgets and electronics for “Dissolution,” produced a discursive field of sound constantly in flux. By contrast, the thematic thrust behind Oliveros’s “Primordial/Lift” was almost entirely evident. Meant to represent a gradual rise in the earth’s resonant frequency, the piece starts with a low, rumbling tone produced with an oscillator, operated here by Shelley Burgon.

Four more performers — Oliveros on midi accordion; Jason Kao Hwang on violin; David Grubbs on electric guitar; Anne Bourne on cello — produced burbling, flitting figures and tiny melodic cells prompted by the score: a pair of star-shaped mandalas and a list of textual instructions, including suggestive terms like “anti-gravity,” “black hole,” “waves” and “particles.” Offstage, another performer, Matthew Cullen, snatched and distorted sounds produced by the instrumentalists onstage.

For 45 minutes, the players listened intently, their sounds colliding and fusing as Burgon gradually raised the oscillator’s frequency to the point at which, in theory, the planet’s magnetic poles shift alignment. Grounded from there on by a pealing drone produced by Miguel Frasconi, who rubbed and tapped glass vessels partly filled with water, the music was transformed into a gently exultant, raga-like song of the earth for its last 30 minutes.” — Steve Smith New York Times 2013

” We were then treated to a performance of classic drone music brilliantly executed by Tony Conrad on violin, viola and electronics, aided and abetted by Anne Bourne on cello. The setting of the two performers obscured by an undulating white sheet and backlit so that their shadows ebbed and flowed with its movements, provided simple yet powerful accompaniment.” — Nilan Perera Exclaim 2007

“ After several years of rehearsal this improvisatory ensemble made its first public appearance at the Festival Musique Actuel Internationale de Victoriaville in 1995 and were acclaimed the hit of the festival. Appearing in public rarely and never outside of the Western Hemisphere, although sometimes afield (as far south as Buenos Aires), disinclined to record (although caught on a couple of occasions by Radio Canada), known for their intensely concentrated continuous sets, although never amplified, the band surprises consistently through pure improvisation.

The low end of their ensemble sound begins with Anne Bourne on cello and ascends through Marvin Green on cravat (a folding inflatable double bass) and Tiina Kiik's accordion to the sonic stratospheres of violin and alto sax, played respectively by David Prentice and John Oswald, and the inaudible music of Andrea Nann. The majority of the players sing in accompaniment to indescribable sonorities.”

— John Oswald, Double Wind Cello Trios International Festival Music Actuelle Victoriaville, and Experimenta 97, Buenos Aires Argentina

“ The album contains three pieces, but the first one accounts for 39 of the 46 minutes it lasts. Bourne leads the way most of the time, either with her deep cello drones, soaring instant melodies, or dreamy vocalizations. Frith provides textures, lightly hammering the strings of his electric guitar, occasionally shifting to long notes faded in with a volume pedal, and even getting into a straight-away solo at the end of the first piece. He also joins in on vocals. Oswald remains very quiet throughout, seemingly unassuming but providing a backdrop of quiet staccato blurps and clicks (much like what he was doing at the time in CCMC -- see aCCoMpliCes). It makes Dearness a mostly ambient adventure.”

— Fran‡ois Couture

Anne Bourne Deep Listening Intensive review

It was the first of three events of Listen Deep, a Poetry, Sound & Multitudinous Remix presented by Margaret Christakos, University College’s current Barker Fairley Visitor.

“ There were about 30 people sitting in a circle with one chair still available. The entire program was free and open to the public, but visitors had to RSVP to this portion as there were a limited number of spaces. Working in the tradition of Pauline Oliveros, Anne Bourne led us through a series of sound tuning meditations. A quote from Oliveros was featured on the front page of the program handout: “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear.” The key word here is ‘possible,’ and we would be reminded throughout the day of the impossibility of hearing everything all the time.

We inhaled deeply as Anne instructed, then let out a long vowel sound with every exhalation. Each vowel sound came from a different part of our bodies, from deep in our bellies to over our heads: ahh, ooo, uhh, eee, ihh. Toward the end of the exercise, we performed a similar meditation with one hand over our chests, feeling our hearts beating, and the other hand on the back of the person to our left. I didn’t know the person beside me, but I could feel the heat of their body and the reverberations as they spoke and sounded. We were tuning into each other’s presence.

Writing this after Anne’s workshop, I’m thinking about myself in my car on the way to the event and the people in the cars all around me—all of our sounds: the Khalid song I’ve been listening to nonstop, the low buzz of the heater, heavy winter tires, an occasional honk.

Project your voice into the centre of the room, Anne told us, then up into the ceiling. Fill the space with your voice.”

— Hajer Mirwali Ephemera The Town Crier, 2019