Meredith Bates: The Quiet Science of Sound Worlds
On ‘The Observer Effect’, Canadian composer Meredith Bates builds long-form sound worlds from violin, electronics, and the recordings of the natural world—and finds that art, love, and politics are harder to separate than they appear.
Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Meredith Bates, a JUNO Award-winning violinist and composer based on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.
Meredith’s recent double album, The Observer Effect, spans roughly 140 minutes of electroacoustic music built from violin, viola, field recordings, and electronics, composed and recorded live in the studio, with very few edits. It's grounded in the physics principle that observation changes what's being observed, an idea she takes personally, musically, and politically.
Meredith talks about how the record came together, what it means to make music that witnesses and is witnessed, and what drew her to the wisdom of witches.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Meredith Bates’ The Observer Effect)
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Dig Deeper
• Artist and Album:
- Visit Meredith Bates at meredithbates.com and follow her on Instagram and Facebook
- Purchase Meredith Bates' album The Observer Effect from Phonometrograph, Bandcamp, or Qobuz, and listen on your streaming platform of choice
- Tesseract (Phonometrograph, 2023): Bandcamp
- If Not Now (Phonometrograph, 2020): Bandcamp
• Collaborators:
- loscil — Scott Morgan, Vancouver-based ambient and electronic composer
- Phonometrograph — Chris Gestrin's boutique label, co-producer of The Observer Effect
- Curtis Andrews — Vancouver percussionist, composer, and educator
- Nadah El Shazly — Egyptian-born, Montreal-based vocalist, producer, and composer; her 2025 album Laini Tani is referenced by Bates as a percussion inspiration
• Organizations and Festivals:
- Vancouver Improvised Arts Society (VIAS) — founded by Bates; supports improvised art by womxn, BIPOC, and LGBTQ2+ artists
- Listen, Listen Festival — VIAS's annual multidisciplinary improvised arts festival
- West Coast String Summit — VIAS's annual string-focused festival and residency
- NOW Society — Vancouver improvisers collective
• Musical References and Influences:
- John Zorn — Masada — the Jewish-music-rooted improvising ensemble central to Bates's development
- John Zorn — Book of Angels — the Tzadik series of Masada compositions interpreted by different ensembles
- John Zorn — Cobra — Zorn's 1984 game piece for group improvisers, referenced as a workshop tool
- Marc Ribot — guitarist; Bates's entry point into Zorn's broader aesthetic
• Field Recording and Birding:
- Merlin Bird ID — free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; both Bates and host Lawrence Peryer discuss its recording archive and identification features
• Concepts:
- The Observer Effect — the quantum mechanics principle that observation alters the system being observed; the conceptual and titular foundation of the album
- Acoustic Ecology — the study of sound environments and their effects on living things; an ongoing influence in Bates's compositional approach
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- Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com
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