Dr. Eldad Tsabary’s main areas of expertise are in the domain of sound studies specifically (1) sonic aural training and (2) live electroacoustic performance. Through these areas of inquiry, Tsabary has been developing educational approaches, tools, and strategies to better-understand and transform the diverse internal processes involved in sound perception, organization, and creation—both individually and collectively within an ensemble. Through cyclical, ground-up, collaborative research projects, Tsabary has been seeking ways to adapt the educational environment to emerging contexts, goals, and ways of knowing and learning among individuals (of various cultural and neurodiverse backgrounds).
He has been teaching electroacoustic performance, composition, and ear training at Concordia University (Montreal) since 2005, where in collaboration with his students, he created the Concordia Laptop Orchestra (CLOrk, 2010) one of the largest and most prolific electroacoustic ensembles worldwide. With dozens of performances in prestigious festivals and venues worldwide, CLOrk has served as a fruitful research-creation platform for investigating the nature of collective improvisation, mediation, and creative process; and developing approaches for equitable, collaborative, neurodiverse co-creation. Presently, Eldad also directs the RISE opera project (funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), designed to enact cataclysmic scenarios in the opera medium as a way to investigate how humans cope with disasters and crises.
With students and professors as co-researchers Tsabary has been developing strategies, pedagogies, and technologies for sound-focused ear training that encourage critical self-reflection, provide informative timely feedback, and foster self-motivated growth. Most recently, Tsabary has been leading the creation of Inner Ear—a SSHRC-funded browser-based collection of sonic-aural-training tools designed around principles of transformational education and findings from motivation studies.
As chair of ICOAH for six years, Dr. Tsabary brings a rich experience in administration and leadership. In recent years he co-chaired the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (2016) and the Montreal hub of the International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC-ESCOM 2018), among service in several other conference committees. At Concordia University he is the Chair of the Department of Music and was previously the coordinator of Electroacoustic Studies at the Department of Music and coordinator of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Eldad received his doctorate in music education from Boston University.