sonicbrat bio

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biography"Chance, conversation, improvisation... sonicbrat is the ambisonic brainchild of Darren Ng. As a believer in poetic imperfection, most of his music are performed and recorded on the fly without multi-tracking."Darren is a Singapore based sound artist and music composer whose electro-acoustic sound-bites have established him as one of the most sought after sound and music composer in the local theatre and international film and art scene. His works have been compared to Erik Satie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Martin Denny by international music reviewers from U.K. (WIRE: Ken Hollings), U.S.A. (The Silent Ballet and Bluesbunny) and Hong Kong (Hompy). A multi-instrumentalist trained in classical piano, he has been exploring re-interpretive playing and improvisations on various music instruments, using processed found sounds to fuse with his acoustic and electronic compositions. He has also ventured into unconventional live looping and sampling with instruments and object sounds to create textured audiographies. His sound art expositions employ digital and analogue synthesis, field recordings, musique concrète, acousmatic music, live sampling, audio processing and programming; exploring minimalist sounds and psychoacoustics performances and installations. ~ continue next page ~Page 2He has also worked and collaborated with many international sound artists and musicians from Spain, Sweden, Germany, France, Greece, Netherlands, Italy, UK, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Thailand. To date, he has performed in Japan (Okinawa), Vietnam (Hanoi), Hungary (Budapest; Sziget Festival), Spain (Barcelona), Austria (Vienna) and Netherlands (Venlo). He was chosen to participate in the 2008 Red Bull Music Academy (Barcelona) under his solo ambisonic brainchild sonicbrat and has been invited to perform solo as sonicbrat in Hanoi Sound Stuff Festival 2009 (Vietnam), Wiener Festwochen 2009 (Vienna), Sonar 2009 (Barcelona) and Zomerparkfeest 2009 (Netherlands).He graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Theatre Studies. He has been active in the theatre and sound art scene for almost a decade. To date, he has had 8 nominations in total for his works and had won the coveted award of Best Sound Designer at the 6th and 8th Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2006 and 2008 respectively. He has also received an Honourable Mention for Special Achievement, for Best Sound in the 5th Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2005.~ continue next page ~Page 3Darren is the first sound artist to be commissioned by Asian Civilisation Museum (Empress Place) to sound design for the closure of Journey of Faith, Art & History from the Vatican Collections (2005). He was also commissioned to design a permanent sound art installation for the new National Museum of Singapore (NMS) in 2006 which is now a key feature exhibition in the living galleries for the next five years (food gallery). Subsequently, he was commissioned to design sound installations for NMS seasonal exhibitions. He has also performed with Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) as a synthesizer player and had sound designed for National Day Parade 2007.He is currently an Associate Sound Designer for The Finger Players and Resident Sound Artist and Music Composer for ECNAD.Circle1