Junto Profile: Andreas Kitzmann
This Junto Profile is part of an ongoing series of short Q&As that provide some background on various individuals who participate regularly in the online Disquiet Junto music community.
What’s your name? Andreas Kitzmann
Where are you located? I was born in Vancouver, Canada. In my mid twenties I moved to Montreal to pursue graduate studies and after a few years I made my way through Europe, settling for a few months in Prague and Paris, before moving to upstate New York to be with my partner who was doing her stint at graduate school. After a while, I got on a plane and lived/worked in Eastern Cyprus for a year and a half and then up north to Sweden, specifically Skövde and later Karlstad for a period of 6 years. During that time my son was born and then we returned to Canada and made a home in Kitchener, Ontario, which is where I’m now based.
What is your musical activity? I grew up learning musical instruments — cello and piano — but then later drifted in alternative and experimental explorations during my university days. Today, I’m fortunate to be able to explore my interest in musical synthesis as a part of my academic profession, notably in terms of using it as a means to engage with and think about the connections between art, philosophy, science, technology, and engineering. I am by no means a professional musician, but rather see my collection of instruments as objects to think with and through. I seek out instruments that ask me to think about sound and music in different ways and that challenge me to pause and reflect on what is and is not possible.
What is one good musical habit? I don’t do this regularly enough, but one habit that I am trying to engrain is to spend concentrated time on one singular instrument and to go through it in a thoughtful, but not necessarily programmatic way. Explore what you have deeply but not only in terms of “outputs” (i.e., finished pieces). Think of your instrument as a partner as opposed to something that you control and master. It is a conversation that meanders in directions that cannot be anticipated.
What are your online locations? I organize a local synthesizer society, which can be found at https://www.tricitysynthsociety.org/. There are corresponding Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube links, as well, which are all accessible on the main page. Some of my research efforts and those of my colleagues can be found at https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/
What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? That’s a hard one, as most of the projects resonate with me for one reason or another. I recall disquiet 0620, which was a collaborative effort, as being particularly engaging, mainly as a result of having the opportunity to engage with others. I used a sample of Emily Haines, from the band Metric, which I literally stumbled over while listening to an interview on the radio. There is something about how she speaks and the words she uses that I still find compelling as a source material. https://soundcloud.com/andreas-kitzmann-27370936/disquiet0620
The Tri City Synthesizer Society seems very interesting. Could you explain a bit about it? The TCSS was founded in 2023 to promote synthesizer-related activities and events in the region of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, Ontario. We have organized a number of events, such as Electronic Music Open Mic nights that invites local synthesists to perform in a welcoming and inclusive environment; workshops at local libraries to showcase electronic instruments, presentations by artists and synth developers and workshops that focus on specific techniques and skills associated with synthesis and electronic music; makerspace activities where individuals build sound objects and synthesizer components. This summer we are partnering with Open Ears (https://openears.ca/ ) — a long-running experimental music festival — to organize workshops and performances as part of their lineup.
Your bio on the website of York University in Toronto lists modular synthesizers as one of your areas. Could you talk about synthesizers as a subject of academic inquiry? For the past few years I have been using modular synthesis as a means to explore questions related to technology and creativity; modes of learning through practice; theoretical concepts related to the “idea” of modularity and generally using synthesis as a context to think about sound, music and the artefacts we use to express ourselves. Recent projects include the edited volume Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People (Routledge, 2024), eds. Andreas Kitzmann, Ezra Teboul and Einar Engstrom; a project that explores the relationships between preservation, access, community and authenticity with respect to historical musical instruments, specifically by building a small Buchla 100 system; and an ongoing makerspace project where participants build a complete modular system, learn how to play it and then connect with the community networks that focus on sound and synthesis that I have helped establish. I am also part of a research cluster housed at the Responsive Technologies Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University (https://relab.blog.torontomu.ca/ ) that uses synthesis to explore a variety of avenues, ranging from disability lead instrument design, using synths as a means to foster STEM based learning with under represented and at risk youth and community based efforts that focus on music, sound and technology. Many of these activities are described in https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/
