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Paul Dolden (born January 23, 1956, in Ottawa, Canada), is an electroacoustic music composer, currently living in Montréal, Canada.
Paul Dolden began his career at age 16 as a professional electric guitarist, violinist, and cellist. Since age 29 he has won over twenty international awards for his music which is performed in both Europe and North America. His approach to audio technology is to use it as a platform to launch otherwise impossible musical performances, thereby making his computer behave like a virtual orchestra. His compositions are characterised by a maximalist aesthetic in which hundreds of digitally recorded instrumental and vocal performances are combined in multiple layers.
Dolden's early works employed a unified approach to timbral and harmonic variation, but under the influence of postmodernism, his concerns shifted to include the juxtaposition and superimposition of disparate musical styles. His Resonance Cycle of works (1992–96) are an example of this. In his Twilight Cycle Dolden investigated contemporary new music-melody and dance rhythms, genres not normally associated with electroacoustic music.
Dolden’s 2-CD set, “L’Ivresse de la Vitesse” (empreintes DIGITALes) is regarded as a landmark recording and was selected by The Wire magazine as “one of the top 100 recordings of the 20th century.”