Michael Trommer
http://www.myspace.com/mtrommer
Participant in
SoundLAB VI – sonic art project environments
soundPOOL – a challenge for imagination
SIP – SoundLAB Interview
Michael Trommer is a Toronto based producer and visual artist who has recorded for such top electronic music labels as Transmat, Wave, Truffle, Stasisfield, Interchill, Monocromatica, Thinner and con-v. He records under his own name, as well as aliases such as ‘sans soleil’, ‘minidisco’, ‘Hydraulic’,and ‘Manitou2’. Broad-minded in his approach to electronic music, Michael also creates gallery-based audio installation work. 2005 saw him creating a site-specific sound installation for Australia’s ‘Liquid Architecture’ exhibition. Another of his recent works was a net-based audio-manipulation project which was part of the ‘from 0 to 1 and back again’ exhibition at Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt; this became the subject of many radio specials on both Deutsche Welle and Hessischer Rundfunk. In 2000, his work was nominated for the Prix Italia for experimental music. His field-recording based material has been featured on London’s Resonance FM, www.vagueterrain.net, www.insine.net, www.monocromatica.com, and www.stasisfield.com. A site-specific field-recording based installation is being exhibited in New York state’s upper Catskill forest (http://www.restlessculture.net/deepwoods ) from the end of May. As a live show, sans soleil was featured at the 2003 Movement Festival (a.k.a.DEMF) in support of Michael’s full-length album on Detroit’s legendary Transmat label. 2007 saw him performing alongside Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender of Berlin’s Raster-Noton label, as well as headlining Toronto’s ‘inthemix’ festival (with VJ Nokami) and closing the ‘Electric Eclectics’ festival of experimental and improvised music. As ‘sans soleil + vj nokami’, Trommer was featured in the 2008 edition of Montréal’s acclaimed mutek festival. Michael also performs regularly as part of the live electronic improvisation collective ‘i/o’ (http://www.io-media.org/). Nominated as one of eye magazine’s ’10 talents to watch for 2006’, the coming year promises to be busy. Expect more installation work from Michael in 2009: a piece based on Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Centre will be presented at the State Gallery in St. Petersburg, Russia in the autumn; in addition, his music has been included in Dodi Nash’s ‘Listening Shell’ installation, exhibited at London’s Victoria and Albert museum.