Electronic music pioneer Norma Beecroft had a passion for combining technology and instruments

After three years of studies abroad, the composer Norma Beecroft returned to Canada in 1962 with high enthusiasm and heady ideas about mixed-media music. Exposure to the avant garde in Darmstadt, Germany, had been “quite a shocker” to her. In particular, a live performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte for four-channel tape and live percussion hit her like a thunderbolt.“It was the combination of technology and instruments,” she said later. “I thought, ‘That’s where I’m going – that’s what I want to do.’”