David Eagle was born in Montreal in 1955. He studied music at McGill University, the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg, and the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1990 he has been Professor of Theory and Composition and Coordinator of the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of Calgary.

'Traces for Flute and Computer' addresses issues involving the interaction between a live performer and a computer. This includes interpretation and expression, improvisation and composition, and brings together aspects of artificial intelligence, psychoacoustics, performance practice and communication.
My aim was to create a performance context which explores a wide range of levels of interaction between the performer and the computer/sampler by developing various roles for the computer. These are:

1. Musical instrument - performed remotely by the flutist through musical gestures and signals and foot-pedal triggers. In this role, the computer is amplifying and enhancing the flute.


2. Interpreter - who listens to the flute and responds with repetitions and variations of material heard.


3. Improvising musician - making decisions about musical parameters and creating musical phrases in response to the flute following preprogrammed generative processes.


4. Composer - creating original musical material by enacting a series of algorithms. By analysing what it is doing, it can then make changes based upon its musical experience as an instrument, interpreter and improviser. In effect it begins to develop an individual musical personality with a catalogue of characteristic musical phrases and processes of development.