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Simon Fraser prof supports Concordia students with $75,000 endowment

“I feel like I’m in a position to help these students both professionally and academically, and why not financially as well?” says world-renowned electroacoustic composer Barry Truax
January 15, 2025
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By Jordan Whitehouse


Guenther and Barry are sitting at a dinner table. They are each wearing suit jackets with a blue rose pinned to their lapel. “The bottom line was that I became very impressed with the Concordia students — they were just really good,” says Barry Truax (right) who established an endowment with his partner Guenther Krueger (left).

It’s not every day that a professor from one university provides a large gift to another. But that’s Barry Truax. The unorthodox comes with his territory.

The professor emeritus from Vancouver-based Simon Fraser University (SFU) and world-renowned composer of electroacoustic music recently established the Glenfraser Concordia Endowment with his partner Guenther Krueger. 

Their $75,000 gift to the Campaign for Concordia: Next-Gen Now will support the Truax Award in Electroacoustic Music, an annual $2,500 award for one or more undergraduate or graduate students who demonstrate excellence in electroacoustic music composition and research.

The endowment comes on the heels of two free, online courses in sound studies that Truax developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever since, Concordia students have consistently enrolled and Truax has been a mentor to many of them.

That connection with Concordia students became so strong that Truax wanted to create a gift to support their work.

“The bottom line was that I became very impressed with the Concordia students — they were just really good,” says Truax.

“This also filled a mentoring niche that was empty in my life after retiring,” he adds. “There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing young, highly motivated, talented and well-prepared students who then value my experience and get something out of it.”

‘A perfect marriage of technology and the arts’

Electroacoustic music is an experimental style where composers use technology to change acoustic sounds. It usually begins with manipulations of sounds like the human voice or orchestral instruments. Then it’s sometimes combined with sounds from field recordings or other unorthodox sources.

Truax admits that electroacoustic music isn’t a mainstream genre. Yet he says that when he got turned on to it in 1969 during his studies in musical composition at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, “peace was declared” within him.

“It was a perfect marriage of technology and the arts for me,” he says.

That began a 55-year career as a groundbreaking and award-winning electroacoustic composer.  

Traux is probably best known for his work with the World Soundscape Project and as a pioneer of granular synthesis with the PODX computer music system.  

At SFU, he taught courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic composition for more than 40 years in the Schools of Communication and Contemporary Arts.

“Looking at it retrospectively, 55 years later, I could not have imagined in 1969 the kind of career that this has led to,” he says. “I’m just so grateful. It’s been amazing.”

‘I love working with these students’

That gratitude led Truax and his partner to establish the Glenfraser Endowment at SFU, named after their kennel for Scottish Terriers. It now supports a professorship in sound studies and three undergraduate and graduate awards in sound studies.

As Truax says, that endowment had “fulfilled obvious needs at SFU.” He and Krueger then started wondering where else they might support others pursuing the field he is so passionate about.   

They eventually found it after Truax developed two webinar courses for anyone interested in learning about sound and audio. The first, launched in 2021, was a 12-week tutorial about acoustics and electroacoustics. The other, a soundscape compositional course, followed a year later.

Both courses “just took off internationally,” says Truax. Especially with Concordia undergrads.  

There have been seven course offerings so far, and each has included at least a few students from Concordia. Many of them have taken Truax’s webinars for course credits and some have participated in SFU-Concordia Exchange concerts.

One of those Concordia students, Kristian North, BFA 24, went on to win the 2023 Jeu de temps/Times Play Hildegard Westerkamp Award, which supports new works by emerging Canadian electroacoustic artists. Concordia student Findlay Sontag won the same award in 2024.

For Truax, the biggest reward has been mentoring students like North, Sontag and others.

“I’m getting so much out of it,” he says. “I love teaching. I love working with these students, especially individually or in small groups. I feel like I’m in a position to help these students both professionally and academically, and why not financially as well?”

Learn more about Truax’s free online courses.



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