LaSaM (Victoria, BC, Canada) is an affiliation of composers, sound artists and musicians creating and performing new music from an approach grounded in acute listening and creative improvisation.
LaSaM had its beginnings in 2007 when the Victoria Symphony invited local groups to participate in its New Currents Festival. Resonant Chambers was LaSaM’s inaugural collaborative project, a concert-length electroacoustic work presented in February, 2008.
LaSaM continues to design performance events that bring attention to the many ways we listen and that foster an enhanced engagement among performers and with audiences. LaSaM is co-directed by its core trio, the Experimental Music Unit, comprised of Tina Pearson, George Tzanetakis and Paul Walde.
As well as presenting the collaborations of its core members, LaSaM programs unique versions of works by composers whose innovation and spirit have profoundly influenced the practice of creative music making in recent times. These composers have included Alvin Lucier, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney, Earle Brown, Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars, Martin Bartlett and others.
LaSaM meets regularly to develop sonic interplay and to engage in sonic and performative conversations among its core group and other musicians, composers, dancers, visual artists and media artists.