BIOGRAPHY

Paul Scriver is a composer, musician, and experienced educator of sound, electronic
music and digital audio. He is an audio professional working in sound design, audio
engineering and composition for film and multimedia.

A Montreal native, he lived in California for 18 years and was the owner and operator of
a music and audio production business before attending Mills College where he
completed a master’s in composition and MFA Electronic Music and Recording. He has
studied composition with Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and
Joelle Léandre.

Paul is an experienced teacher having returned to Montreal in 2007, he has been on
faculty at Concordia since 2008. He continues his professional engagement composing
for electroacoustic and acoustic instruments, creating imaginative sound pallets for film
and other types of media and as a live sound mixer at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall
and other venues.

Artist Statement

The music and sound art that I make is a product of my daydreams; an expression of an inner sound world that I can sometimes access through making things and exhaling air through an instrument.


All sound starts with vibration at the source; music is not something separate, it too starts with a vibration – a thought or a daydream that eventually is manifest in the combination of tones and timbres, notes on a page or sculptures that invite exploration and listening.


Sound needs time and change to exist. Creating music and sound art requires the same from me: time and change are essential to my process. The change comes with thinking through the multiple aspects of something and with sufficient time and breathing room, converting imagination into physical action where tangible forms emerge.

All of my most personal work seems to have existed and seems only to be revealed through the process of creating. A paradox of many artists certainly, but also a source of constant delight for me.


I feel that music is a ‘magical’ language of a sort that employs the physical senses to engage the mind and keep it tuned to the intricate sonic subtleties of the world around us. The music we share is a cultural battery that holds the cypher to the code of nature and our existence.

CV