A bit of personal history: I first came to Concordia as a part-time student in the mid-1980‚s. My BFA major was in photography and I was working on getting a minor in film animation. My animation teacher, Joyce Bornstein, after hearing me speak about my upcoming projects suggested I look up a teacher named Jean-François Denis in the Music Department. Having played tuba, trombone and euphonium in high school, but not having continued with it through CEGEP, I was a bit leery about entering the Music Department and wondered what kind of thing Joyce might be getting me into. After speaking with Jean-François, I realized that I might have finally found the art-form that I had been secretly searching. I signed up for a course and my first year of ea was co-taught by Kevin Austin and Jean-François; my early suspicions about the art form being correct: I loved this stuff and wanted to do and know more.

I started going to ea concerts right away and attended ÉuCuE when it was in the basement of the AD building, in the Chameleon theatre and then in the new concert hall (sitting on stage, under the bright lights, peering into the gloom of the hall).

As the CD was only just taking hold in 1990, most concerts were either from reel to reel or DAT. I managed to listen to many of these tapes again later by discovering the collection buried in the dungeon of the RF building. Listening to these tapes, and my beginning work with the CEC, led me to suggest doing CEC/EuCuE concerts, and with the blessing of the powers that be, I started presenting one or two ÉuCuE concerts per year.

A year away and a master‚s degree later, I managed to land a great job team-teaching with Kevin (WWF style) the first year ea course, and officially joined the EuCuE team (actually anyone can officially join the team, ya just gotta show up for the set-up and tear-down more than twice and you‚re in, but I didn‚t know this at the time).

And the rest is a story for another day. I hope you enjoy this concert.

Ian Chuprun