Ryan Parker photographed Shawn Pinchbeck, president of BEAMS, for Bring the Noise, a feature in Avenue’s October 2019 issue on the Edmonton society whose musicians have spent three decades pushing the city’s sonic boundaries.
The story
Bring the Noise
The feature marked 30 years of BEAMS, the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society, started by CJSR DJs in 1989 to produce and promote experimental, sound-based art. The non-profit puts on concerts and workshops and releases recordings by members who range from composers to dancers and poets. Its president, Shawn Pinchbeck, has belonged since the start, holds a PhD in electroacoustic music and has lectured in Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Membership has ranged from about 30 at its smallest to almost 100, and the society marked the anniversary with a free outdoor concert that July.
- Magazine
- Avenue
- Issue
- October 2019
- Ran as
- The opening spread, and the story across a second spread
- Words
- Renato Pagnani
- Art direction
- Kim Larson
- Photographs
- Ryan Parker
As printed
The cover, and the pages.
01Avenue, October 2019
The frames
The photographs, before the type.
01The photographs
How it got made
The brief, the room, the frame.
Kim’s note for this one was a studio shoot where we could control beams of light: shape, light and shadow. I played on the northern-lights side of the name, with a laptop in the foreground, and made the beams with a pink gel and a gobo, so I asked Shawn to bring something light to wear that would pick up more of the colour. He brought his gear so we could set him up behind his board, and I patched him into the studio sound so he could play his own music while we shot.
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