Greg Bruce

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Canada °1983
research interests: artistic research, electroacoustic music, improvisation, classical performance practice, saxophone, Augmented Instruments, analogue electronics, analogue vs digital, research-creation
affiliation: University of Toronto
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Greg Bruce is a multifaceted saxophonist, improvisor, and composer from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. As a musical anarchist who blurs the lines between classical, jazz, folk, and pop, Greg plays with a diverse range of ensembles and can be heard on a variety of recordings. He is a consummate performer who is equally comfortable playing with street bands, at academic conferences, in bars, or in concert halls; and who has played extensively in Canada, as well as in the US, the UK, France, Italy and Russia.

As a Doctor of Musical Arts Candidate at the University of Toronto and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow, Greg is also an accomplished artist-researcher. His current research-creation innovates the relationship between analog technology and acoustic instruments through improvisation, composition, and performance on feedback saxophone.

research

research expositions

  • Feedback Saxophone: Expanding the Microphonic Process in Post-Digital Research-Creation (2024) author(s): Greg Bruce published in: Research Catalogue
    The microphonic process is the term I use to encapsulate how microphones, loudspeakers, and related media are used to support, extend, and innovate musical practice. In this research-creation thesis, I contextualize, document, and analyze my own application of the microphonic process – feedback saxophone. My feedback saxophone system combines the unique characteristics of the tenor saxophone with the idiosyncrasies of various microphones and loudspeakers to produce and manipulate acoustic feedback. While there are examples of similar systems, there is no standardization and little documentation exists outside of audio recordings. Furthermore, my work employs feedback in a systematized fashion that challenges its conventional, indeterminate use in performance and composition. To support this research-creation, I discuss the history of the microphonic process, examine contemporary “microphonic” practices, and use these findings to describe and analyze my own works. For the history of the microphonic process, I discuss how microphone amplification changed popular vocal technique through the work of early-microphone singer Bing Crosby. I then discuss how microphonic instrumentaria were variously employed by avant-garde and popular artists using the examples of Mikrophonie I by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hugh Davies’ feedback work Quintet, and the guitar-feedback practice of Jimi Hendrix. Following this discussion of instrumentaria, I establish the contemporary context in which my research-creation occurs by examining two present-day microphonic saxophonists, Colin Stetson and John Butcher. I use their distinct electroacoustic practices as a springboard to explain recent musical-technological trends: from the accelerating consumption of digital media in the new paradigm of sound, to the reactionary concepts of post-digitalism and the minimally augmented instrument. Lastly, I describe the creation of three concert etudes for my post-digital, minimally augmented feedback saxophone system, and critically examine the new works’ processes of creation, musical materials, and aesthetics.
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