Freely traversing borders and genres, David Ogborn is a composer, guitarist and performer of electronic sound and video.  At the centre of his work is the combination of traditional performance arts with electronic elements — whether these be recordings of diverse outdoor environments around the world, improvisations on a laptop or altered guitar, video projections influenced by live musical gestures, or massive synthesized sounds on immersive arrays of loudspeakers.

Emigrating to Canada from South Australia as a child, Ogborn's earliest professional experiences came as a guitarist in Winnipeg's thriving jazz scene.  His compositional mentors have included Michael Matthews at the University of Manitoba, Yves Daoust at the Centre d'Arts Orford and Christos Hatzis at the University of Toronto, where he completed a doctorate in 2006.  His ongoing study of the life and works of Luigi Nono has also been a formative influence — especially the Italian composer's life-long insistence that music be a moment of challenge and transformation with an impact on culture beyond the concert hall.

Ogborn's work is performed across Canada, the United States and Europe by a diverse and expanding group of virtuoso musicians and ensembles, including the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, New Adventures in Sound Art, and Tapestry New Opera. His sound installation Dream House was featured at the Canadian Music Centre's Chalmers House during Toronto's inaugural Nuit Blanche (2006) and his live electronic music for Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis was a special event at the Esprit Orchestra's 2007 New Wave festival.  In 2008, his Opera On The Rocks (created with librettists Leanna Brodie, Dave Carley, Lisa Codrington and Krista Dalby) was a smash hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival, sold out 11 of 13 Toronto shows, received 4 Ns (stars) from Now magazine, and was included among the Toronto Star's 2008 list of "boffo opera". 

A highlight of 2009 will be the premiere (again supported by the Canadian Music Centre) of the piece Emergence, featuring Ogborn on electric guitar alongside a singing robot of his own construction (see http://emergentbehaviour.ca for details) in a tour of 4 Canadian cities.

Ogborn is in increasing demand both as a teacher and as a producer of electronic and experimental art. He recently completed a post-doctoral teaching fellowship in the humanities at the University of Toronto, offering a workshop series on soundscape composition and an interdisciplinary seminar on the work of Luigi Nono.  Currently he teaches Composition, the New Music Ensemble, Canadian Music, and the laptop orchestra at the University of Regina.  He is an Associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a founding member of the angelusnovus.net (Toronto) and holophon.ca (Regina) audio collectives, and is the president of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC).

(Click here for catalogue, audio and scores.)