• Visit
  • What’s On
  • Learning & Research
  • About
  • SFU Art Collection

Closed

Wednesday–Sunday, 11AM–5PM

Closed for installation

Always Free

Support the Gibson

8888 University Drive

Burnaby, British Columbia

Canada V5A 1S6

778-782-4266

Closed

Wednesday–Sunday, 11AM–5PM

Closed for installation

Always Free

VisitGetting HereAccessibilityContactShop
Learning & ResearchUniversity Students & FacultyK–12 LearningKids & FamiliesTeen Art Lab
What's OnCurrentUpcomingArchive
AboutTeam & GovernanceSupportOpportunitiesFacility Rentals
SFU Art CollectionRecent AcquisitionsPublic Art

performance

upcoming
Oct 18, 2026, 2:00 PM

Ooga Mooga: Songs from Martin

Matt Rogalsky Performs Martin Bartlett

Matt Rogalsky

Sunday October 18, 2026, 2PM 

Arya and Hamid Eshghi Forum

Free with registration


Please join us as composer, sound artist, and musicologist Matt Rogalsky performs a number of Martin Bartlett compositions, including the rarely-heard Gertrude Stein Songs (1975). Rogalsky will both play and sing with his own accompaniment using Bartlett’s Table of Pythagoras, a method of choosing microtonal pitchouts.

Rogalsky is uniquely knowledgeable about Bartlett’s repertoire; he not only studied electroacoustic composition with the composer during his undergraduate years at SFU, but was responsible for cataloguing Bartlett’s software archive after his death, so it could be brought to SFU Special Collections and Rare Books. He also speak about his experience working alongside Bartlett as an assistant in various capacities, reflect on Bartlett’s musical ideas, and offer a range of anecdotes (including the origins of the term “ooga mooga”).

Programme:

1. Gertrude Stein Songs (1975) with Lines from Chuang-Tzu (1973) [a. the ten thousand things are one horse; b. a path is made by people walking on it]

2. Pulse Studies (1976, remix 2026)

3. The Arrival of Sir John Franklin in Paradise (1988), legacy code and instruments translated for performance by Matt Rogalsky

Performance will run 90 minutes.

Generously supported by Arlene James, Coleen and Howard Nemtin, Martha and Ron Burnett, and other Friends of the Gibson
Sponsored in part by Canadian Music Centre

Related Programs

  • ExhibitionMartin BartlettBegin Anywhere

Artists

  • Matt Rogalsky
RSVP Here


Matt Rogalsky is a settler-identifying Canadian, living in Kingston Ontario, also known as Katarokwi, on territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee.

He is a performing member of Composers Inside Electronics, with many presentations of Rainforest and other David Tudor works since 1998, and he co-created Rainforest V, which was acquired in 2017 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for its permanent collection. He teaches at Queen's University as Professor in the departments of Drama and Music, Film and Media, and the Cultural Studies Graduate Program. He is Director of the Sonic Arts Studio, originally named Queen's Electroacoustic Music Studio, founded by David Keane in the 1970s and later directed by Kristi Allik. In 2024 Rogalsky released a new double album of electronic compositions on the late Phill Niblock’s XI Records label, entitled Visitations and Revisitations.

Rogalsky is currently collaborating with Sonic Geographer Dr Laura Jean Cameron on installation and performance work through their duo TYΦA (Typha), which makes musical use of the woven fibres of cattails from the marshes of Ontario. They also have an ongoing study of the life and practices of early Canadian field recordist William W.H. Gunn, which has resulted in several installation works.

Formative studies included many mentors and teachers, significantly Martin Bartlett, Barry Truax, Pauline Oliveros, George E Lewis, Ron Kuivila, Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton and many others; his PhD (2006) with Simon Emmerson from City University London focuses on the history of David Tudor's Rainforest.