About Me
Alex Voorhoeve
Cellist
Digital artist
Alex graduated as a cellist from the Canberra School of Music in 1993. In 1995 he traveled to Europe where he continued to give chamber music concerts and performed with the Vienna based Eurasia Chamber Orchestra as principal cellist. In early 1997 Alex returned to Canberra to explore his interests in music visualisation by completing a graduate diploma in computer animation at the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (ACAT), now the Center for New Media Arts (CNMA) at the Australian National University . Alex�s graduate work, filling lost, was chosen to be screened as part of the digital media section of the 1999 Sydney Film Festival. Since then he has participated in the 2004 symposium for the Society of International Musicologists (SIMS) in Melbourne where he gave a seminar on the use of music visualisation in the development and education of new classical audiences.
This interest was borne from the recognition that audience numbers for classical music were declining and efforts to counter this were becoming prevalent issues across the industry world wide. The greatest impediment to developing classical audiences is a lack of musical education and exposure to the repertoire.
Unlike Disney�s Fantasia, Alex�s work endeavors to reveal the complexity of musical works by using all the information that exists within a musical score; phrasing, key structure, orchestration etc. along with a scientific understanding of acoustics. This is woven into a 3 dimensional computer animated visual experience which offers the viewing audience to be both introduced to classical music by the attraction of a visual accompaniment but also a means to understand through the visuals how such a work is in fact constructed by the composer.
Alongside the development of his digital work Alex maintains a busy schedule with regular chamber music engagements, performing with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra as well as composing and recording work. He has also been employed on a casual basis at Questacon, the National Science and Technology Center, for the last four years as a gallery explainer, engaging the curiosity of kids of all ages in all things scientific and more. Recently Alex introduced a digital media class to the Young Music Society summer school 2007 which introduced kids from the ages of 9 - 15 to the principles of sound production and wave synthesis, the results of which can be found here.
