Kenneth Newby - Revealing the Inner Life of Sounds

Reader, find within yourself the drive to push into the depths of what is profound, and there discover yourself in search of a rough diamond hidden from most ears. That diamond we shall now call Kenneth Newby.

Kenneth, in 1993 you made your solo debut as well as taking part in the Lights In A Fat City and Trance Mission projects; what musical experiences had you had before then?

As a child I studied classical piano and singing, as well as music theory, harmony and music history. In 1967 my older sister brought home a copy of the Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"; that music triggered a creative explosion in my young mind and body. Although I had no idea about the technical aspects behind the making of those songs, I sensed that the recording process was just as important as the performances themselves: that was an early sign of the use of the recording studio as an instrument in its own right. I was also struck by the fusion of high and low culture evident in George Martin's contribution, who had added classical orchestral elements to the songs. My course was set. Shortly after I discovered Frank Zappa, who once again offered a hybrid of popular music elements with aspects of classical avant-garde and electronics. In my early twenties I threw myself deeply into the idea of creative music and improvisation as a way of life. For several years I took part in projects as part of a musicians' collective, the New Orchestra Workshop, in Vancouver, playing soprano saxophone, oboe and bassoon in various ensembles. In '79 I attended an intensive summer course in composition and electronic music at the Creative Music Studio, led by George Lewis, who had brought together an extraordinary group of artists of the calibre of Pauline Oliveros, Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum.

A course I imagine was formative.

Over those six weeks I spent a lot of time studying Lewis's experimental practice of designing interactive systems for musical performance using small computers. That led me to explore this approach in my own artistic practice, so in 1980 I bought a Sym-1 microcomputer, teaching myself to program but also to connect the computer to a wide range of synthesizers. That's how I began what has become a lifelong exploration embracing the fusion potential between computing and creative practices such as music, but also visual media. In '84 I was invited to present my work on interactive music at a computer music conference at IRCAM in Paris. After that experience I made my first trip to Indonesia, where I was inspired by the extraordinary oral traditions of the indigenous peoples. Over the following six years I returned several times to study Gender Wayang, the music for "shadow theatre" in Bali, and Karawitan (the classical court gamelan) in Java with various masters. In Vancouver, during that period, I was part of a gamelan group that performed traditional music but also new compositions. Meanwhile I was refining my electroacoustic composition practice, integrating what I had learned during my studies in Indonesia with the aim of fusing that influence with my personal practice at a deeper level of integration.

Yesterday I was listening again to "New Nectar" by Gamelan Madu Sari, which features your suite "Dreams He Is A Ball Of Fire… Or A Hummingbird", and I made a note to ask you what gamelan represents for you.

Gosh, I love it for so many reasons! I love it for its very genesis, for how it conceives of improvisation, for its timbres, for the "tajam" aesthetic, for its structures, for the Canadian ensemble Ombak, for its hierarchies, for the social relationships that characterize it, for its minimalism, for its ritual context, for its usefulness and for being a valid alternative within the culture in which it developed.

Not simply a genre, then, but rather a system.

I want to be more specific. I'm fascinated by the way music, particularly in the Javanese form of Karawitan, is generative, in the sense that each musician's part is governed by rules that allow for a form of constrained improvisation, based on a deep structure of the music. The hierarchical structure of the music is interesting in that it suggests an organic form mirroring the fractal patterns we see everywhere in nature. The timbre and tuning of the music suggest rich alternatives to the traditional forms we've inherited. And finally, but perhaps most importantly, there's the ritual foundation of gamelan. It carries a coherent meaning that touches multiple levels, suggesting a foundational model adaptable to the new cultures we will develop as we move beyond the postmodern era.

Anyone familiar with your discography can sense the influence Jon Hassell has had on you. I'd like some less obvious names you loved during your formative years.

Jon undoubtedly influenced and supported what I did in my early years of activity. But I can't help mentioning Zappa again, as well as Toru Takemitsu, Ralph Towner, Gerard Grisey, the Deep Listening Band led by Pauline Oliveros, your own Fausto Romitelli, and of course everything I studied regarding the music of Bali and Java. But then there are specific works worth mentioning, such as Béla Bartók's "String Quartets", Steve Reich's "Music For 18 Musicians", and Morton Feldman's late, hugely expansive pieces.

How did the name Lights In A Fat City come about?

You know, I have no idea! That's something Eddy Sayer and Stephen came up with on their own.

What is Stephen's greatest gift?

He has always devoted himself with great commitment to the art of music, and he's an excellent collaborator. The passion he pours into his playing can move a sensitive listener to tears.

What was the modus operandi with Trance Mission?

The basic approach was group improvisation: the improvisations were recorded, after which we'd pick out the strongest elements and work on them until we arrived at the final compositions to be recorded. In some cases, each member would bring an idea to the group to develop compositionally.

What did you play?

I alternated between a range of wind instruments like the Suling flute and the P'iri. But I also handled percussion and shaping the right electroacoustic atmosphere.

Now to the solo masterpiece “Ecology Of Souls”: first of all, I wanted to know if there's a connection to the theories of naturalist Terence McKenna.

Yes, both the title and the conceptual framework were tied to Terence's thinking. “Ecology Of Souls” was, in its original form, a multimedia project made in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Lorraine Thomson; with the project we wanted to explore the role of non-ordinary states of consciousness in culture and creativity. That involved in-depth research into shamanism and the role of plant medicines across different cultures and throughout history.

Was it purely theoretical research?

No. Part of the research involved our own explorations of non-ordinary states of consciousness as we developed what we considered a personal psychedelic yoga; we'd sit facing each other and take turns immersing ourselves in the hyperspatial realms of psychedelic mental space. The richness, and of course the strangeness, of these experiences created strong connections with some of McKenna's ideas, particularly the notion of an “ecology of souls” one might encounter while in these deep states.

What elements of your life led you to “Ecology Of Souls”?

Toward the end of the seventies, in the middle of summer, I was walking alone along one of my favorite trails in Vancouver's Stanley Park when I was overcome by a sense of connection with everything around me. I moved along with the leaves and branches of the trees above me as they swayed in the wind. My ears opened up in tune with the birdsong. My feet, through my shoes, sank into the ground beneath me. A passage from William Wordsworth's poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” came back to me:

“(…) And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

"of something more deeply diffused,

whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

and the round ocean and the living air,

and the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

a motion and a spirit, that impels

all thinking things, all objects of all thought,

and rolls through all things"

On that occasion, I didn't simply recall the lines I've just quoted to you: I lived those words, and from that walk I emerged with the conviction of our interconnection with the unfolding of things. That was the spark that gave rise to a permanent dedication to exploring what Aldous Huxley called “the antipodes of the mind”. Ecology Of Souls was the first coherent expression of a new form of awareness. All my subsequent work represents an attempt to express the depth of experiences we might call ineffable. And music is perhaps the perfect medium for a project of this kind.

And so we come to Sirens.

A tribute to a series of “singers” – in the broadest sense – with whom I've had the pleasure of working. These were the “sirens” present in every composition: the singers DB Boyko, Eda Maxym, Patricia Clemens, Sutrisno Hartono, but also the spoken voice of Robert Anthony, the melodic sound of Alex Stahl on his “bull fiddle”, the vocal intensity of Stephen's didgeridoo, and various quotations from my favorite classical pieces, such as Debussy's “Sirènes”, taken from the composition “Nocturnes”. Against each of these elements I set my own voice, as composer and performer, so as to create a kind of dialogue.

One gets the feeling you wanted to go beyond what you achieved with Ecology Of Souls.

I think it stems from a natural desire to make music I've never heard before. I get bored easily with most of the music I've already listened to, even my own. It's a strategy for escaping routine and the comfort zone, embracing personal transformation and every new possibility. I take very seriously John O'Donohue's encouragement to go beyond oneself.

What's your approach to electronics, whether analog or digital?

There's a common thread running through my approach: spectralism. I mean it as a fascination with the harmonic series that drives my interest in revealing the inner life of acoustic sounds, so as to achieve a timbral richness that embraces every nuance. Spectralism has led me to focus on sound through the psychoacoustic properties of hearing, so as to reveal the union and ambiguity of harmony and timbre that arise from the fusion of harmonic relationships. Throughout my career I've worked almost exclusively with acoustic sound sources, because of their unique timbres and rich inner life.

The giant strides made by AI in recent years make it easier to realize the generative music theorized by Brian Eno. Any misgivings?

My concerns have to do with the loss of craftsmanship, the loss of the personal dimension, and the loss of originality. Artificial intelligence is, at its core, an attempt to replace human abilities with mechanical simulations. Rather than working with AI in that sense, I work with what I call IA, meaning Intelligence Amplification: this approach uses computational models built "by hand" out of my own musical intelligence, functioning as a kind of prosthesis that extends my ideas about how music works.

In post-globalization society, what is the face of so-called “fourth-worldism”?

The concept of the “fourth world” theorized by Hassell also included notions about the “north and south of oneself,” meaning the division between intellect and body, as well as between thought and sensuality. I think it's still a useful idea, as long as we avoid the easy route of cultural appropriation, meaning openly flaunting one's influences. Let's put it this way: as artists we should be aware of, and resist, that cultural imperialism which projects a single form of Western popular music onto the rest of the world. If this care and respect for traditional music is lost, we risk losing precious and beautiful musical languages. I've always thought of this diversity as cultural information: it's the differences that make the difference, as the sociologist Gregory Bateson would say.

Listening to some albums released in the new millennium (“Gradual Music,” “Seasonal Round,” “From Emergence”), you seem to have reached a further level of purity.

I'm glad you liked these three. “Gradual Music” is the most formal, if you will, music derived solely through the application of processes. “Seasonal Round” is a project born out of a desire to preserve the voice and words of a dear friend, the poet Robert Anthony, in a musically fitting context. “From Emergence” is a synthesis of the best work from the first two decades of the 21st century.

“From Solitude” is one of your most unsettling works. How did you arrive at it?

I hope the "unsettling" character of this music can be perceived more as an approach to the sublime: that place where one stands naked before something far greater and more timeless than our everyday lives normally allow us to experience.

It's also a remarkably cohesive collection of tracks.

That cohesiveness comes from the spectral processes I used in sound analysis and orchestral resynthesis. Here's how I work: I start by analyzing a real sound, breaking it down into its individual spectral components. These can then be mapped onto a large set of instruments acting as a kind of orchestral synthesizer. By altering the analysis and the mappings — stretching, transposing, shifting the partials, unfolding them as sequences in various permutations, and so on — a whole world of new sounds opens up. This makes it possible to produce an entire composition starting from a single sound source lasting a fraction of a second, unfolding and orchestrating its inner life. I'm particularly drawn to the psychoacoustic effects that occur in many sounds because of the harmonic relationships among the partials. That's what accounts for the fusion of the partials making up a sound into a single sonic object. Some of these effects occur in the orchestral resynthesis of the sound. There are beautiful resonances and fusions that lead the ear to enjoy the resulting music as pure sound rather than as melody or harmony.

“Halcyon Days,” the album you made together with Steve Roach and Stephen Kent, doesn't seem to me to add much to what the three of you had already recorded individually.

For me, on the contrary, out of all the collaborative projects I've had the pleasure of taking part in, this is my favorite. It was made in less than a week, and it was precisely that tight timeframe that forced us to interact in a largely improvised way, making it the summa of our three imaginations.

In what way are you unmistakably Canadian?

I feel deeply connected to this land, out here in the western part of the country: mountains, rivers, ocean. I'm also devoted to the social-democratic values that the Canadian experiment embodies as an ever-evolving project. And I'm proud of the work we've begun to address the historic wrongs our colonial culture has committed against Indigenous peoples. I'm also encouraged by the potential for integration — evident in the way we live and learn — that is inherent to Indigenous practices and wisdom.

I sense a constant openness to spirituality in your compositions, but I couldn't say exactly what kind of spirituality it is.

The fact that you sense this gives me great joy. It all stems from that walk I mentioned earlier. As a result, I've spent my life devoted to philosophical questions about the nature of reality and the meaning of our existence here, and about how such questions might find answers through a creative practice.

What answers have you found?

In short: death gives life its ultimate meaning and the motivation to fulfill ourselves in this existence. The fundamental metaphysical fact isn't about Being, but about Becoming. In light of Bateson and Whitehead, and of my own deepest experiences, it's clear that Mind, in some form, is present – as feeling, interaction and habit – in everything, right down to the deepest level. At the simplest levels, these habits are the laws of physics that define how things interact. At the most complex level, such habits stretch into the past and project into the future, opening us up to a complex experience of being alive in the world. We are the Universe become conscious and capable of reflecting on itself.

What role does music play in all this?

Music is an attempt to represent the intensity and beauty of the feeling experienced through certain experiences, the kind I mentioned earlier.

What is an intellectual?

In the noble sense of the term, it's a person interested in matters of politics, philosophy, art and so on; someone accustomed to critical thinking and inquiry, and therefore able to knowledgeably question conventions and norms in order to give rise to new ideas. In short, they can be a high-level seeker of Truth.

What should the role of intellectuals be in 2026?

I think it's clear that the anti-intellectualism of our era has shown just how dangerous it is to drift away from rationalism. We live in times of growing fascism, fueled precisely by anti-intellectualism. A profound rethinking of our society, at its deepest level, is necessary, and intelligent, educated people will play a key role in shaping everyone's future.

What is the mission of the Flicker Art Collaboratory, which you're part of?

As the name suggests, it's a meeting place dedicated to collaborative initiatives. It's an invitation for everyone to join in creative efforts and to recognize each person's contribution to the various projects born out of this collective work.

Having come up with the concept of environmentalism, humankind created the conditions for anti-environmentalism to emerge as well. Does the latter have any valid reason to exist?

Anti-environmentalists want to preserve a way of behaving in the world that is simply unsustainable within a capitalist, industrial framework, and in the exploitative relationship with the resources available on Earth. The fact is that the changes needed will be so radical that very few of us are willing to see the problem through to the end.

Technological progress and respect for the planet: how do we make it work?

Let's move away from capitalism and its destructive, exploitative relationship with our ecology's resources. We need to return to an Earth-centered approach to life, one that celebrates the vitality of our planet. Let's choose sustainable technologies. Let's embrace Earth-centered spiritual values that recognize our interconnection with the precious living matrix we're part of. And, within that context, let's cultivate beauty, Truth and goodness. The ancient Greeks had the notion of "techne", which they understood as "art", "skill" and "craft"; it's a very different concept from our current "technology", which unfortunately focuses solely on the mechanical aspect in the name of resource extraction. My teachers in Bali taught me that when we create, we should ground our work in "life-affirming sources". That's an excellent recipe for any creative endeavor, including the technological developments we need to overcome the current global crisis.

Do you learn by teaching?

I'm certain I've learned more from my students than they have from me. My greatest contribution to them was showing them my own ways of learning, so they'd at least have an example of how to go about it. But this process pushed me to deepen my reflection on my own way of learning and on my creative practices, activating a virtuous circle that, yes, has made me grow.

In your career as a teacher, what's the most shocking thing your students have taught you?

They've shown me the symptoms of the decline in literacy caused by the technologies that social media is built on. It's exactly what Marshall McLuhan warned us about: we're drifting away from literacy as we've known it, the kind that evolved out of the Gutenberg revolution. People read less and less, and there's a noticeable lack of awareness of the History that brought us into this strange new world we live in, an interconnected, "always-on" world where time and space have merged into a way of living "in the moment." As a result, it seems our time horizons — our awareness of the past and our projection into the future — have narrowed.

You gave me a preview of a piece you're working on, “Nada Brahma,” and my sense is that you've definitively entered the territory of Serious Music.

I've never taken music lightly, without seriousness. That said, what I compose, in its ambitions, can be seriously fun, seriously passionate, seriously profound.

Right, but how did you conceive the orchestral parts?

There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, I'm increasingly focused on creating music that comes from deep within my musical self; it's a lifelong journey that's bringing me back, closing the circle, to the musical roots of the culture I come from, namely the Serious Music I was trained in as a child and for which I hold great love. The style and techniques I currently work with seem to me the most suited to achieving that goal.

What role does technology play in this modus operandi?

Another way I've managed to achieve the goals mentioned above has been to "design" my own software instruments, which reflect my personal conception of what music is but also of how it works. The computer is a thinking machine that mirrors the way of thinking of the software designer who conceived it. I've spent many years reflecting on my understanding and practice of music, and today the software I use is an encoding of those reflections, offering me the freedom to interact with a dynamic, interactive system that is, at the same time, a kind of mirror and a partner in the creative process. It's a very different approach from AI, which tries to substitute itself for the practice of a skilled artist. So it's fair to say the software is an extension of my abilities and my craft, and it lets me explore the infinite space of musical design far more than I could ever hope to without it. The spectral processes I mentioned earlier represent the most recent approach I've embraced, and they translate into an orchestral analysis and resynthesis "mapped" onto up to 200 instruments to achieve the music I'd like to hear that didn't exist before.

This one is from the American essayist Joseph Campbell: “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”

You don't need to suffer from a serious mental illness like psychosis to drown in your own inner world. Socrates urged us to know ourselves; he suggested that philosophy is useful as a preparation for one's own death. For those who haven't devoted themselves to these preparatory exercises, an encounter with what Carl Jung called "the spirit of the depths" can be an overwhelming and frightening experience. Learning to navigate deep waters requires three things: a guide, a practice, and the community around us.

What's the most extraordinary aspect of being an artist?

The gift of living a life that departs from the norm. Being able to operate at the edge of the wave that carries innovation. Bearing witness to and taking part, up close, in the miracle of Becoming. Being an emissary of Aletheia, the revelation of Truth. Being able to share these gifts with others and, hopefully, add something of value to our lives and to our collective culture.

(April 19, 2026)

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