"The best thing that ever happened was when I was four years old, my parents gave me a CD player."
That's Vancouver-based concert violinist Jack Campbell's take on what started his love affair with music, in addition to his natural curiosity for beautiful and interesting things.
"Music is the universal language," he tells V.I.A. "Every single living thing on this planet has a resonance within."
At only 22, the composer has a jaw-dropping resume, performing in international concert halls and collaborating with musicians worldwide.
Campbell calls the violin the "great love of his life," noting the "limitless possibilities" the string instrument presents. He also likes to ponder the centuries-old instrument's history, and how it helped shape modern music.
His latest tour will showcase his long-term project Sounding Bombe: Enigmatic Music: a musical/compositional work based on the mathematics used to crack the Enigma code during the Second World War.
Campbell collaborated with the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park UK on the project, which he calls "one of the great honours" of his life. The work combines historical reflection and shows musical representations of mathematical concepts, expressing the "relationship between electromechanical computation and electro-acoustic composition."
"The process of cracking the Enigma code during the Second World War, I personally believe to be perhaps the most consequential invention in human history, because the variety of outcomes in the Second World War could all have changed the human race forever," he explains.
Ambitious Enigma project was five years in the making
Campbell says that "music is mathematics" because the way sound waves are transmitted and received by the ear is "directly related to mathematics and physics."
The violinist says he first had the idea of creating the Enigma project five years ago and that it has gone through several calculations.
"I finished the project last year and it was shown at the National Museum of Computing," he notes, adding that he recently finished recording the LP and will release it later this summer.
Campbell is also about to embark on a North American and United Kingdom tour, including several stops in Canada, including Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, and, lastly, Vancouver.
He will also visit New York City before performing 12 concerts in the U.K., including at cathedrals and museums, ending in a record release and five nights at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Vancouver-based experimental dance organization Belle Spirale will also join him for his U.K. concert dates.
The show is 75 minutes long, with 50 minutes of music and a presentation. It is strictly an auditory experience.
"One of the joyful things about being a classical music artist in the 21st century and working in the modern classical realm is the floodgates are open, and you can use any sort of analogy or reference any genre you wish," he comments.
Vancouver composer draws inspiration from myriad genres
While the local composer draws a significant portion of his style from Baroque, Renaissance, and 20th-century classical music, he is also influenced by experimental jazz and post-punk rock and roll, he says.
Campbell says the record will showcase his musical version of the Enigma coding machine and a musical version of the bombe code-breaking electromechanical machine, which was developed by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in March 1940.
British cryptologists created the bombe in World War II to decode German messages that were encrypted using the Enigma machine, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
"So Alan Turing, the fellow who broke the Enigma code, was actually a violinist himself, and not many people know this, but he invented the first prototype electronic keyboard," he explains.
"So I took his favourite song, which he played on the violin, and I encrypted it using a musical Enigma machine. So it turned into this very experimental eight-tonal blur of notes, and then, using the musical decryption machine, over the course of this piece, which is 50 minutes long, that melody is slowly decrypted until it returns to its original harmonious form."
Campbell has also taken pre-recorded "found sound" of the original machines from the Second World War and played with them in a way "where it becomes sort of the rhythmic background of the piece."
Locals can see “Sounding Bombe: Enigmatic Music" on April 11 at Gallery 881 located at 881 East Hastings St. The doors are open at 6:30 p.m. and the concert starts at 7 p.m.
