IF Archive 2021

Ireland/England/Germany

3BP

3BP is co-presented by the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

Network Performance

3BP is a new international trio of improvisors (Adam Pultz Melbye, Paul Stapleton, and John Bowers). Born of and in the pandemic, and thus native to online exchange of real-time audio, the trio explores network instabilities, data loss, compression artefacts, and latency as affordances for a creative approach to negotiating the physical and virtual materialities and spaces of online improvisation. The performance features custom-made instruments and interfaces chained together in complex signal and feedback loops across the network. These, in turn, stimulate ‘bots’ that generate live parodies of our playing and form the basis of spectral visualisations and image processing. The performance is a document of the evolution and adaption of both instruments and performers as they become entangled in distributed and temporally asynchronous ecologies across continents.

The Netherlands

Aaron Lumley and Marielle Groven

A Short Improvisation from Zaal 100, Amsterdam

Groven and Lumley’s submission for IF 2021 was filmed in late May in the small hall at Zaal100, Amsterdam. Until the lockdowns of 2020-21, this room hosted free improvised music concerts on an almost weekly basis for over 15 years. Playing there now, after many months of near-silence, one feels the uncanny energy of this history resonating in the room’s rich acoustics and wood surfaces.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist Marielle Groven and double bassist Aaron Lumley are Amsterdam-based artists originally from Canada. Partners in life, they also collaborate regularly on musical projects ranging from free improvisations to performances of Groven’s chamber music compositions and as members of larger groups including Leo Svirsky & The River Without Banks.

Ontario, Canada

Ahmri Vanderborne

Re-inter(re)act

“Re-inter(re)act,” created for IF 2021, is a layered composition of three improvised visual performances using video projection in which live interactions with objects found within the two filming locations were recorded, loaded into, and manipulated through a program and projected within the same space, creating a new architectural environment.

Ahmri Vandeborne is an interdisciplinary artist relying on the process of a meditative state and responding to happenstance to explore the conflict between what exists, what was destroyed, and the remnants of what is left behind, both in her encounters with the natural world and within her work.

Using shadow imagery and various methods of light manipulation as a vehicle between natural and artificial or architectural elements, her work focuses on fleeting interactions and obstructions to understand concepts of destruction and ephemerality.

Ahmri holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Studio Art from the University of Guelph, where she also completed minors in French and Art History. Upon graduation, she co-founded Otherwise Studios in Guelph, Ontario, an inclusive studio space for art-making and community building offering diverse opportunities for collaborating, teaching, innovating, and mess-making.

Ontario, Canada

Aimee Copping

Church Sunday

Aimee Copping is a writer, composer, producer, and educator, and the executive director and founder of Blackball. Blackball was launched in 2015 to deliver free electronic music teaching to at-risk individuals and prison inmates. Now entering its sixth year, Blackball has reached over 200 at-risk individuals in four different Ontario communities.

Aimee Copping records and performs as Transstar. According to CBC Radio q, Transstar’s debut EP, Famous Door, is “like landing on another planet.” The second Transstar album, Untraceable, is set for a fall 2021 release.

Aimee has collaborated with the Guelph Black Heritage Society, Art Not Shame, and Girls’ Rock Camp Guelph among other community-founded arts organizations. Aimee Copping resides in Guelph, Ontario and drinks responsibly.

Mexico

Alain Derbez, Mauricio Sotelo, and Jazzamoart

todo es escucha en el silencio / everything can be heard in silence

“Todo se escucha en el silencio” is the title of one of Derbez’s books and also the name of his poem featured in this festival piece. After the poem, there is an improvisation featuring Mauricio Sotelo playing the “charrófono,” Derbez playing the soprano saxophone, and Jazzamoart painting. “Everything can be heard in silence.”

All of this was recorded by Jonás Derbez in Jazzamoart’s atelier.

Alain Derbez studied history, has two passports, improvises mainly with his soprano saxophone, and writes books of fiction, essays, and poetry. Some of those have been presented in Guelph where he has played, read papers, and enjoyed life. He also translated and commented on Ajay Heble’s Landing on the Wrong Note (Spanish title: Caer en la que no era).

Quebec, Canada

Alana Dunlop

June (A Million Ways to Sit in One Room)

Alana Dunlop is a writer, self-proclaimed Montrealer (raised in Ontario), and a Libra (with a Leo moon). Her creative work has appeared in Open Book Magazine, PACE Magazine, and Yolk Literary. Her poetry chapbook, Another Language to Lie In, is available on Amazon. Though writing is her preferred art form, Alana is also into documentary film-making and photography.

Italy

Alessandro Fedrigo and Claudio Sichel

Quadrilatero

Alessandro Fedrigo is an expert acoustic guitar player, recognized around the world. The instrument he plays is fretless and he often uses sound effects to modify its sound. For him, the importance of researching a peculiar sound is crucial.

He has played jazz, free improvisation, experimental music, electronic music, and explored multimedia performance. He has recorded more than 30 CDs and has played with musicians such as Amir El Saffar, Samuel Blaser, Francois Houle, Tony Scott, Jimmy Weinstein, Chris Hunter, Ben Monder, Robert Wyatt, Elliot Zigmund, and Ferenc Nemeth.

In 2011, he was recognized as one of the best bass players of the year by JAZZiT. In the same year, he published his first solo album, Solitario. Since 2011 he has served as the Artistic Director of nusica.org, an independent, digital, ecological, and conceptual label. He is also the principal curator of the Sile Jazz festival, which offers site-specific concerts in the Treviso area.

England, UK

Alexis Zelda Stevens

Alexis Zelda Stevens is co-presented by Elysium.

Clock’s Ticking

Clock’s Ticking (2020) was made during lockdown using Pina Bausch’s Tanztheatre improvisation approach to generate movement material which is layered with other visual information. The work deals with the inertia of the lockdown period, a sense of time standing still and running out at the same time. 

Alexis Zelda Stevens is a London-based artist, bilingual in visual art & dance. She makes video and performance, as well as sculpture, room-filling installation, and images. The work is an ongoing exploration of liveness in the material world, and people in relation; textural, poetic, surreal, concerned with the visceral body and psychological states. Her work is medium-large scale, sometimes collaborative and often outside the gallery or performance space from a Cornish mine to a carpark on Aylesbury Estate, London. She is a current recipient of the SET Free Studio Prize. 

Recent projects include: Recreational Grounds IV, London; Scaffold Gallery’s There is No Such Thing as Boredom, Paradise Works, Manchester; and i.e.a.o.u/ SHELF at Old Spanish City, Newcastle; SPACE, London. She was commissioned by Metal to make a new outdoor work for Village Green, Artists Village through a CultureLab residency in 2016; and had her first solo presentation at ArtSway curated by Peter Bonnell some years before. 

Canada / Singapore

Alt_F

ALT_F is co-presented by LASALLE College of the Arts.

In Front of the Body

“In Front of the Body” is a performance showcasing three highly developed Digital Musical Instruments (DMI) whose combined history spans two decades: karlax (D. Andrew Stewart), t-stick (Michał Seta), and phallophone (Dirk Stromberg).

The praxis for all three instruments includes a performance orientation similar to regular instruments which are held with two hands and positioned in front of the performer. Consequently, all three instruments may be understood as extensions of the performers’ physiology, expanding the performers’ reach into the surrounding space and soundscape. DMIs of this nature cease to be instrument-objects and, in the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) Phenomenology of Perception, become areas of sensitivity, extending the scope and active radius of touch and listening.

“In Front of the Body” may be understood as a metaphor for, and response to, a post-truth sensibility. We wish to draw attention to a worldview that is still human-centric, experienced by the body: immersion of the senses. “In Front of the Body” is also a tribute to those who open new paths, question the ways, and appreciate discovering new approaches. All three instruments (karlax, t-stick, phallophone) require an attention to designing palpable gestures, which are on full display, in full view, and not shrouded in deception.

Alt_F is a trio of improvisers, technologists, and composers. They aim to explore new instruments in production practice. Based in Canada and Singapore, their work has been largely telematic in the past year. Together they create a number of VR and other types of telematic performances.

Ontario, Canada

Andrew Rinehart

Andrew Rinehart is co-presented by Open Ears Festival

Lamp Lit Room

Andrew Rinehart is, first and foremost, a creator. Known for his mystical use of electronics and trance-inducing melodies, and even for inventing machines with which to play his works, the word “harpist” is insufficient alone to describe him. Self-described as a multimedia harpist, he dabbles in coding, 3D-printing, and filmmaking—it is difficult to affix one label to Andrew as an artist.

Currently based in Waterloo, Ontario, Andrew graduated with his BMus from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2021 under the tutelage of the eminent harp player Sharlene Wallace, composer and electronic musician Cam McKittrick, and improviser Dr. Kathryn Ladano. Andrew’s studies cumulated in his first full-length concert film, This Garden, which incorporates imagery of the Canadian landscape with the work of notable collaborator and poet Eli Sokoloff Harris, a custom-built music box, and, of course, the harp. Currently, Andrew is growing his private teaching studio and developing new inter-arts performances.

Ontario, Canada

Anh Phung

Intro + “He Loves Me” Remix (Kristin Fung, remixed by Anh Phung)

Anh Phung is a shining example of the modern musician. As a child, she earned her virtuosity while sweeping flute contests across Canada and has since used her mastery of the flute as a compass to navigate countless styles of music, constantly learn new instruments, and consistently deliver exciting performances.

Not bothered by the convention and standard limitations of the flute, her powerful musical voice steers her through everything from hip hop to bluegrass to Bulgarian folk music. She is the leader of prog-rock tribute band Tullstars and performance art act Hairbrain.

Catch Anh Phung on the main stage at summer festivals facing off with the lead guitarist, or slinking around the basement after hours at a free jazz club. But blink and she’s off chasing the next new sound. (Bio written by Alan Mackie.)

Ontario, Canada

Anita Cazzola

How to Hold You Back Together

“How to Hold You Back Together” is an improvised poem built on kind, curious, and failed gestures of re-joining. Through spontaneous movements and words, Anita attempts to understand what it means to fall apart and where to go from there.

Anita Cazzola’s work inhabits the intersections between textiles, geology, geography, and the built human environment. Exploring the material and metaphorical complexities of cloth and geological forms, Anita reconsiders the destructive assumptions of decay and disintegration as means of resistance, reclamation, and healing. Stitched, pieced, and handwoven textiles in combination with video projection, cast surfaces, and found forms communicate her ideas softly, yet intentionally. She asks, how are our contemporary methods of delineating and constructing space (digital maps, rigid architecture, boundaries, and borders) mediating our connections to land and environment? Gridded structures are broken down, bent, curved, softened, and remade out of malleable materials to undo and reframe their resilience.

A textile and installation artist from Guelph, Ontario, Anita Cazzola completed her BFA in 2018 at OCAD University, where she studied Sculpture and Installation and minored in Material Arts and Design with a focus in Textiles. Anita has begun to exhibit her works within Ontario in solo and group exhibitions including Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto, ON; 10C, Guelph, ON; and Propeller Gallery, Toronto, ON. She attended an artist residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Isle, ME) in August 2019 and is currently the 2021 Artist in Residence for the City of Guelph.

Ontario, Canada

Ann Westbere

Nature’s Conversations

“Nature’s Conversations” is a soundscape piece recorded during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is an improvisatory conversation among birds, insects, wind. Sounds found in nature and in the urban environment. The accompanying photo, titled “Interplay,” is a mixed-medium piece of rock and plants. The listener is welcome to use their imagination while engaging with the soundscape and photo.

Ann is a PhD student in the Critical Studies in Improvisation Program, a musician, a photographer, and a researcher.

USA/Canada

annais linares

construct/ion

annais linares is a musician and multimedia social practice artist from the Coachella Valley, California. she is interested in working alongside under-served communities and those of color in imagining and engaging ideas of collective future realities through improvisation, sound, and play. recently, annais was a part of BLaNK Project in collaboration with multidisciplinary artists in Whitehorse. she and other musicians improvised together while accompanying a breakdance crew, a sculptor, a multimedia contemporary dance group, and a producer/emcee, all video and sound documented. another facet of this project was developing and facilitating musical and artistic workshops for children ages 5–12, including an instrument-building workshop and a full day of music-making, breakdancing, and improvising! she had lots of fun and really enjoyed connecting to local Yukon artists. 

annais has worked with numerous arts organizations that focus on community engagement (such as Arts for LA, CalArts, Wyld Womxn Collective, Equal Sound LA) as an artist, program developer, arts curator, marketing manager, facilitator, and councilmember. she holds a BFA in Musical Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and is currently a student at the University of Guelph in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program which centres on artistic practice and community engagement. 

Ontario, Canada

Anne Bourne

milk

Anne Bourne, composer/improviser and artist, documents the geopoetics of shorelines and spectral wave patterns. Seasoned in international songwriting, intermedia performance, and recording arts, Anne composes emergent streams of cello with voice, altered piano, field recordings, oral histories, and text.

A long time collaborator of composer Pauline Oliveros, Anne premiered Primordial/Lift and was one of the first to be awarded a certificate to impart Oliveros’ Deep Listening text scores and listening practice. Founder of Sounding Difference—an experience of listening, non-narrative sounding, and collective creativity produced by David Dacks at the Music Gallery in Toronto—Anne brought this practice to OCADU; York and Concordia Universities; Acts of Listening Lab; Emily Carr University of Art + Design; The Banff Centre for Art and Creativity; Killowatt Festival in Bologna, IT; and to MM_MMM in Geneva, CH with Ione. Anne composes and records independently and facilitates listening and sound-making over distance online with audiovisual works in gardens and wild park shorelines.

A Chalmers Fellow, Anne explores sound fields and microtonal voice practices where water meets land to listen, to contribute to renewal of the balance of human and more than human for sonics as a living topographical map at the intersection of nature and creative technology.

British Columbia, Canada

Aram Bajakian and Julia Ulehla

Dálava

Dálava is an homage to traditional Moravian (Czech) folksong, sourcing melodies transcribed over 100 years ago by the great-grandfather of Dálava’s singer, Julia Ulehla, and reanimating them in an extremely stirring, avant-garde, post-rock musical language. Comprised of a group of stellar musicians from Vancouver, Dálava’s release The Book of Transfigurations (Songlines, 2017) has garnered critical acclaim. In performance and on recording, the “incandescent” (Musicworks, Summer/Fall 2017) Dálava delves into deep territory, conjuring ancestors, animating spirits, and crafting musical microcosms around the gem-like folk melodies.

The music of guitarist, composer, and educator Aram Bajakian has been called “a masterpiece” (fRoots, July 2017), “shape-shifting” (FreeJazzCollective, January 2017), and “astonishing” (Georgia Straight, March 2017).  Bajakian received his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he studied with Dr. Yusef Lateef. He holds a Masters Degree in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Master of Music degree in Music Composition from the University of British Columbia, where he studied electronic music with Dr. Keith Hamel. When not touring, he works as the Music Curator for the Western Front in Vancouver, one of Canada’s leading artist-run spaces for art and new music.

Quebec, Canada

Ariel Swan and Laurie Torres

Ariel Swan and Laurie Torres are co-presented by Suoni per il Popolo.

Swan/Torres

SWAN/TORRES is a space where Black expression can shine. Ari Swan and Laurie Torres, friends in the Montreal music scene for years, created this project as a way to explore their own improvisational practices with voices firmly centred in their experience as Black women. Both Laurie and Ari are classically trained musicians who have used this base as a jumping-off point to other musical worlds. Laurie is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer. Ari is a violinist, pianist, and songwriter.

Ontario, Canada

Ben Finley

Flotation Devices from My Voice Memo Diary

Ben Finley is a performer-composer specializing in acoustic bass and electric bass (in multiple tunings and with effects). He grew up on a music festival farm (Westben) witnessing many ecosystems of music-making. Ben aims to cultivate music that embraces the unique individual life experiences of its participants. This often manifests through improvisation, hybrid texts, the human voice, electro-acoustic worlds, learning from the biosphere, community projects, and exploring multi-stylistic compositional frameworks. Ben is the creative director of the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s international/multi-generational Performer-Composer Residency. He is a current PhD candidate of Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, composing-improvising creative ensemble music and studying music festivals as sites of ecological restoration.

Ontario, Canada

Sound Symposium: Various Artists

Cinesthesia

This series of short films are co-presented by Sound Symposium.

The Places Between Roots and Stumps
film by Joseph Kisusi
music by Luke Blackmore

A Dream in Nara Park
film by Mimi Stockland
music by Holly Winter

The Runaway
film by Shaalan
music by Jing Xia

Onward
film by Krissy Breen
music by Atomic Clock (Michelle LaCour, Tiber Reardon, Josh Ward, Chris Donnelly)

Quebec, Canada

Bernard Falaise

Guitar Solos

Composer, improviser, and guitarist Bernard Falaise has some surprisingly varied musical activities. From pop album production (Marie-Jo Thério, Jorane) to contemporary music composition to dance, theatre, and movie scores. This Montréaler is a member of several bands, including Miriodor, Klaxon Gueule, Subtle lip can, Quartetski, and L’ensemble SuperMusique. He works frequently with artists such as Michel F. Côté, Pierre Labbé, Martin Tétreault, Jean Derome, and Damian Nisensen, among others. He has composed works for the Quatuor Bozzini, Pentaèdre wind quintet, Quasar saxophone quartet, and Bradyworks, to name a few. Mr. Falaise has released four solo albums. His second, Clic (2007), won the best new music record Opus award in 2008.

Singapore

Black Zenith

Black Zenith is co-presented by LASALLE College of the Arts.

Lines of Force

“Lines of Force” explores rhythm as a fractal connector between acoustically and electronically generated rhythmic elements. Electro-acoustic duo Black Zenith creates an eco-system of polyrhythmic artefacts with drums, triggers, modular synthesisers, and electronic effects to harness layers of time that extrapolate into a multitude of lineages.  

Black Zenith is a duo of Brian O’Reilly and Darren Moore. They draw influence from the electroacoustic music tradition and noise music as well as the foundations of abstract video art and dub music. Their music is gestural, textured, and rhythmic. They use modular synthesisers, electronic effects, and percussion as pathways to create an evolving improvised dialogue.  

Brian O’Reilly works within the fields of electroacoustic composition, sound installations, moving images, and noise music. Also, he is a contrabassist focusing on uncovering the inaudible textures and hidden acoustic microsounds of his instrument by integrating electronic treatments and extended playing techniques. In addition to his solo performances and works for moving images, he plays modular analogue synthesizer and generates visuals in the duos Black Zenith and Electromagnetic Objects, and contributes contrabass and electronics to the noise-jazz group Game of Patience. Currently, he is a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts’ School of Contemporary Music, focusing on electronic music composition, visual music, and creative music-making techniques through the use of improvisation.  

Darren Moore is a drummer, electronic artist, and researcher working in the fields of jazz, improvisation, experimental music, and multimedia throughout South East Asia, Australia, Japan, and Europe. Driven by his passion for artistic expression, Darren is continually challenging himself to explore new territory. He believes life itself is an improvisation and weaves this spirit into everything he does. Darren lives in Singapore with his family and works at Lasalle College of the Arts as a Lecturer in Popular Music. 

Ontario, Canada

Blunderspublik

Pacific Trash Vortex

With over 20 years of experience in sound design, editing, and music composition, Curtis Walker (a.k.a. Blunderspublik) has written and recorded music and sound for film, podcasts, dance, and live performance. The “spublik sound” is a blurring of synthetic and organic sound sources translated to binary code, sculpted, and organized into complex structures and narratives. The end result is a dense, layered sound field that respects musical confines while moving outside their borders. Recent explorations have included ambient modular synthesis under the moniker Murmurer and organizing a fundraising compilation of local electronic music.

Blunderspublik’s latest full-length album, Tracker’s Trails, is available now on Bandcamp: https://blunderspublik.bandcamp.com/

Ontario, Canada

Bob Wiseman

Go To 4:10

Bob Wiseman is a multiple Juno award recipient and Governor-General Media Arts Nominee. His book, Music Lessons (ECW Press), was listed by Canada’s Globe and Mail as a top ten music book of 2020. Currently, he is completing a PhD at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. He is the longest standing board member of Toronto’s accessible, non-profit performance space, The Tranzac Club.

Some career highlights include being kissed by Odetta, being added by David Byrne to his influential playlist, and accompanying Meryl Streep in the final scene of Postcards From The Edge. He believes Sun Ra is, in fact, from Saturn.

Ontario, Canada

Brent Rowan

Bari In & On the “Sky”

Brent Rowan is a professional community musician.  As a saxophonist based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Brent performs in a wide variety of musical collaborations including two-time Juno-nominee Eccodek as well as various big bands, smaller jazz combos, and creative music ensembles. 

Brent has performed and recorded all across Canada as well as in the UK and Germany, at music festivals in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and in London, England to name a few. He has released three recordings of his own compositions: It’s About Time (2006), IZ  (2012), and Where is Local (2016). 

Brent composes and arranges music for many of the groups he directs.  He is the founding director of both the Guelph Youth Jazz Ensemble and the New Horizons Band for Guelph. Brent teaches in the Community Music Program at Wilfrid Laurier University and woodwind and jazz improvisation techniques and concepts at his private music studio.  He is also a clinician and adjudicator at music camps and festivals throughout southern Ontario. 

Brent holds a Master of Arts in Critical Studies in Improvisation from the University of Guelph, a Master of Arts in Community Music from Wilfrid Laurier University, a Bachelor of Music from Humber College, and a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. He is currently a PhD student in the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph. 

Ontario, Canada

Bucko Art Machine (Chris Binkowski & Nick Schofield)

Beluga

Beluga originally screened at EVERYSEEKER in June 2021.

Chris Binkowski, also known as Bucko, is an emerging artist working primarily in electronic music performance. Central to Bucko’s work is the idea of music as a dynamic way to express oneself and connect with people. In his own words, Chris states “every time I perform music live it is an act of advocacy for inclusion and accessibility.”

Technically, Chris utilizes an iPhone mounted to his wheelchair to control a myriad of synthesizer applications, generating interwoven gestures that range from deeply serene to outright unhinged. For this performance of Beluga, Chris presents his expanded ensemble, known as the Bucko Art Machine. An initiative that involves additional instrumental accompaniment, this is an occasion for the signature Bucko sound to be elevated alongside producer Nick Schofield to make improvised music with a partner skilled at ambient music and synthesizers.

Taking influence from Air, Stereolab, and LCD Soundsystem, Chris’ musical output is equally innovative and intriguing, often taking audiences on a brave sonic expedition. In concert, Chris has opened for like minded artists, such as Jessica Moss, Organ Mood, and Danielle Dahl, performing his solo music to receptive audiences at Club SAW and Arboretum Festival. As an artist with a disability, accessibility, visibility, and representation is very important to Chris’ practice. He is an ambassador in the Ottawa arts community for accessibility in creative spaces, and is a recognized scene-builder and pioneer for his work in the experimental music circles.

CBC recently awarded Chris the ‘2021 Trailblazer’ prize for his leadership in the arts. Currently, Chris is working on his debut album alongside producer, Nick Schofield. This body of work fuses his iPhone synthesis with a full backing band to form the Bucko Art Machine.

Alberta, Canada

Calgary Opera Labs

Co-presented by Calgary Opera.

The Seeds of Namwayut (Excerpt)

IF 2021 will feature an excerpt from the making of Namwayut, the first instalment in Calgary Opera’s Opera Labs series. To watch the full video this excerpt has been taken from, please visit calgaryopera.com/namwayut.

This video features Marion Newman, Parmela Attariwala, Ian Cusson, Yvetter Nolan, Melody Courage, Michelle Lafferty, and Asitha Tennekoon.

Founded in 1972, Calgary Opera is one of Canada’s most innovative and ambitious professional opera companies. 

Fast approaching its 50th anniversary season, Calgary Opera has become known nationally and internationally for its commitment to the development of Canadian talent and the creation of new operas. Calgary Opera serves our entire community with innovative and inspiring operas in a multitude of forms and venues, and through educational activities and the training of young Canadian artists while developing our people and managing our operations in a fiscally sound and efficient manner. This institution aspires to be a leader in the opera field, known for its intensive collaboration with arts organizations of all sizes, a thoughtful balance of traditional classics and more alternative works, and a mix of larger-scale and smaller artistic projects.  The company will rely on a network of diverse sources to recruit artistic and operational talent, with a strong commitment to develop and showcase top Canadian talent.

USA

Candice Hopkins and Raven Chacon

Songline

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer of Tlingit descent originally from Whitehorse, Yukon. She is Senior Curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art and co-curator of the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada. She was a part of the curatorial team for documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany and a co-curator of the major exhibitions Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, and the 2014 SITElines biennial, Unsettled Landscapes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing is published widely and her recent essays and presentations include “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind and Sounding the Margins: A Choir of Minor Voices at Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway. She has lectured internationally including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dak’Art Biennale, Artists Space, Tate Britain and the University of British Columbia. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art and the 2016 Prix pour un essai critique sur l’art contemporain by the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco. She is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.

Ontario, Canada

Carey West and Jeff Wilson

Carey West and Jeff Wilson have been collaborating consistently since 2000 on a range of musical projects including raising a daughter. Carey is a vocalist, songwriter, and researcher who was inspired after a long stint as an elementary music teacher to research questions surrounding voice, agency, and improvisation. She is currently enrolled in the Critical Studies in Improvisation PhD program. She continues to perform and record. Her latest album, Made of Clay, was recorded and mixed by Wilson and released in the fall of 2017. Jeff Wilson is a percussionist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who has worked with Maza Meze, Jaffa Road, and Ensemble Polaris, among many other groups. He also works as a dance accompanist, spending many hours improvising under the direction of artists such as Jon Bonham, Serge Bennathan, and Janet Johnston.

Mexico

Carina López

Carina López is co-presented by UNAM.

Originally from Mexico City, Carina López has played the bass professionally for more than 20 years and has toured internationally with various groups and artists. She has also developed a professional career in sound production and post-production in film and television. She is currently part of the band Klezmerson and continues to produce original music for media and other experimental art movements.

USA

Carla Kihlstedt

26 Little Deaths – A Work in Progress

Carla Kihlstedt is a composer, improviser, songwriter, singer, violinist, mother, and educator. She graduated from Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a degree in classical violin performance, but her musical life has taken a far more circuitous creative path since then.

She is a founding member of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat, The Book of Knots, Minamo, and 2 Foot Yard. She also enjoys creating large-scale collaborative song cycles that pull from her various musical influences and use song form to explore a single idea from many angles. She has written for the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

Her recent work, including Black Inscription (written with Matthias Bossi and Jeremy Flower) and her upcoming international treble chorus project, Long for This World, investigate our connection to the natural world. She is currently writing for the vocal sextet, Variant 6, and for the Dither Guitar Orchestra.

Carla is on the faculty of the Contemporary Improvisation Department of the New England Conservatory, the MFA in Composition program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the Creative Gesture Lab for composers and choreographers at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She lives in Cape Cod, MA with her partner and their 2 kids. She is a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Her band, Rabbit Rabbit Radio, releases a song on the first day of every month to their subscribers at rabbitrabbitradio.bandcamp.com.

Ontario, Canada

Caroline Gillis

Another Thing I Didn’t Do During the Pandemic

Caroline Gillis grew up in Cape Breton and currently resides in Toronto, where she has been an actor for over 30 years. She has appeared in theatres across Canada, from the Belfry in Victoria to Neptune in Halifax.

She has had a long-term working relationship with Daniel MacIvor, first appearing in See Bob Run in 1987 and, most recently, performing in New Magic Valley Fun Town. Others include: Communion, A Beautiful View, and Marion Bridge.

She narrated the audiobook Into That Fire for Penguin Random House and recently appeared in Mrs. America (FX/Hulu). Caroline is the author of her own play, Caveman Rainbow, and has an MA in Theatre Studies from the University of Guelph.

France

Catharine Cary

What I Longed For, Guéthary, 2021

Catharine Cary paints space. But it was not always so. Trained as a diplomat, she worked in 45 countries across 3 continents, spending 10 years running big, complicated urban projects in New York City before decamping to Paris to paint and to dance.

One of her paintings hangs on a yacht between a Diebenkorn and a Motherwell and her installation, “Whisper,” was at the 2011 Venice Biennale. She has tagged (legally) the 5-star palace Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, and illegally, well, elsewhere.

From 2012 to 2017, she co-created Instant Pudding! which ignited improvisation across Europe. She is currently co-firing WHAT IIIF?, the research festival that asks the absurd question, “Can improvisation be documented?“.  She started a PhD at the Royal College of Art called Plastic Presence and the Smell of Capitalist Time, but a year later realized it was much more useful to improvise her life.

Catharine animates several rather amazing and regular improvisation sessions via Zoom and feels that all her arts have come together into painting the rectangle. As part of the Corona Improv Sessions and the All Women’s Networked Jam Session, Catharine performed at Ars Electronica 2020. She writes a letter a day (and sends it by snail mail). If you would like to receive one, let her know. She just recorded her first children’s book. Catharine thrives in the anarchive, that interstitial infrathin remembrance of all that is not concrete, and in that in between she eats as much butter as she can.

Oregon, USA

Catherine Lee

Shedding Skin: An interspecies improvisation with the Bombyx mori (domestic silkworm moth)

Shedding Skin was recorded live on July 3rd, 2021. Catherine Lee has spent the past three summers raising Bombyx mori (domestic silkworm moths), and they have been a profound source of inspiration. She recorded this piece using a single microphone placed directly in the box with the silkworms. This microphone captured both the constant drone-like sound of the silkworms voraciously eating mulberry leaves and her improvisation on oboe d’amore in response to them. These sounds were sent directly into the Scuffed Computer Improviser (SCI) programmed by Taylor Brook, which listens, learns, and improvises with the sounds that it has heard. She continued improvising with the sounds produced by the SCI and the silkworms in real-time. Throughout, Catherine was guided by the experience of the silkworms growing and shedding their skins during their instar stages.

Catherine Lee actively commissions evocative new music and has extensive experience in classical, contemporary, interdisciplinary collaborations, and free improvisation setting on the oboe, oboe d’amore, and English horn. A founding member of the Lee+Hannafin Duo alongside Matt Hannahfin, Lee is also part of the Re:Soundings trio which performed Roscoe Mitchell’s seminal work Nonaah at the Park Avenue Armory (NYC, 2019) and whose recording of the piece is available on Roscoe Mitchell and Ostravaska Banda (WideHiveRecords, 2020). Lee’s most recent solo CD, Remote Together (Redshfit Records, 2021), features works by Canadian and American composers residing in the Pacific Northwest. A well-known researcher and dedicated teacher, Lee is on faculty at Willamette University and holds a Doctor of Music in Obo performance from McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), and a certification from the Deep Listening Institute (New York).

Ontario, Canada

Cathy Nosaty, Erin Robinson, and Mark Korven

Late Prayer

Cathy Nosaty is a musician, composer, musical director, and teaching artist. She began her musical training at age three as a classical pianist and her love of creative collaboration led her to work in dance, theatre, and scoring to picture. Over the past thirty-five years, Cathy has written music for over one hundred theatre productions across Canada. Her work has been heard on international stages with Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Manitoba Theatre For Young People, and DynamO Théâtre. Cathy has scored a dozen documentary films including The Motherload for CBC Doc Zone and was Assistant Conductor /Keyboard 1 for the Toronto company of Jersey Boys.

Cathy has been a passionate teaching artist for numerous programs including the After School Opera Program for Canadian Opera Company, Youth Inside Opera for Tapestry Opera, tdsbCREATES and Swallowing Clouds for Princess Dance Productions. Cathy conducted community choirs for Unfolding for Community Arts Guild and Moving Parts for Fujiwara Dance.

Other projects include music workshop facilitation for Call and Response (Roy Thomson Hall/Massey Hall), Dispelling Darkness (Sampradaya Dance Creations), and creation of The iPad Vocal Group at Waterfront Neighbourhood Centre for the WeeFestival, as well as participation in the Artist and Climate Change Incubator with The Arctic Cycle and composer for Poetry & Healing (The League of Canadian Poets).

Cathy has been nominated for five DORA awards and for the 2020 Louis Applebaum Composer Award – Music For Young People. She is a member of the Toronto Musicians Union Local 149 and the Screen Composers Guild of Canada.

Saskatchewan, Canada

Charity Marsh and Evie Johnny Ruddy

Imagine This

Dr. Charity Marsh is Director of the Humanities Research Institute, Director of the IMP Labs, and Professor in Creative Technologies and Interdisciplinary Programs in the Faculty of Media, Art, & Performance at University of Regina.

Dr. Marsh has produced and facilitated multiple workshops on creative audio and digital technologies; she has curated the Flatland Scratch Seminar and Workshop Series, developed supports for remote communities with hip hop programming, and engaged in numerous collaborative hip hop and interactive media projects with many community partners.

Dr. Marsh’s current program of research focuses on Girls Rock Regina and the impacts of community arts-based initiatives on expanding possibilities for women and non-binary people. In 2020, she released the award-winning documentary, I’m Gonna Play Loud: Girls Rock Regina and the Ripple Effect, which focuses on the musical experiences and impacts of Girls Rock on the organizers, musicians, and volunteer women and non-binary folks involved.

Dr. Marsh has published on Hip Hop, women in popular music, gender and technology, interactive media and performance, and community arts-based programming. She is co-editor of We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel.

When the lockdown related to Covid-19 began in Saskatchewan in March 2020, Dr. Marsh began co-hosting a weekly radio show for 91.3 FM CJTR Regina’s Community Radio Station called Imagine This Music! along with her children, Ilse and Aksel, and partner Evie Johnny Ruddy.

Evie Johnny Ruddy (they/them) is a socially engaged interdisciplinary artist and PhD student in Cultural Mediations at Carleton University. As a PhD Fellow with the Transgender Media Lab, Evie is helping to develop an online database of film and audio/visual works made by transgender, non-binary, Two-Spirit, intersex, and gender non-conforming artists.

In 2020, Evie’s interactive web project with the National Film Board, Un/Tied Shoes, won a Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling Award from Columbia University School of the Arts Digital Storytelling Lab and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. In 2019, Evie partnered with UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity to lead Stories That Move You, a portrait and digital storytelling project by and for transgender and non-binary people in Saskatchewan. Evie co-produced the audio walking tour Queering the Queen City, which features place-based stories told by queer, trans, and Two-Spirit folx at sites throughout downtown Regina and the city’s Heritage Community located on Treaty 4 lands.

As a PhD student, Evie is researching the ethics of documenting trans subjects. They are particularly interested in the role of improvisatory practices for fostering productive spaces for trans collaborators to exercise agency over how they are represented.

Switzerland

Charlotte Hug

In Resonance

Swiss-born Charlotte Hug is an inter-media artist, composer, improviser, and musician of the extreme. Her innovative solo performances in distinctive locations have created an international furore. With her inter-medial compositions, room-scores, and Son-Icons (visual sounds), she created a new genre of multidisciplinary music and art.

Hug has reinvented the viola. Her specialty is also a blend of viola and vocals into hybrid sounds. After having completed her studies in fine arts and classical music, she won various artist-residencies in London, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, and Shanghai. She was “artiste étoile” (star artist) at the world-renowned Lucerne Festival and nominated for the Classic:Next – Innovation Award in 2019.

An important influence and inspiration is her long-standing participation in The London Improvisers Orchestra. Hug has developed open concepts and conducted the SPIO. Hug is fully active as a concert performer, soloist, composer, and conductor of her own works at major festivals worldwide. She is a lecturer in improvisation at the Lucerne University of Applied Science and Art and head of the international postgraduate studies Creation & Scenario in Music at the Zurich University of the Arts.

UK

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha

The Dancing Tongue

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha is a Nigerian-born artist living and working in Hampshire. She is the winner of the New Art Exchange Open Main Prize (2019) and a recipient of the Santander Universities Post COVID-19 Performance Making Enterprise Award (2020) supported by Santander Universities and ICCE, Goldsmiths, University of London. Ezugha is also a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter and a Research Associate at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry.

Her piece for IF 2021 was originally commissioned by impossibleperformances.

Ontario, Canada

Christina Kingsbury

Record Snow Fall: Improvised Pandemic Isolation Edition

Christina Kingsbury’s multidisciplinary art practice is inspired by quilting and explores place, ecology, and care. Her work takes the form of performance, social practice, installation, and sculpture. Christina collaborates regularly with poets, ecologists, Elders, artists, choreographers, and the public—including the ecological public—to create relational works that offer a quiet and radical challenge to the commodification of life inherent in capitalism.

Christina received her BFA in Visual Art from York University (2005). Her solo and collaborative work has been shown as public interventions; in curated exhibitions including Lore Arts (2021), Cambridge Galleries (2018), Gladstone GrowOp (2016), the AGG’s Boarding House Gallery (2016); and at events including Kazoo Fest (2017), ALT/Futures: Eco_Hack (New York and Taiwan 2016), and the Guelph International Jazz Fest Nuit Blanche (2011). She is currently working on a collaboration with artist Lisa Hirmer in the form of a nocturnal artwork made for moths.

USA

Darius Jones

What’s Out There?

Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music. Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Commission, Jerome Artist-in-Residence at Roulette, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, and, in 2019, the Fromm Music Foundation commission at Harvard University. Jones has released a string of diverse recordings featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism. His work as a new music composer for voice culminated in a major debut performance at Carnegie Hall in 2014.

Jones has collaborated with artists including Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Craig Taborn, Wet Ink Ensemble, Jason Moran, Trevor Dunn, Dave Burrell, Eric Revis, Matthew Shipp, Marshall Allen, Nasheet Waits, Branford Marsalis, Travis Laplante, FayVictor, Cooper-Moore, Matana Roberts, JD Allen, Nicole Mitchell, Georgia Ann Muldrow, and many more. The New York Times named Jones among the Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 for his Vision Festival performance with Farmers by Nature. In 2018, Darius premiered across the United States a major new composition entitled LawNOrder, a dramatic commentary on social justice and American politics. Jones’ music is a confrontation against apathy and ego, hoping to inspire authenticity that compels us to be better humans.

Greece

Dimitris Tigkas

Dimitris Tigkas is co-presented by Onassis Cultural Centre.

nâv

Dimitris Tigkas is an experienced free improvisation performer who enjoys expanding his musical interactions through a wide range of repertoire and arts. Having studied both classical and early music, Dimitris collaborates with symphonic and chamber orchestras and often plays in theatre and collective art projects. In addition to performing regularly with several early music ensembles, he is a member of Medea Électronique, a new media collective focusing on innovation in the field of contemporary art.

Mexico

Discreantes

Discreantes are co-presented by 17, Institute of Critical Studies

Comenzar por el final (Start from the end)

MARICARMEN GRAUE. Since childhood, I was permeated by creativity. Although music is what I have dedicated most effort and enthusiasm to, I need to express myself with other arts. Writing clarifies and relieves me, plastic arts express visual images and forms of my internal world. Improvising is an essential part of my expression; it is a good exercise of attention, of exchange with what happens outside of oneself.

VÍCTOR H. I am an essayist and researcher. Literature and disease allow me to know and understand the world in which I live. Writing is a means to explore my sick body and identity and leave a record of those experiences. My concerns have gone beyond writing and I have begun an exploration of my body through mobile photography. There I am, exploring new ways to narrate myself.

EDGAR LACOLZ. I was born in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico. I studied Philosophy but I am dedicated to the literary world as a content editor, reading promoter, and documentalist from the everyday. I am also an expansive storyteller: I write short stories, novels, microfiction, and chronicles. Since 2018, my creative way has been influenced by collaborations with performing and graphic artists as well as sociologists and musicians.

Spain / New Zealand / Mexico

Don Malfón & Misha Marks

Don Malfón & Misha Marks are co-presented by UNAM.

Free Improvisation

Don Malfon is a Catalan saxophonist. Born in Barcelona in 1978, he has participated in more than 40 albums, making him one of the most active Catalan musicians in the improvisation scene at a national and international level. He has collaborated with John Edward, Agustí Fernández, and Barry Guy, among many others.

Misha Marks has been part of the Mexico City soundscape since emigrating from New Zealand in 2008. He explores the sonic possibilities of six wires attached to a box, extracting a surprising gamut of sounds through traditional guitaristic approaches as well as extended techniques that probe the physicality of the instrument and its sound-producing capabilities.

South Korea

Dong-Won Kim

Improvisation on 4 Different Traditional Korean Rhythmic Structures

Before the pandemic, I was enjoying myself: challenging myself with a new music vibe, experimenting with something new, and collaborating with foreign improvisers. But it’s not happening these days. However, thanks to the pandemic, I had a grateful moment of looking into the roots of my musicality. One of my musical reflections at the moment is rechewing all the traditional elements. As a part of that, playing improvisation on traditional rhythmic structures feels organic to me. Indeed, tradition is an everlasting element of my music.

Percussionist, pedagogue, vocalist, composer, improviser, Dong-Won Kim has studied various forms of traditional music from great Korean music masters. In 1987, he was a political prisoner for assembling illegally for a funeral ceremony for an innocent young victim who was killed by a policeman’s teargas gunshot. By participating in many intercultural projects, he has been devoted to sharing the profound beauty of Korean traditional culture and music with the world. He has performed in Europe, the US, Japan, and many other countries, especially as a member of cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. Kim teaches music online as a professor of Wonkwang Digital University, Korea. He has also written a fairy tale known as Story of Samulnori (2001), and he was featured in a music documentary film, Intangible Asset Number 82 (2009).

USA

Douglas R. Ewart

Homage to George Perry Floyd

The polymathic Douglas R. Ewart has been honored for his work as a composer, improvising multi-instrumentalist, conceptual artist, sculptor, mask and instrument designer, builder, and more. As an educator, Ewart bridges his kaleidoscopic activities with a vision that opposes today’s divided world by culture-fusing works that aim to restore the wholeness of communities and their members and to emphasize the reality of the world’s interdependence.

Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Ewart immigrated to Chicago in 1963. There he studied with the master musicians of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—an organization for which he later served as chairman at different intervals from 1979-1987 and into the new millennium. He also studied music at VanderCook College of Music and electronic music at Governors State University.

Ewart is the founder of Arawak Records, the leader of ensembles such as the Nyahbingi Drum Choir, Quasar, Clarinet Choir, and Douglas R. Ewart & Inventions. He is a designer and creator of instruments and kinetic sonic sculptures that have been exhibited in venues such as Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago. “Crepuscule,” his vast periodic conceptual work, is collectively actualized by scores of musicians, dancers, visual artists, poets, capoeiristas, puppeteers, martial artists, activists, honored elders, and more.

Ewart’s honors include a U.S. Japan Creative Arts Fellowship, a Bush Artists Fellowship, and an Outstanding Artist Award granted by former Chicago Mayor, Harold Washington. He is a Professor Emeritus at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago.

Saskatchewan / Ontario / Iran

Earth and Ether Trio

Musical Meditations with Birds

Earth and Ether Trio was formed in 2019 as a collaboration among Stacey Bliss (SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Regina), James Harley (Professor, Music/Critical Studies in Improvisation, University of Guelph), and Reza Yazdanpanah (Graduate Student, Critical Studies in Improvisation, University of Guelph). Coming from varied musical backgrounds, the trio first performed together in Gaspé, then in Guelph. A few days of exploration and recording in December 2019 led to the current project. Gongs and Persian Tar are combined with bird sounds that have been processed in an indeterministic way on the computer.

Germany / Greece / Austria

Elena Kakaliagou

Elena Kakaliagou is co-presented by Onassis Cultural Centre.

addressing the things that hurt

Elena Margarita Kakaliagou is a Greek-Austrian french horn player and performer based in Berlin since 2010.
After studying with Vagelis Skouras (Athens) and completing her Bachelors with Hector McDonald (Graz) and Masters with Erja Joukamo-Ampuja (Helsinki), she received scholarships from Klangforum and Ensemble Modern.
Her field of interest became contemporary music, free improvisation, and multidisciplinary projects. Her work is now focused on the political and social aspects of music and art.

Elena founded the trio PARA in 2010 and the Nabelóse Duo with Ingrid Schmoliner in 2016. Since 2014, she
has been a member of both Zinc&Copper and zeitkratzer. She has worked with Kasper T. Toeplitz, CC
Hennix, Thomas Noll, Katharina Klement, Riikka Innanen, Eliane Radigue, James Andean, and Matias Guerra.
She has performed premiers as a soloist and in various combinations at Festivals such as Maerz Musik, Musica,
Warsaw Autumn, New Adits, FIMAV Victoriaville, Tokyo Live, and others. Her music has been documented on
more than 15 albums of various styles supported by grants and residencies.

New Brunswick, Canada

Emily Kennedy

Emily Kennedy is co-presented by RE:FLUX

the air that sits in the space between us

“the air that sits in the space between us” is a semi-improvised piece that incorporates field recordings, voice, cello, and synthesizer. The field recordings and projected video footage were collected during long walks around the city of Moncton, NB while Kennedy was the White Box Artist-in-Residence at Galerie Sans Nom during the 16th RE:FLUX festival.

Emily Kennedy is a cellist and composer based in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Often seen collaborating with electronic musicians, dancers, visual artists, and songwriters, her personal writing is an opportunity to synthesize her classical training with interests in improvisation, minimalism, and pop music. She mulls over translation, repetition, self reflection, and time in her work, using loop and effects pedals to expand the possibilities of her instrument.

Ontario, Canada

Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor

Phone Scroll

Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor is a guitarist and multidisciplinary researcher who is completing their MA in Critical Studies in Improvisation. Emmalia has recorded and produced multiple albums with their current musical project, Bonnie Trash, alongside their sister and co-creator, Sarafina. Bonnie Trash has received national praise for blending Northern Italian folklore with creative research to present modern horror stories. Emmalia’s work in the local arts community includes coordinating the Girls Rock Camp Guelph chapter, curating live music and theatre, and live sound engineering.  

Quebec, Canada

Eric Lewis, Deanna Radford, and Michaela Grill

Latency

“Latency” was inspired by the delays, connections, and omissions that occur along infrastructural lines of communication in relation to human experiences of pandemic time. It was recorded beside the NDM CN Rail line on unceded land at Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, longitude: 45; 31; 43.5000000000000853 and latitude: 73; 36; 433000000001627. The opening text is an excerpt from the “Oral Messages” introduction in A Coney Island of the Mind, poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions Books, New York, 1955, 1958.

Eric Lewis and Deanna Radford have collaborated together in a number of improvisational settings around Montréal with large ensembles as well as in a trio with flautist, Ellen Waterman. “Latency” is their first project as a duo.

Eric Lewis is primarily an improvising brass player. He is a member of the 312 Ensemble, The Free Jazz Messengers, and The Instant Synthesis Ensemble, among others. He is also a professor of philosophy at McGill University.

Deanna Radford’s poetry and criticism have appeared in print and online publications. Her poetry can also be heard on the EP, Bur sting brea k’r, by her group, Cloud Circuit (2020). She is at work revising her first manuscript of poetry.  

Illinois, USA

Ernest Dawkins

Ernest Dawkins Black Star Lines Postcards Project

One of the life goals of Ernest Dawkins is for his music and compositions to reflect the evolving collective cultural memory of the American jazz aesthetic. Dawkins is one of the world’s premiere saxophonists and composers. He is an entrepreneur with years of experience working with new media technologies to produce and promote his work and that of the jazz community online and in digital venues. He is leader of several ensembles, including the New Horizons Ensemble, Aesop Quartet, Chicago Trio, Live the Spirit Big Band, and the Chicago 12. He is also a member of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. Dawkins has recorded numerous CDs and his publishing company, Dawk Music, has eight releases to date.

France

Erwan Noblet and Lechapus

De Nouveaux Yeux

Erwan Noblet is a French vocal explorer, passionate about the infinite power of the human voice. He is a voice teacher, a singer, and an improviser. Free vocal improvisation has become a meaningful way for him to explore and make music with people from all over the world. He recently studied with mentors such as Bobby McFerrin and Rhiannon and graduated from Shenandoah University with a Masters of Music in Contemporary Voice Pedagogy. In 2021, he will join the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph.

Lechapus poétise sur le monde qui l’entoure en mettant en musique des jouets en plastiques, des blisters de nouilles chinoines, des tubes de pastille pour le bain Reine des Neiges. Il fabrique des micros pour sonoriser des fers à repasser et les potions magiques de la sorcière cornebidouille. Lechapus chante des chansons festives sur la fin du monde et parfois récite des poésies electroménagères!

—

Lechapus poetizes the world around him by making music with plastic toys, packs of Chinese noodles, and tubes of Frozen-themed bath pastilles. He turns microphones into sound irons and the magic potions of the raven witch, Cornebidouille. Lechapus sings festive songs about the end of the world and sometimes recites household appliance poetry!

Newfoundland/Ontario, Canada

ETA

ETA 10 Minutes

AndrEw Staniland, Ambrose PoTtie, DAniel Oore

electrotelemacoustic

ethically treated atoms

environmentally transmissed audiation

wats ur ETA?

England, UK

Evan Parker

Journal of a Plague Year

Born in Bristol in 1944, Evan and his family moved to West London near Heathrow Airport where my father worked at the age of 9. He completed his A levels at Chiswick Polytechnic and then went to Birmingham University where he was “required to terminate [his] studies” after two years. The one clear piece of instruction he took to heart was to “prepare for the coming Age of Leisure.” He had been working hard on the saxophone, so this advice coincided with his own plans.

In the late 60s, he moved back to London, was asked to join the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, went on to co-found the Music Improvisation Company, the Musicians’ Co-operative, Incus Records, and MUSICS magazine. He sat on the Jazz Sub Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain and later the Music Panel. He made connections with like-minded musicians in Germany, Holland, and the US, where he continues to work. More recently, he started another record company, psi, and has built a catalogue of 85 recordings either as musician or producer. In 1990, he founded his ElectroAcoustic Ensemble to investigate the then-new technology of live processing of acoustic instruments. He was awarded a Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2008, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in 2016. He was awarded the Albert Oehlen Instant award in 2019.

Russia / Norway

Evelina Petrova

Evelina Petrova’s Imaginary Folklore

Evelina Petrova was born in an industrial city close to St. Petersburg, Russia. She studied music in a local music school where she took up accordion at the age of twelve. She continued her studies in St. Petersburg and graduated from Mussorgsky’s College of Music, State Conservatory, and State Theatre Arts Academy. She attended a master course at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

Evelina has lived in Norway since 2012. She has collaborated with many musicians, dancers, actors, and film directors as a composer and performer. Her main musical interest and inspiration as a composer comes from folk music. She experiments with various folk traditions, attracting artists of different approaches and experiences. Petrova blends Russian folk music, classical music, and quite avant-garde improvised music in her playing. She explores the possibilities of both her own voice and accordion and, at the same time, breaks the limits of the traditional expression of both.

Scotland

Evelyn Glennie

Tam Tam Improvisation

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest orchestras, conductors, and artists. Evelyn paved the way for orchestras globally to feature percussion concerti when she played the first percussion concerto in the history of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1992. Evelyn has commissioned over 200 new pieces for solo percussion from many of the world’s most eminent composers to vastly expand the percussion repertoire. She regularly provides masterclasses and consultations to inspire the next generation of musicians. The film ‘Touch the Sound’ and her enlightening TED speech remain key testimonies to her innovative approach to sound-creation.

Leading 1000 drummers, Evelyn had the honour of a prominent role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and now has over 100 international awards, including the Polar Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. She was recently appointed the first female President of Help Musicians, only the third person to hold the title since Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Evelyn is currently creating The Evelyn Glennie Collection with a vision to open a centre that embodies her mission to Teach the World to Listen. She aims to “improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening as proven in her book ‘Listen World!’. We want to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower.”

Ontario, Canada

George Elliott Clarke

Jazz Poetry Riffs

The 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke is a revered artist in song, drama, fiction, screenplay, essays, and poetry. Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960, Clarke is also a pioneering scholar of African-Canadian literature. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard.

He holds eight honorary doctorates, plus appointments to the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. His recognitions include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

Clarke’s work is the subject of Africadian Atlantic: Essays on George Elliott Clarke (2012), edited by Joseph Pivato. But Clarke is also a librettist, and has had a hand in three operas: Beatrice Chancy (composer: James Rolfe), Québécité (composer: dd Jackson), and Trudeau: Long March / Shining Path (composer: dd Jackson). He’s also released these recordings:

• George Elliott Clarke: Lush Dreams, Blue Exile. Halifax, NS: Pottersfield Soundtracks, 1994. Tape.
• George Elliott Clarke Koiné Opera (GECKO). Vicenza, Italy: The Art Box, 2017. CD.
• The Afro-Métis Nation, Constitution. Toronto: The Afro-Métis Nation, 2019. CD.

His latest project? Vocals and lyrics for rapper Shad’s song, “Storm,” to be “dropped” imminently.

Ontario, Canada

Georgia Simms with Elise LeGrow

Georgia Simms is co-presented by Guelph Dance Festival.

Just Keep Going

Georgia Simms’ 20-year dance performance career, both as a company member with Dancetheatre David Earle and as a freelance artist/choreographer, has taken her to different parts of Canada and to France and South Korea. She has taught Graham-based modern technique as well as improvisational practices in a variety of contexts since 2005.  

These experiences in dance combined with her academic studies in geography, governance, and arts-based community engagement, inform her creation of embodied learning experiences for University of Guelph students in the First-Year Seminar Program. She also weaves movement into group facilitation and program design for the organization, Art Not Shame.  

In her recent artistic residency with Guelph Dance, she experimented with familiar music, experimental playlists, emotional narratives, and invented-in-the-moment movement, allowing the residues of technique, lived experience, beloved lyrics, and haunting instrumentation to guide her dance. She continues to challenge the binary understanding of composition and improvisation and the worth of these practices in her body.  

Prayers (not in the religious sense, but rather as a means of connecting to soul/spirit) have helped her navigate the layers of disillusionment and reckoning that have, for her, most dramatically marked pandemic time. 

Georgia lives in Guelph with her partner, Adam, and their three-year-old daughter. 

Ontario, Canada

Germaine Liu

Mint Conditions

Germaine Liu (b. 1983, Hong Kong) is a composer, scenario-maker, and percussionist based in Tkaronto. Liu is interested in exploring and sharing things she finds joyful in collaborative settings, with hopes that participants are open and willing to participate. She loves tactile, movement, sonic, and physical explorations of found objects and percussion.

Some scenarios she composed include Still Life—a 45-minute sounding installation for found objects; Puzzle Piece, for prepared violin; Water Music—pieces for water and found objects; CeramiX—for ceramic creations by Chiho Tokita, See, and Draw exploring live-interactive notation with open instrumentation ensemble; Quarantine Playground, co-composed with Joe Sorbara using Zoom Video Communications Software as part of the score; and UnDrum-set Solo for Duo, with collaborators Susanna Hood, Bea Labikova, Stacy Lee, Elysha Poirier, and Mark Zurawinski.

In addition to her interest in sounds/movement/touch, she makes jewelry as handmade by germaine with the intention of using recycled materials as a way of crafting them in a new light. She is also part of the Willow Gardens Collective with friends, where she is happily learning how to grow, share food, care for and love the land.

Illinois, USA

Hamid Drake

Natural Rhythm

Hamid Drake is internationally renowned as one of the world’s leading jazz and improvised music percussionists. Born in 1955 in Louisiana, Drake moved to Illinois with his family as a young child—similarly to Fred Anderson, who would later become one of Drake’s mentors. His first experiences with music were at church and in school as a young child, with his position as a drummer for the school play solidifying his life-long love for music. 

Drake worked closely with Fred Anderson until his passing in 2010. He has worked with other talented musicians such as Don Cherry, Marilyn Crispell, Pierre Dorge, Johnny Dyani, Hassan Hakmoun, Herbie Hancock, Joseph Jarman, George Lewis, bassist William Parker (in a large number of lineups), and has performed a solstice celebration with fellow Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang semi-annually since 1991. 

Hamid won the Jazz Journalist Award for Percussionist of the Year in 2009 and Downbeat Critics Polls in 2006, 2010, 2017, 2018, 2019 as best percussionist. In 2017 he was awarded the title of Chevalier Des Arts et des lettres. The Ordre des Arts et des lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Though a large portion of Hamid’s has been the role of a sideman, he is now also devoting his energies and creativity as bandleader and co-leader focusing on his own groups and projects.

Mexico

Héctor Infanzón

Héctor Infanzón is co-presented by 17, Institute of Critical Studies.

Héctor Infanzón es egresado de la Escuela Superior de Música del INBA, con estudios en la Escuela Nacional de Música y en Berklee College of Music de la Ciudad de Boston. Durante más de 40 años de trayectoria, se ha destacado como compositor y pianista, siendo especialmente reconocido en el género del jazz y en la música de concierto.

Ha sido invitado a participar como solista y como compositor por las prestigiadas orquestas: Tonkünstler Orchestra en Viena, Twilight Orchestra en Indonesia, Nagoya College of Music Orchestra en Japón, The String Orchestra of the Rockies-Montana y Bryan Symphony en los Estados Unidos. En México ha colaborado con la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes, Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México, Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM, Orquesta Filarmónica de Acapulco, Orquesta Filarmónica de Querétaro, Orquesta Sinfónica de Aguascalientes, Orquesta Sinfónica de Michoacán, Orquesta Sinfónica de Puebla, Orquesta Sinfónica Mexiquense y Orquesta Sinfónica Sinaloa de las Artes.

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Héctor Infanzón is a graduate of the INBA School of Music, with studies at the National School of Music and at the Berklee College of Music in the City of Boston. During his 40+ years of experience, he has stood out as a composer and pianist, being especially recognized in the jazz genre and in concert music.

He has been invited to participate as a soloist and as a composer by prestigious orchestras such as Tonkünstler Orchestra (Vienna), Twilight Orchestra (Indonesia), Nagoya College of Music Orchestra (Japan), and both String Orchestra of the Rockies and the Bryan Symphony Orchestra in the United States. In Mexico, he has collaborated with the National Symphonic Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Fine Arts, the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra, the UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra, the Acapulco Philharmonic Orchestra, the Querétaro Philharmonic Orchestra, the Aguascalientes Symphony Orchestra, the Michoacán Symphonic Orchestra, and the Puebla Symphonic Orchestra, among others.

Ontario, Canada

Hossein Soleimani

Hossein Soleimani is co-presented by Small World Music Centre

I became interested in playing music in my teens. I started out with singing and then then expanding my portfolio of skills to include Kamancheh, a traditional Iranian musical instrument. Playing this instrument for me was a way to calm myself down from stressful day to day life and not to think about anything but music for a few hours a day. While studying at the university in the field of engineering, continued learning music from several prestigious musicians, including world renowned and Silk Road Ensemble, maestro Kayhan Kalhor. A few years later, me and some of my friends formed a band. I played Kamancheh, composed and lead the band. I have continued to garner critical acclaim as leader of the band Sayesar. Together with my band, I released 3 albums: Familiar Glance, Good Days, and Forty Nights of Solitude. Individually, I have participated in several music festivals inside and outside Iran and won a number of awards in composing and playing Kamancheh. I have so many experiences in the field of Persian traditional music and Fusion music.

Greece

I broke the vase

I broke the vase is co-presented by Onassis Cultural Centre.

effects of working night shift

We are I broke the vase (Eva Matsigkou, Nefeli Sani), a female duo that creates musical performances. We make small rituals that are linked to our music, but also to our spiritual and bodily pursuits. We apply processes such as deep listening, sound exploration, free improvisation, phonetic expression, speech, composition, site-specific projects, and anything else that can contribute to the desired result, trying to overcome the barriers of censorship and musical and/or social stereotypes. We use instruments, objects, microphones, electronics, voices, recordings, and loops. 

Czech Republic

Iva Bittová (in performance with Ensembles Musiques Nouvelles)

Dos Kelbl

Iva Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntál, northern Moravia, in what was then Czechoslovakia and is nowadays the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Iva attended drama pre-school, specializing in violin and ballet. In due course, she gained admittance to the Music Conservatory in Brno, often called the Czech Republic’s Second City. She graduated in drama and music. During her studies, Iva took part-time engagements as an actress and musician in Brno’s Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose On A String Theater). She cites these engagements as some of the most formative and influential of her life. Around this time she also featured as an actress in radio, TV, and movie productions. Later on, while working full time in theatre, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her father’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an instrumentalist and by composing her own music.

Norway

Ivar Grydeland

Improvisation

Ivar Grydeland is a Norwegian musician, chiefly operating within the realm of contemporary improvised music. His main instruments are guitars and pedal steel guitars. Grydeland has toured regularly in Europe, Asia, and throughout North and South America over the last 20 years with his main improvising ensembles, Huntsville and Dans les arbres, as well as with the Norwegian artist, Hanne Hukkelberg. He has released and contributed to more than 40 albums with his main groups, as a solo artist, and in other projects on labels like ECM, Hubro, Rune Grammofon, and Sofa—a label he started together with Ingar Zach in 1999. Along with Dans les arbres and Huntsville, he has performed on stage and recorded in the studio with Henry Kaiser, Paul Lovens, Nels Cline, Thurston Moore, Tony Oxley, Yumiko Tanaka, and Tetuzi Akiyama, among others. Grydeland is Associate Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he also is engaged in artistic research.

New York, USA

Jacob Cohen

Jacob Cohen is co-presented by the ArtsEverywhere Festival.

Flame for Pawel

Jacob Cohen is a Brooklyn-based experimental cellist and instrument maker. He developed a unique style of improvisation while performing in the New York City subways. He created the program Cello Without Walls to bring live music and art to Rikers Island and worked with incarcerated youth from 2014-2018. His program was disbanded in December 2018 and he was banned from working at Rikers Island for life due to his work helping a young man who claims innocence to create a fundraiser for legal services. Recently, he has been working on a series of short films documenting performances, collaborations, and encounters.

Ontario, Canada

Jane Bunnett

Trees and Social Distancing

Internationally acclaimed five-time Juno award winner Jane Bunnett has turned her bands and recordings into showcases for the finest musical talent from Canada, the US, and Cuba.  Bunnett is known for her creative integrity, improvisational daring, and courageous artistry. Her exploration of Afro-Cuban melodies expresses the universality of music and her ability to embrace and showcase the rhythms and culture of Cuba has been ground-breaking. Two documentaries have been made about Bunnett’s work: Spirits of Havana, by the National Film Board, was presented at numerous film festivals internationally, on television (CBC, PBS), and in Europe. A more recent film, Embracing Voices, has been shown at film festivals and is awaiting commercial release. As an educator, spokesperson, and social activist, Jane remains unafraid to explore uncharted territory in her quest for excellence.

UK

Jayne Wilson

Jayne Wilson is co-presented by Elysium.

The Equilibrists

Jayne Wilson is an artist and filmmaker working with experimental approaches to moving image and installation. Her constructed narratives sit at the juncture between art and documentary and revisit the themes of technology, legacy, and progress. She has exhibited widely in events and screenings including Wroclaw Media Art Biennale, The Anthology Film Archive; New York, London Short Film Festival, and Experiments In Cinema, New Mexico.

Ontario, Canada

Jeannette Hicks and Melissa Joakim

Lemon Berry Electric

“Lemon Berry Electric” is an improvised conversation between two friends, some berries, lemons, soap, lightning, wires, and time.

Jeannette Hicks is a visual artist, philosopher, and emerging arts writer in Guelph, where she plays with materials and thinks about how the arts can contribute to positive social change.

Melissa Joakim is a lighting and projection designer based in Toronto. She plays music as Saturn City, an improvised electronic project based on the moons of Saturn.

Ontario, Canada

Jeff Bird and Sue Smith

Illimitable Repeating Action

The Bell Piano and Organ Company was established in Guelph in 1864 and by the late 1920s had produced over 170,000 instruments. They were shipped all over the world, gracing the homes of Queen Victoria, Kings of Italy and Spain, and a Turkish Sultan, as well as everyday parlours and living rooms like ours. Our Bell piano, manufactured in 1905, was a gift from Sue’s mother upon graduation from the University of Guelph. The piano had been rescued from the infamous “Chooch” in downtown Guelph and rebuilt by Steve & Shirley Potter. Its cigarette burns and the carnival colours painted on the backs of the hammers remain. It has a huge, gloriously rich sound and is a joy to play, so consequently, it has appeared on countless recordings.  All of the sounds and images in the video are from our beloved Bell upright, serial number 27427.

Jeff Bird is a founding member of the seminal folk group, Tamarack. With Cowboy Junkies, he was part of the legendary The Trinity Session.  He continues to record and tour the world with them. He has realized 16 recordings of his own as a soloist and collaborator. Jeff has scored music for both film and television. He is an experimental filmmaker and performance artist whose work has been showcased at festivals from Dawson City, Yukon to Vladivostok, Russia. His latest project is contemporary interpretations of the music of the 12th-century mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, performed on the harmonica. In 2019, Cowboy Junkies, along with Jeff, were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Sue Smith is a singer, songwriter, composer, producer, and teacher. With a passionate interest in the natural world, much of Sue’s work takes inspiration from the landscape and its many interpreters. Sue is a co-founder of Guelph’s legendary Hillside Festival, an original Bird Sister, and Co-Artistic Director of the ethereal choral ensemble, Ondine Chorus. As Artistic Director of Season Singers, Sue has written and produced nine original children’s musicals. Sue has released six albums—most recently, her pandemic offering and 2nd solo project and magical collaboration with the Potion Kings, “Tonight We Sail”. 

UK/Canada/Iran

Jemma Llewellyn, Ben Finley, and Reza Yazdanpanah

Improvising Across the Lifespan

Jemma Llewellyn is a PhD student at the University of Guelph studying Critical Studies in Improvisation. Her research, practice, and scholarship focus on amplifying youth voices through adult allyship. Jemma is interested in using participatory action research methodologies to investigate improvised youth-led activist performances on and offline in relation to mental health.

Reza Yazdanpanah is an Iranian musician who is an improviser, performer, and composer. Since 2009, he has been a music faculty member at the University of Guilan, Iran, where he teaches Persian classical repertoire, Radif, and Improvisation on tar and setar (Persian plucked chordophones). Me, Myself, & I; Reza et Moi, Tamashay-e-Saba, Eshq Amad, and Goshayesh are his recorded improvisation/compositions based on folkloric, traditional, and classical Persian music.

Ben Finley is a performer-composer specializing in acoustic bass and electric bass (in multiple tunings and with effects). He grew up on a music festival farm (Westben) witnessing many ecosystems of music-making. Ben aims to cultivate music that embraces the unique individual life experiences of its participants. This often manifests through improvisation, hybrid texts, the human voice, electro-acoustic worlds, learning from the biosphere, community projects, and exploring multi-stylistic compositional frameworks. Ben is the creative director of the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s international/multi-generational Performer-Composer Residency. He is a current PhD candidate of Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, composing-improvising creative ensemble music and studying music festivals as sites of ecological restoration.

Ontario, Canada

Jesse Stewart

Solo Improvisation for Euphone (aka Cristal Baschet)

Jesse Stewart is a Canadian composer, improviser, percussionist, instrument builder, visual artist, educator, and community arts activist dedicated to re-imagining the spaces between artistic disciplines. He has performed and recorded with musical luminaries including Pauline Oliveros, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Joe McPhee, David Mott, Ernst Reijseger, Stretch Orchestra (with Kevin Breit and Matt Brubeck), Michael Snow, and many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours including the Order of Ottawa, and the 2012 Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy) for “Instrumental Album of the Year” for Stretch Orchestra’s self-titled debut CD.

His music has been heralded as “exceptional” (Cadence Oct. 2002), “phenomenal” (Cadence Nov. 1999), “ingenious” (Exclaim! June 2006), and “brilliant” (Truths for Serious Drummers, 2012). “Stewart quietly opens the door for us to a limitless world of delicate sonic beauty,” writes Randy Raine-Reusch in Musicworks 97. “Highly recommended ear-cleansing” states a review in Italy’s Touching Extremes (2007). “Jesse Stewart is an eloquent and poetically powerful percussionist, composer, improviser and teacher—a man of ideas and inventions,” writes jazz legend William Parker. “Jesse is an incredibly innovative artist. He’s a performance artist, he’s a jazz drummer, he’s an incredible creative force” states Roman Borys, cellist with the internationally acclaimed Gryphon Trio. He has been described as “one of the finest young drummers and percussionists on the scene today” (Frank Rubolino, One Final Note Summer/Fall 2002) and as “one of the most innovative musicians in Canada” (OttawaJazzScene, 2015).

Jesse is a professor of music in Carleton University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture and an adjunct professor in the Visual Arts program at the University of Ottawa.

California, USA

Jessica Perea and John-Carlos Perea

Ghosts (A. Ayler) for Cedar Flute and Double Bass

Dr. Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina, German/Scottish American and Irish/French Canadian) and Dr. John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, German, Chicano) are musician-scholars whose work intersects the fields of Native American & Indigenous studies and music & sound studies.

Jessica currently works as an Associate Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, where she is the founding director of the Indigeneity Collaboratory, an Indigenous-led and Indigeneity-centered research collective working to advance relational ways of being, knowing, and doing to generate more just futures for Indigenous communities. Her first book, Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska, will be published in Fall 2021 as part of the “American Musicspheres” series by Oxford University Press.

John-Carlos is an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley (AY2021-22). His most recent publication, co-authored with Jacob E. Perea, is “’What the Music Could Be: Revisiting the Unexpectedness of Jim Pepper” (2019, Kalfou). John-Carlos’ most recent creative work is Improvising Home (2017), a multi-movement work for cedar flute and large ensemble funded by grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at SFSU. In April 2019, he was recognized by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s American Indian Initiative for his musical contribution “to reclaim space, to challenge false narratives, and to reimagine public art from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples.”

Brazil

João França, Lygia Testa Torelli, Caio Testa França

Batucada

João França’s love of visual art drew him to filmmaking early in life. Born and raised in Brazil, he started his own company, Belina Filmes, as he graduated in Audiovisual Arts at the University of São Paulo. For the past decade, he has prolifically documented, edited, and directed video content for the web and TV channels.

His film, Eye on Water (2009), won the São Paulo Environmental Film Festival; his tribute to an emblematic actor in the country, In the fields of David (2010), was nationally broadcasted. In 2013, he made his debut in fiction with the comedy Dog Quente (‘Hot Dog,’ 2013), a short film nominated at Festival Curta-SE. He was the cinematographer for a season of The world as seen by Brazilians (2013), a series for TV and Netflix; as well as for Second Half (2017), a feature documentary on soccer awarded at CINEfoot and shortlisted at 11MM at Berlin (2018).

During his stay in Canada, he created a directed the web series Storylines (2016) and connected to the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, where he directed a short documentary of the Musical Improvisation Camp at Land’s End (Why I’m Here, 2017).

USA

Joe McPhee

Joe McPhee, born November 3, 1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He is currently a member of Trio X, Survival Unit III, and has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Raymond Boni, The Thing, Trespass Trio, and Universal Indians, among many others. With a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections, and reach for music’s outer limits.

Ontario, Canada

Joe Sorbara

27 June 2021

“27 June 2021” is three overlapping improvisations, all made on that day while listening—for the first, second, and third times in at least a decade—to Sarah McLauchlan’s song, “Hold On,” from her 1994 album, The Freedom Sessions. I had borrowed my Mom’s car for a few days and happily found Fumbling Towards Ecstacy in its CD player. This is music that has meant a great deal to me since I was a teenager and that my Mom and I still bond over today. I had been thinking of using something to connect multiple improvisations together for this IF contribution and it occurred to me as I was setting up my gear that I remembered this performance of “Hold On” being more open and loose than the one on Fumbling…, though I hadn’t listened to The Freedom Sessions in years. On that hunch, I found it, pressed play, and recorded the drum set performance you hear and see here followed immediately by the table percussion part and then the string part. It was a wonderful experience interacting both with the music itself and with my memory of it after so long.

Canadian drummer and percussionist Joe Sorbara has spent more than two decades developing a reputation as an imaginative and dedicated performer, composer, improviser, organiser, writer, and educator. Sorbara is equally comfortable playing jazz, free improvised music, indie rock, and chamber music, but is most at home when playing them all at the same time. He has played and recorded with the AIMToronto Orchestra, Ken Aldcroft, Alien Radio, Jared Burrows, Anthony Braxton, François Houle, the Imaginary Percussion Ensemble, Mars People, My Misshapen Ear, Never Was, Evan Parker, Allen Ravenstine, Reliable Parts, Remnants Trio, Clyde Reed, and Friendly Rich. Sorbara is currently developing a book for a post-pandemic Toronto-based quintet. Other projects under his own name include a Vancouver-based quartet and the woodwinds-and-percussion trio, The Imperative.

Joe is a long-time student of master drummer Jim Blackley. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music from York University in Toronto and a Master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph where his work focussed on critical improvisation studies, literary and cultural theory, and pedagogy. He is currently studying toward a PhD with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Joe has worked extensively as a workshop facilitator and guest lecturer and has taught for twelve years in the Music Department at the University of Guelph.

Quebec, Canada

Jonathan Voyer

Kaushik Dhwani – Alap

Jonathan Voyer has a Bachelors degree in Education, a Masters in Religious Studies, and a PhD in Practice and Theory of Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). He received his initial training with voice teacher Louise Yard from whom he learned the Bel Canto singing technique. A disciple of santoor maestro Pandit Satish Vyas and of vocalist Pandit Somanath Mardur, he now evolves in the Hindustani Classical Music tradition. With dancer Julie Beaulieu, he founded the company Saṃskāra: les artisans du passage to promote transcultural dialogue through arts. Jonathan is a member of Centre d’études et de recherche sur l’Inde, l’Asie du Sud et sa diaspora (CERIAS) and a lecturer in arts at UQAM. He performs regularly in Canada and abroad.

Manitoba, Canada

Jordan Sangalang

Jordan Sangalang is co-presented by SOUND OFF: A Deaf Theatre Festival.

Imagined Reality

Jordan Sangalang, taken under the wing of Hot Thespian Action’s Shannon Guile, took flight with 100 Decibels in the summer of 2014. Jordan made his performing debut during high school in Florida, where he sang songs all around the state. He had his professional theatre debut performing in Nina Raine’s Tribes as Billy, in Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera as Mr. Peachum, and in Phantom of The Opera as Raoul. He has done ASL performances including poetry at World Poetry Day, storytelling at the Storytelling Festival, and visual vernacular for Royal Manitoba Theatre’s Tiny Plays, Big Ideas festival. Jordan aspires to show audiences the beauty of building connections through ideas and feelings in ASL. 

USA

Joshua Abrams

Excavation 6821 for Bass, Bells, Nakatani Kobo Bow & Rattle

Joshua Abrams is a composer, bassist, and improviser. He has played and recorded with artists including Fred Anderson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Hamid Drake, Axel Dörner, Theaster Gates, Rob Mazurek, Joe McPhee, Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, and The Roots. Abrams has scored the music for nine feature-length documentaries including four by Steve James: The Interrupters, Life Itself, the Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, and the docuseries America To Me.

Since 2010, Abrams has composed, recorded, and toured with a shifting lineup of musicians as Natural Information Society (NIS). Grounded in Abrams’ interwoven and multi-layered compositions, the group’s long-form environments have been described as ecstatic minimalism. NIS has released six albums for Eremite records, including Simultonality (2017), Mandatory Reality (2019), and decension (Out of Our Constrictions) with Evan Parker (2021).

Joshua’s other recent releases include Cloud Script (RogueArt), a quartet with Ari Brown, Gerald Cleaver, and Jeff Parker; and Mind Maintenance (Drag City), a duo with Chad Taylor. He released Excavations 1 a solo bass lp on Feeding Tube in 2018. Abrams was a 2018 Grants for Artist recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

USA

Josslyn Luckett

Pulling Through: A Pledge (For Billie Holiday and Irene Kitchings)

Josslyn Luckett is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at NYU, where she currently serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. She is also an affiliated faculty member of NYU’s Asian Film and Media Initiative (AFMI). She is a contributing editor for Film Quarterly and her work was recently included in their special Spring 2020 dossier, Asian American Film at 50, edited by Brian Hu and B. Ruby Rich.

Her current book project examines the pre-history of the filmmakers known as the “L.A. Rebellion,” by engaging the multiracial media “insurgents” of UCLA’s Ethno-Communications Program whose activist film work changed the face of independent media in Los Angeles and beyond. A former Executive Story Editor for The Steve Harvey Show, her original screenplay, Love Song, was directed by Julie Dash and produced by MTV.

Her PhD is in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and she also has an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU. She’s proudest of her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Ontario, Canada

Judith Thompson

Judith Clare Thompson is a Canadian playwright and theatre-maker who lives in Toronto, Ontario. She has twice been awarded the Governor General’s Award for drama. As well, she received the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for a female playwright writing in English and is proud to have won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. She is the Artistic Director of Rare Theatre, a company dedicated to creating theatre with under-represented communities.

Ontario, Canada

Justin Gray

Bss Veena and Electric Bass Improvisation

Justin Gray is a producer, bassist, composer, and educator based in Toronto. As an electric bassist, double bassist, and Bass Veena player, Justin performs in a variety of traditional and contemporary musical ensembles from around the world. Additionally, Justin leads his own contemporary world music ensemble, Justin Gray & Synthesis. Justin is on faculty at Humber College in Toronto.

As a producer and recording, mixing, and mastering engineer, Justin has worked with artists from across the globe in a diverse range of musical styles at Synthesis Sound.

Over the course of his career, Justin has received a number of awards and distinctions. He was nominated for World Music Album of the Year (CFMA, 2020) and Best Solo Artist (CFMA, 2018) and received the Emerging Jazz Artist Award (Toronto Arts Foundation, 2015) and the Shanti Chakravarty Award for Excellence in Indian Classical Performance (York University, 2015).

As a performing artist, Justin is endorsed by Godfrey Guitars, Markbass Amplifiers, D’Addario Canada, Radial Engineering, Lava Cable, and Source Audio.

Louisiana, USA

Kalamu ya Salaam

Jackie Seal

New Orleans writer, filmmaker and educator, Kalamu ya Salaam is a senior staff member of Students at the Center, a writing program in the New Orleans public schools. Kalamu is the moderator of neo•griot, an information blog for black writers and supporters of our literature worldwide.

Ontario, Canada

Karen Kew and Anika Kew Brandstetter

Syndemic

Karen’s work examines identity, representation, and internalization, both within and at the backdrop of coloniality. Her focus shifts between de/constructing cultural narratives to catalyzing acts of resistance from the margin. Karen currently finds herself happily ensconced at MABELLEarts, a community-engaged arts organization in Toronto.

Anika is currently pursuing film studies at Ryerson University in Toronto with a specialization in integrated media. She experiments with image manipulation to create digital landscapes that move between the natural and unnatural, what is real and what is imagined.

Saskatchewan, Canada

Kathryn Ricketts

COVID LUG #2

I have characters that I inhabit for the purpose of creating kinaesthetic provocations towards emancipatory encounters. My 15-year-old character LUG, donning an old overcoat and felt hat and always “lugging” an old leather suitcase, dances stories of displacement, longing, belonging, and in-betweenness.

In this continued period of isolation, LUG and I created a sequel to my neighbourhood LUG where we wandered my neighbourhood; the warehouse district of Regina, Saskatchewan. This sequel is taken in Fort Qu’Appelle, which is about an hour outside of Regina. These shots were taken in the deep of Winter and exemplified that feeling of elongation and isolation. I wanted some words that were timeless and otherworldly and turned to Wordsworth for this. The music is by my good food friend Scott Morgan, with whom I have collaborated extensively

Kathryn Ricketts is an Associate Professor and Chair of Dance at the University of Regina. For 35 years, Ricketts has been researching/practicing dance and visual arts and has articulated the methodology Embodied Poetic Narrative. Her work is focused on developing ‘voice’ through performance with vulnerable populations using artifacts and personal narratives. She runs The Listening Lab, a visual and performing arts ‘incubator,’ and presents exhibitions and performances in her loft in the John Deere Tractor Building.

Ontario, Canada

Kevin Breit

Kevin Breit is co-presented by Mariposa Folk Festival

The Continental Rail Saga

Kevin Breit has recorded with Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash, k.d. Lang, Hugh Laurie, Cassandra Wilson, Holly Cole, Jane Siberry, Serena Ryder, Taj Mahal, Irma Thomas, and countless others. He has released 27 discs to date.

Breit has won a Maple Blues Award, a Gemini Award, a National Jazz Award, a Canadian Folk Music Award, two Juno Awards, and has recorded on albums that earned 10 Grammy Awards.

British Columbia and Quebec, Canada

Kevin McNeilly and Geoff Mitchell

Variants of Concern. Coda, Strathcona Aftermath

“Strathcona Aftermath” is an improvisational coda to a socially-distanced music/text collaboration by Geoff Mitchell and Kevin McNeilly that responds to the eviction of marginalized and precarious people encamped at what was called a “homeless tent city” at Strathcona Park, near Vancouver’s Downtown East Side in April 2021. This work forms part of a larger project called Variants of Concern. Kevin made a field recording of improvised text in a parked car across from the park as it was being cleared in late April. Geoff responded with an improvised set of theme and variations for piano, which was overlaid on a rough edit of video images from the park and then re-improvised in the studio live over the video. What results here is a form of bearing witness to, and listening closely to, a fraught space of human departure.

Kevin McNeilly is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia and a researcher with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. A book of poems about early jazz trumpet players, Embouchure, is published by Nightwood Editions. He teaches and writes about contemporary poetics, media aesthetics, comics, and listening.

Geoff Mitchell is an improvising musician living in Hudson, Quebec. A Truro, Nova Scotia native, he studied Jazz at St. Francis Xavier University and at McGill University (MMUS, 1995). He played and studied with drummer Jerry Granelli in Halifax in 1987-89, and subsequently with Art Lande and Don Cherry at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. Geoff has appeared at the Montréal Jazz Festival, the Tremblant International Blues Festival, and the Atlantic Jazz Festival. He works in film sound as a rerecording mixer based in Montréal.

Ontario, Canada

The Kween Company

The Process – Life of a Choreographer

The Kween Company is a one stop hub for marketing, social media, and branding for BIPOC owned and operated businesses. It also supports BIPOC creatives in the dance and artist space while offering education and awareness in activism, allyship, and on political issues. The Kween Company believes that everyone is royalty!

Kween is CEO of TKC and Vanessa Laidley is Social Media Management for TKC, and they also both co-Own The Heels Academy with their business partner, Michelle. Both womxn are very excited to bring you into our world to see the life of a choreographer.

New York, USA

Laura Ortman

Laura Ortman is co-presented by Electric Eclectics.

Scended Sparks

Laura Ortman is a White Mountain Apache artist who works across recorded media, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, and Okkyung Lee. Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and pedal steel guitar, often sings through a megaphone, and is a producer of audio works using field recordings. She has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe.

France

Lê Quan Ninh

Eraflures

Classically trained percussionist Lê Quan Ninh has been active since the early 1980s in the field of contemporary music interpretation and free improvisation. He was one of the founding members of the Quatuor Hêlios, a percussion ensemble from 1986 to 2012 (creations by Jean-Pierre Drouet, George Lewis, Kaija Saariaho, Jean-Christophe Feldhandler, Daniel Koskowitz, Vinko Globokar, Giorgio Battistelli, Chrichan Larson, GeorgesAperghis, etc.). Along with cellist Martine Altenburger, he founded in 2006 the ensemble]h[iatus, a contemporary music ensemble whose members are both performers and improvisers (creations by Vinko Globokar, Peter Jakober, Steffen Krebber, Jennifer Walshe, Anthony Pateras, etc.). He is one of the artistic advisors of the Ryoanji Association and of the festival Le Bruit de la Musique which develop works of creation, sensitization, and transmission devoted to contemporary musical creation.

As an improviser, he has been involved in several regular training sessions with artists such as Daunik Lazro, Michel Doneda, Paul Rogers, Frédéric Blondy, Peter Kowald, and Butch Morris, among others. He has a privileged relationship with dance (Franck Beaubois, Marie Cambois, Clara Cornil, Olivia Grandville, Masaki Iwana, Patricia Kuypers, Fine Kwiatkowski, Yukiko Nakamura, Michel Raji, Kirstie Simson, Moeno Wakamatsu).

In 2014, he published IMPROVISING FREELY: THE ABCS OF AN EXPERIENCE available from Publication Studio. A 2018 addendum in French is available to read in the Revue des Ressources.

British Columbia, Canada

Lee Pui Ming

Morning 1 and Morning 2

Lee Pui Ming, called by the giant trees, moved to a southern gulf island in British Columbia, leaving Toronto, Ontario, which had been her place of residence for 33 years. Being on this piece of land, nature and her elements are moving through her body and energizing her soul. She is very pleased to be able to share her play with other improvisors in this festival. The journey continues.

British Columbia, Canada

Like the Mind

Time Space / Space Time

Like the Mind, the Vancouver version, is a pared-down trio iteration of the full sextet. Formed in 2019, Like the Mind is an instrumental ensemble led by Meredith Bates made up of six award-winning female musicians from Canada and Sweden: Peggy Lee (cello), Lisa Ullén (piano), Meredith Bates (violin), Lisen Rylander Löve (saxophone), Elisa Thorn (harp), and Emma Augustsson (cello). These women have pursued their careers to achieve excellence and be recognized both within and beyond the borders of their respective countries for raising the bar of artistic innovation and merit.

Their accolades are countless and they continue to forge ahead in their fields as artists of absolute integrity and outstanding ability. Born out of the unmistakable similarities between their music sensibilities, Like the Mind is dedicated to creating soundworks that represent the vast and limitless landscape that both Canada and Sweden share. The drastic vertical descent from mountain peaks to the ocean, the endless plains, and the permafrost of the North.

Canada and Sweden share so many visible and tangible geographic elements, not to mention cultural and socioeconomic similarities, that it is inevitable that their musical outputs share so much sonically. Improvised creative music is the spontaneous voicing of these cultural ties and represents, in the moment, through the socio-communicative language of sound, everything that we feel together.

British Columbia, Canada

Lisa Cay Miller

Boom Breach (2021)

Presently living on the unceded Territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples, Lisa Cay Miller is an improvising pianist and composer who has performed with Nicole Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, Butch Morris, Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, Audrey Chen (USA), Ig Henneman, Michael Moore, Michael Vatcher, Wilbert de Joode, Anne La Berge, Jasper Stadhouders, Onno Govaert (Amsterdam), Éric Normand, Vicky Mettler, Raphaël Foisy-Couture (Montréal), Nova Musica Eletroacústica (Brazil), Dylan van der Schyff, Peggy Lee, Jesse Zubot, Joshua Zubot, JP Carter, and Kenton Loewen (Vancouver). Miller creates music with her ensembles Q, Sleep Furiously, and Hejira’s Brew in collaboration with Vicky Mettler, Rapheal Foisy-Couture, Carol Sawyer, and Kenton Loewen (Not for Proper).

Miller is the Artistic Director of the NOW Society, presenting a broad community of improvisers and heads the 8EAST social space for new culture in Vancouver. Her compositions have been premiered by the Flat Earth Society, de Bijloke ensemble(Belgium), the Tetzepi Bigtet (Amsterdam), mmm… (Tokyo), NME, Pianorquestra (Brazil), Ensemble SuperMusique, le GGRIL, Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), Vancouver New Music, Standing Wave, Jesse Zubot, Turning Point Ensemble, Rachel Iwaasa, Hard Rubber Orchestra and the François Houle Jane Hayes duo(Vancouver).

British Columbia, Canada

Lorna Crozier

Signs

An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has written seventeen books of poetry, including God of Shadows and The House the Spirit Builds. Her memoir about her life with poet Patrick Lane, Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats) was published in the Fall of 2020. She is the recipient of many national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award, three Pat Lowther Awards, the Raymond Souster Award, and two lifetime achievement awards. Her work has been recognized with five honorary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser universities

Denmark

Lotte Anker / Sub Habitat

Chyma/Session 2

Lotte Anker is a Copenhagen-based saxophonist/improviser/composer working in the field between improvisation, experimental jazz, and contemporary composed music. In recent years, her own groups and collaborations have included Anker, Taborn, Cleaver (with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver), What River Ensemble (with Phil Minton, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Chris Cutler, and Garth Knox), Electric Habitat and Sub Habitat (Sofia Jernberg, Mazen Kerbaj, Andrea Neumann, Sten Sandell, Katt Hernandez, Nina de Heney, Ikue Mori, Burkhard Beins, Thomas Lehn, and Michael Vorfeld ao), and the duo with Fred Frith.

Other past and present collaborators include Okkyung Lee, Raymond Strid, Ute Wasserman, Andrea Parkins, Magda Mayas, Joëlle Léandre, Cristof Kurzmann, Jakob Riis, Sylvie Courvoiser, Ikue Mori, Evan Parker, Torben Snekkestad, Frelosa (Fred Frith & Sam Dühsler), Paul Lovens, Johannes Bauer, John Edwards, Nate Wooley, Satoko Fujii, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Mokuto Trio, and Life and Other Transient Storms.

Ontario, Canada

Lucy Bilson

Monster Catalogue #6

Lucy Bilson is a designer, researcher, and educator working at the periphery of contemporary graphic design practice. In addition to operating an independent studio, Lucy explores the interdisciplinary space between design and art; she often uses her work to contest the boundaries of contemporary practice. Lucy recently curated an exhibition at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery titled Articulating Legibility, which explores the implications of illegibility in works from the permanent collection. She is currently working on a site-specific installation in collaboration with the City of Waterloo combining typographic poster design and community-generated responses about what it means to be in Canada, on this land, as the nation marks Canada Day.

Lucy was recently selected as the 2021 Waterloo Artist in Residence, through which she will engage the community in an arts practice investigating nature within the urban environment. Much of Lucy’s work crosses disciplinary boundaries, flouting convention and prescribed media in favour of exploring questions about placemaking and disciplinary issues through practice-based research. Lucy has a Masters of Design and a Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies in Visual Culture in addition to a Bachelor of Design (Hons) from York University. She is an incoming student to the Critical Studies in Improvisation PhD program at the University of Guelph.

Singapore

Lynette Quek

Lynette Quek is co-presented by LASALLE College of the Arts.

Untitled

Lynette Quek is an audiovisual maker from Singapore. Emerging from a music and audio technology background, Lynette has nurtured an interest in the sonic arts, combining audio and visual elements in her various works. She is currently engaged in examining synchronisation and interaction within audiovisuality, challenging the notion of the heard/unheard and seen/unseen. Incarnations of her work include site-specific pieces, installations, composition through sound manipulation, and cross-disciplinary performance with the computer, all utilising an ever-expanding list of media including sound, video, performance, and sculpture.

Ontario, Canada / Peru

Maju Tavera

The Internal Sound of Maria Nuquez

The Internal Sound of Maria Nuquez is an ongoing project in which the author uses the only surviving photography of her great-grandmother. Maria Nuquez is remembered as a silent, hard-working woman who never talked about her personal life and had worked as a servant on a sugar plantation. The piece is a reflection on Tavera’s female lineage, trapped in domestic labour, often in the homes of other people. The sound of washing clothes by hand is both a refuge and a trap in which her voice is silenced and distorted but also reverberates through time. 

Maju Tavera is a self-taught artist from Peru living in Toronto, Canada since 2007. She has worked as a photography instructor, nanny, cleaner, waitress, kitchen sever, wedding photographer, Spanish tutor, and many more. In 2019, she completed a BA in Urban Studies at York University and she is currently writing an MA thesis on hand-painted photography from Chile for the Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management program at the institution currently known as Ryerson University. 

Ontario, Canada / Colombia

Marcela Echeverri

A`quos´i`ty

“A`quos´i`ty” is an improvisation piece inspired by the membranous features of rivers, in particular the Eramosa, as porous spaces that encompass a multiplicity of intra-acting agencies brought together by flowing water.

Marcela Echeverri is a musician and anthropologist currently doing her Masters degree in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph. She is a bass player who has played with bands in Colombia and Estonia. Her Masters project concerns itself with the use of sound recording methodologies as a means to produce and present research findings on humans’ relationships to technology. The project was presented in the form of an interactive sound installation featuring recordings made by Marcela in the Tallinn Centre for Biorobotics.

In addition to her academic work, she has been involved in education with non-profit organizations such as CISV and De Vrolijkheid, leading summer camps and music workshops, respectively. She is interested in exploring the possibilities of improvisation in the context of education and community-building. 

Wales, UK

Marega Palser & Stephen George Jones

Marega Palser & Stephen George Jones are co-presented by Elysium.

Tripping Through Newport’s Underbelly

Marega Palser and Steven George Jones are two multi-disciplinary artists working in Newport, South Wales. They work in the often-overlooked urban spaces of their hometown using performance, movement, film, sound, and graffiti to investigate notions of place, identity, and belonging. They also work under the names Cointeen Trash and Kajagoogoo Squadron.

Quebec, Canada

Marianne Trudel

The Cosmos Within

John Korsrud: orchestral composition 
Marianne Trudel: piano improvisation

Marianne Trudel is a pianist, composer, improvisor, and arranger. A generous and engaging artist, a veritable powerhouse in Quebec and Canada’s instrumental music scene, Marianne Trudel has presented multiple artistic projects that not only bring her considerable skills to the fore, but also her keen sense of creativity. 

At once energetic and passionate, her music cross-cuts a wide swath of musical interests. Her moving, spellbinding music is not easily labelled, one of its many strengths. It is at once sophisticated and catchy, authentic and unique. As a performer, she pursues an active career in a variety of settings ranging from solo performances to small and large ensembles. She has presented her music in various countries: Canada, United States, Mexico, France, Spin, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, and China. She has published eight recordings as a leader, all having garnered rave reviews and numerous nominations and awards (Juno, Prix Opus). 

Marianne Trudel has composed for orchestras and ensembles such as Les Violons du Roy (QC), the American Composers Orchestra (NYC), the Henri Mancini Institute Orchestra (LA), the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Jazz de Montreal, the Hard Rubber Orchestra (Vancouver), and the Guelph Symphony Orchestra (Ontario). 

She has shared the stage with many international artists, including Chucho Valdes, Ingrid Jensen, David Liebman, Tony Malaby, John Hollenbeck, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Mark Feldman, Mark Helias, and George Lewis, among others. 

Marianne Trudel currently teaches at the Schulich School of Music (McGill University) and at Cégep de Saint-Laurent.

Canada

MATIVETSKY AMIRI & PAGE

Pathos

Amir Amiri on santur, Sarah Pagé on harp, and Shawn Mativetsky on tabla form the trio Mativetsky, Amiri & Page, tasked with developing a new form of chamber music that is reflective of today’s global society, uniting a myriad of traditions and practices. Musical adventurers, explorers, innovators, virtuosi, their collective creations combine tradition and modernity, emotion and spontaneity; a dynamic coming together of santur, harp, and tabla, unlike anything you’ve heard before.

Amir Amiri was born in Tehran, Iran where much of his youth was spent studying the santur, a 72-string hammered dulcimer that lies at the heart of Persian classical music. Classically trained, Amiri has always sought to explore the limits of his music, stretching beyond the constraints of classical thought. Amiri has worked extensively as a performer, composer, musical director, and consultant.

To encapsulate the career of Montréal-based harpist Sarah Pagé, one would have to draw long, constellation-like shapes across genres, borders and histories. While perhaps best known as a founding and long-time member of roots rockers The Barr Brothers, a brief consideration of her resume reveals the fact that she’s equally at home within traditions as without them. Her first solo LP, Dose Curves, affirms this versatility and reveals Pagé as one of Canada’s most accomplished experimentalists.

Dynamic performer Shawn Mativetsky is considered one of Canada’s leading ambassadors of the tabla, pushing the boundaries of tradition. Acclaimed as an exceptional soloist and a leading disciple of the renowned Pandit Sharda Sahai, he performs both solo and in ensembles, from traditional to contemporary music and everything in between. 

USA

Matthew Shipp and William Parker

Pulse of Slumber

Matthew Shipp is an American pianist, composer, and bandleader. Shipp was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and began playing piano at six years old. Shipp has been very active since the early 1990s, appearing on dozens of albums as a leader, sideman, or producer. He was initially most active in free jazz but has since branched out, notably exploring music that touches on contemporary classical, hip hop, and electronica. Shipp has been continuously improving his repertoire while touring the world and writing new compositions and, since 2011, has been collaborating with Barbara Januszkiewicz. Together, they are exploring new territory through an avant-garde film called The Composer with Matthew Shipp / Barb Januszkiewicz. 

William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and has taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists. Parker’s current bands include the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan’s Hat Flapping in the Wind, and the Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore.  Throughout his career, he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, and David S. Ware, among others. 

Ontario, Canada

Memory Pearl

Moshe Fisher-Rozenberg is co-presented by Wavelength.

Cupola, 2021

Memory Pearl is the alias of Moshe Fisher-Rozenberg, a multi-instrumentalist and consummate collaborator (Absolutely Free, Alvvays, US Girls, Fucked Up). He works from a decidedly electronic foundation, creating blurred sonic landscapes and dazzling bouquets of texture that glisten with nostalgia. His palette is full of warm and saturated hues rife with allusions to assorted technological eras and electronic music idioms. Fisher-Rozenberg is also a music therapist currently implementing clinical improvisation heavily in his work with WWII veterans.

Alberta, Canada

Michelle Bennie

Michelle Bennie is co-presented by the National accesArts Centre

Wild Thing in the City: Exhibition Making with Michelle Bennie

In this video, NaAC artist Michelle Bennie shares her approach to storytelling through exhibition-making while she curates “The Wild Thing in the City.” Through real-time creative decision making, Bennie retitles and connects to artworks by artists from the NaAC with Director of Artist and Program Development, Karly Mortimer.  

This exhibition features works by Susan Brosz, Anna Kozak, Brad MaCaull, Lynn Cameron, Carol Harris, and Amanda Varty.  

Michelle Bennie was born in Calgary and was in special classes in regular schools. She loved the drama they did there. She has work experience at the S.P.C.A, Chapters Books, Boston Pizza, Wendy’s and Harvey’s restaurants. She also keeps a clean house. 

Quebec, Canada

Mili Hong and Eli Davidovici

Mili Hong and Eli Davidovici are co-presented by Suoni per il Popolo.

Transmitting To/From

Mili Hong and Eli Davidovici are an improvised performance duo working in the Montréal area. Their work draws on 20th-century traditions of improvised music, connected as well to the traditional musics of their ancestors. The aim of the improvisational act is to explore space and timbre through the immediacy of the acoustic and the uncanny nature of the electronic and the digital interface. Through these explorations, what is achieved is a warped sense of what is real, what is familiar, and where agency lies.

Ontario, Canada

Mingjia Chen, Julian Anderson-Bowes, Katherine Semchuk

Mingjia Chen, Julian Anderson-Bowes, and Katherine Semchuk are co-presented by the Toronto Downtown Jazz Society.

Prospect

beijing-birthed, toronto-dwelling vocalist-composer mingjia (MING-jee-ya) (she/her) writes music that’s equal parts fantastical & relatable, & performs it with courage & honesty. aside from making mischief with her chamber ensemble tortoise orchestra, she has performed with & written music for grammy-award-winning artists roomful of teeth and andrew yee, matt mitchell, james fernando, the science of what ?, david occhipinti, juliet palmer, christine duncan, GREX, pleasure craft, pomes, emily steinwall, & others. she has performed at various venues and festivals across canada, china, & the US, & has produced four releases as a bandleader. her EP feel seen is described by the whole note as “beautiful, mature and exceptionally coherent”. i care if you listen describes mingjia as “(having) strong command of timbral combinations” and “one to watch.” she enjoys drawing, dancing, & watching the nickelodeon smash hit series avatar: the last air bender. since the pandemic began, mingjia has been taking lots of socially distanced walks & learning to play the guitar.

Quebec, Canada

Moe Clark

tapwêwin – we feast the truth

âpihtawikosisâniskwêw multidisciplinary artist, Moe Clark, fuses together vocal improvisation with multilingual lyricism to create meaning that is rooted in personal legacy and ancestral memory. Originally from Treaty 7, she’s called tio’tia:ke (Montréal) home for over a decade. Her last solo album, “Within,” toured across North America in 2017, and her video poem, “nitahkôtan,” won best indigenous language music video at the ImagiNative film festival. “Fire & Sage/ Du sauge et du feu,” her bilingual book of poetry, was released through Maelström Editions in Belgium.

Moe has six albums of music, both solo and collaboratively, and multiple performance videos. Her music and voice have appeared in documentaries, films, and theatre performances alike. Apart from performance, she facilitates creative workshops with indigenous youth; directed the first bilingual edition of the Canadian Festival of Spoken word; and, in 2016, launched nistamîkwan: a transformational arts organization with an emphasis on intercultural, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational collaboration. Moe has been featured around the world at the Lincoln Centre (US), UBUD Writers & Readers Festival (ID), and Origins Festival in London (UK).

Nova Scotia, Canada

Mohammad Sahraei

Mohammad Sahraei is co-presented by Upstream Music.

Mahoor

This improvisation is titled “Mahoor,” based on the name of one of the classical Iranian Dastgah modes.  It is pronounced similar to mazhoor, and sounding similar to the French pronunciation of majeure, and is similar to the major scale. 

Mohammad Sahraei, who came to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2017, is a musician and ethnomusicologist originally from Iran, where he graduated with a BA in Music and an MA in Ethnomusicology. He is a multi-instrumentalist (Tar, Setar, Dotar, Daff and Robab) and his improvisations, compositions, and performance practices are focused on the music of the Middle East and Central Asia. Mohammad has traveled internationally, researching the music of each country he has visited, collecting more than 60 different and unusual musical instruments. 

Within a few months of his arrival to Canada, Mohammad and his newfound friends formed the group Open Borders. In the last two years, he has organized three large international music concerts, performing many concerts with Open Borders, playing global music and as well as his own compositions and improvisations. He and his bands have played at the Halifax Jazz Festival, Obey Festival, Upstream’s Open Waters Festival, the Halifax Multicultural Festival, and in various Persian and Indian Festivals.

Mohammed particularly enjoys improvising live music during silent movies, presenting these at the Halifax Central Library, Dalhousie University and Kings College, and at Upstream Music Association’s Open Waters Festival. In addition to performance, composition, and arranging, Mohammad also teaches and holds master classes and workshops about the music of various Central Asian countries.

Norway

Moskus Trio

The Owl

Moskus could be the perfect twenty-first century piano, bass, and drums trio. Rather than fetishizing the acoustic purity of their sound, the virtuosity of their instrumental technique, or the integrity of their compositional structures, Anja Lauvdal (keys), Frederik Luhr Dietrichson (double bass), and Hans Hulbækmo (drums/percussion) seem to improvise on ideas more than themes or tunes and to change direction quickly and effectively as they go, abandoning one thought for another with a refreshing lack of fuss. 

Italy

Muhssin Pizii

Muhssin Pizii is co-presented by Nusica.org.

Ŕesonantiæ

In many ways during this past year, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve tried to think of a way to imagine how I can try to morph the idiosyncratic aspects of my instrument, the guitar. So, with “Ŕesonantiæ,” I managed to affect the attack (one of the peculiar timbrical elements of this instrument) and to create a free improvisation based on this concept. To this idea, I’ve added some fictitious harmonies derived from the harmonic series. 

Muhssin Pizii is a young composer, improviser, and guitarist who was born in Rome. He is interested in exploring the elements and aesthetics of contemporary, improvised, composed jazz, creative, and new musics by using different instruments, from a 24 EDO baritone guitar to an O-hole Jazz Archtop. His interests in music range from the study and application of different concepts of the field of microtonality to the research of different approaches in improvised and composed music by studying and analyzing the works of the great composers and theorists of the twentieth century. He’s currently a Masters student in Jazz Guitar at the Conservatory of Milan.

Japan

Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii

AME

Japanese trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends jazz lyricism with extended techniques. This unpredictable virtuoso’s seemingly limitless creativity led François Couture in All Music Guide to declare that “we can officially say there are two Natsuki Tamuras: the one playing angular jazz-rock or ferocious free improv and the one writing simple melodies of stunning beauty. How the two of them live in the same body and breathe through the same trumpet might remain a mystery.”

Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a band-leader who gets the best collaborators to deliver,” says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on nearly 100 albums as a leader or co-leader, the globe-trotting Japanese native synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone.

Quebec, Canada

Navid Navab, Maya Kuroki, and Rainer Wiens

Unstructure Open Improvisation Excerpt

Rippleganger duo, consisting of Maya Kuroki on vocals/movement and Rainer Wiens on kalimba and prepared guitar—often joined by Navid Navab, a gestural-sonic alchemist who brings a unique, organic approach to microsound—have developed a strong following in Montréal because of Maya’s riveting performances and vocal presence, gracefully intertwined with Rainer’s rhythmic fantasies on kalimba and textural explorations on prepared guitar, as well as Navid’s precise gesturally shaped sonic architectures. What unites these three artists is a fearless approach to improvisation and an original sound.

Ontario, Canada

Nick Fraser

Join With Computer Audio

Nick Fraser (drums) has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years. He has performed with a veritable “who’s who” of Canadian jazz and improvised music and with such international artists as Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, William Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, Donny McCaslin, and David Binney. A Juno award winner, he was also awarded a 2017 Chalmers Arts Fellowship. Nick’s recorded works as a leader include Owls in Daylight (1997), Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes are faking it (2004), Towns and Villages (2013), Too Many Continents (2015), Starer (2016), Is Life Long? (2017) and Zoning (2019). For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller, who released four critically acclaimed recordings. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Titanium Riot, The Brodie West Quintet, Ugly Beauties (with Marilyn Lerner and Matt Brubeck), and the Lina Allemano Four. Nick has performed on over 80 commercially released recordings. Recently, he has worked with the Calgary-based Decidedly Jazz Danceworks as musical director for their productions of Juliet & Romeo (2017) and Mimic (2018).

Illinois, USA

Nicole Mitchell and Coco Elysses

Joy is Liberation

Nicole Mitchell is a creative flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator who developed her music in Chicago’s resilient arts community. A United States Artist (2020), a Doris Duke Artist (2012), and a Herb Alpert Award (2011) recipient, Nicole is the founder of Black Earth Ensemble and is a former president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). As a composer, she has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, MusicNOW, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Chicago Sinfonietta. She is the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, and the Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Coco Elysses, a modern-day renaissance woman hailing from Robbins, Illinois, is a producer, musician, actress, voice-over artist, screenwriter, and poet. She is the second female Chair of the 56-year-old venerable AACM (Association for the Advancement of  Creative Musicians). During their second season, she was a featured musician in the critically claimed FOX drama, Empire. Coco was also a featured musician in the book, Black Women and Music: More than The Blues, documenting historical female musicians. Coco performed with the Great Black Music Ensemble of the AACM in Pisa, Italy for The Insolent Noise Festival, at Millennium Park Chicago, The Chicago Blues Festival, and for the Chicago Jazz Festival.  She has also performed with Renee Baker’s Chicago Modern Orchestra Project.

New Brunswick, Canada

Nicole Rampersaud

Dolichonyx oryzivorus

Composer, improviser, and trumpet player Nicole Rampersaud has a unique voice that cuts across a broad range of musical practices and traditions. Her intrepid listening and boundless curiosity have made her an internationally sought-after collaborator throughout several musical communities. Nicole’s individualistic versatility has led to collaborations with many of the leading innovators in contemporary music, including Anthony Braxton, Joe Morris, Ra-kalam Bob Moses, Sandro Perri, and many more. Her primary groups include Brass Knuckle Sandwich (with pianist Marilyn Lerner) and a duo with guitarist Joel LeBlanc. She is also a founding member of the trio c_RL alongside Allison Cameron and Germaine Liu. She relentlessly seeks out and creates spaces to work with a diverse and expanding group of music-makers as a means of exploring and nurturing new connections between creative practices. Since 2008, Nicole has been building a catalogue of solo compositions that deconstruct the trumpet’s sonic possibilities. In solo performances, Nicole improvises composites of her pieces in the moment, resulting in compelling structures that engage audiences in the creation of a connected experience.

Canada / USA / The Netherlands

NOW Society

This contribution is co-presented by NOW Society.

Zeitfaltung • time folding • folding time

This piece was created between March and June of 2020, by 30 musicians and 1 sound engineer.

The NOW Society began as a community initiative designed to support the vibrant community of Vancouver improvisers. Lisle Ellis, Paul Cram, Paul Plimley, Gregg Simpson, and Ralph Eppel founded the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW) Society in 1977. Since then, leadership has also included Clyde Reed, Paul Bruce Freedman, Graham Ord, Kate Hammet Vaughan, Don Druick, Roger Baird, Ron Samworth, Nikki Carter, and, since the spring of 2014, Dr. Lisa Cay Miller. NOW has a history of presenting stellar new works by improvising ensembles in unique and engaging concerts, of collaborating with international artists of commissioning new compositions, of domestic and international touring, and of producing celebrated recordings and publications. NOW Society presents improvisation workshops, and has been presenting them public for over 40 years at the Western Front. Our most exciting new program is the establishment of the 8EAST social space for new culture. Workshops take place at 8EAST, as well as creative improvised music performances, community collaborative events, and informal historical and neighbourhood talks.

Featuring: Anne La Berge, Melissa Hubert, Karen Ng, Andromeda Monk, Bruce Freedman, Ada Rave, Meredith Bates, Joshua Zubot, Parmela Attariwala, Lan Tung, Peggy Lee, Alex Catona, Elisa Thorn, Jeff Younger, Cole Schmidt, Ava Mendoza, Chloe Ziner, Ron Samworth, Jasper Stadhouders, Róisín Adams, Cat Toren, Paul Plimley, Lisa Cay Miller, Marta Warelis, Wilbert de Joode, Clyde Reed, James Meger, and Tommy Babin.

Sound engineering and video editing by Sheldon Zaharko.

Ontario, Canada

Ola Minou

L’espionne

Ola Minou (she/her)—the Persian Pussy of Burlesque—is an Iranian-Canadian dancer, producer, and educator based in Tkronto, Ontario. Known to captivate audiences with her signature pout and storytelling, this coquette loves to pair striptease with a dash of comedy and a pinch melodrama. Since 2017, Ola Minou has taken the stage—both live and online—with Les Femmes Fatales WOC, QueerCab, Kreative Kulture, and Bricks and Glitter. In 2019, Ola Minou co-founded Silk Burlesque, producing shows that centre QTBIPOC drag and burlesque artists, particularly diaspora from SWANA. Her goal is to divest from modesty politics and embrace and amplify the principles of body love and sex positivity. Not your model minority, sweet, sexy, audacious Ola Minou brings character and glamour to every stage!

Ontario, Canada

Olivia Shortt

Olivia Shortt is co-presented by Silence.

makwa

(They/Them: Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) Olivia Shortt is a Tkarón:to-based trans-disciplinary performing artist. They are a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, curator, administrator, and producer.

Highlights include their Lincoln Center (NYC) debut in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble, their film debut performing in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film Guest of Honour, as well as recording an album two kilometres underground with Stereoscope in the SnoLAB (Neutrino Lab in Sudbury, Canada). Recent commissions include Long Beach Opera (Songbook 2020), the JACK Quartet (JACK Studio), a new opera for Loose Tea Music Theatre, and Arraymusic Ensemble (Toronto, 2022). 

Shortt was a finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award and was awarded and named one of the 2020 Buddies in Bad Times’ Emerging Queer Artists. Shortt is featured in the 2020 Winter edition of Musicworks Magazine. They are attending Dartmouth College in the Master’s of Digital Musics Program.

Photo by Alejandro Santiago, glitter edits by Heshaka Jayawardena.

Ontario, Canada

PAMA

Pama

Pama is an experimental music duo that creates evocative atmospheres through improvisation with analog and digital instruments. Ellen Waterman (flutes/voice) and Michael Waterman (theremin, homemade and hacked instruments, processing) have long histories of sonic exploration whether in the context of Ellen’s contemporary music performance or Michael’s work with improvised audio collage band Mannlicher Carcano. As Pama, they create sonic dazzle vector patterns that scramble time, space, and place.

Canada / Colombia / Japan

The Parahumans

Rocks and Wind; Global Union

The Parahumans are Dave Wilson (director, dance score, videography), Viv Moore (dancer, Rocks and Wind), Caroline Niklas-Gordon (dancer, Rocks and Wind), Falciony Cruz (dancer, Global Union), and Yui Ugai (dancer, Global Union). Music by Clozee.

Dave Wilson danced in the UK in the 1950s as part of the Rudolf Laban Creative Dance program in schools. He later studied all aspects of dance training as a P.E. teacher. Moving into dance teaching, choreography, and performing in the 1970s, he studied at Centre of Movement, Toronto and Synergy, Vancouver. Dave toured Sweden and Australia with partner Viv Moore in the 1980s as Remote Control. 

Dave recently retired after 30 years of work at McMaster University, where he founded the McMaster Dance Company. He also founded the Hamilton Dance Company in 1997. His main creative outlet is The Parahumans, a multidisciplinary dance company founded in 1992 based in Toronto. The company toured England in 2002 and 2003. He also performed/choreographed for the first dance fringe festival in Toronto (fFIDA) in 1991. His dance documentary, Boy Dancer, received the Fan’s Choice Award at New York-Long Island film festival in 2011. Dave co-produced the Hamilton Site-Specific Dance Festival and Dance Animation Hamilton. He has an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University. 

Recent productions have included choreography for Dance For Parkinson’s—McMaster School of the Arts interactive xbox/brain regeneration project; choreography for Nesia, a Holocaust dance film; Day of Delight presenting Angels and Humans; Short Dances as part of New Blue Festival; 21 Chopin Nocturnes; New Jazz Dance Improvisations; Dance Alchemy at Dance Ontario Dance Weekend; University of Toronto’s Festival of Original Theatre, presenting Revisioning Historical Dance Through Post-Contemporary Dance. The Parahumans presented four dance solo pieces for IF 2020.

British Columbia, Canada

Parmela Attariwala

Parmela Attariwala is co-presented by the Vancouver Improvised Arts Society.

Orange Poppies for the Stolen Little Ones, 215 and Counting

Violinist and ethnomusicologist, Parmela Attariwala juggles life as a performer-creator, researcher, arts equity advocate, and music educator. Trained as an interpreter of Western art music, Parmela’s creative work explores the liminal space between musical genres, artistic disciplines and identities, often using improvisation as a point of departure. Through the Attar Project, she has released three albums featuring avant-garde works for violin and tabla. She has also collaborated extensively with choreographers (bharata-natyam, butoh and contact) as composer and movement artist. 

For much of the past year, Parmela has been immersed in discussions on radically reimagining the Canadian musical ecosystem, from education through performance. Sprinkled through this gravity have been restorative creative projects including comprovisations, composing sonic memorials based on end-of-life bhakti poetry, dance, and VR scores, and an opera.

British Columbia, Canada

Paul Plimley

Striking a Balance

For the past 45 years, Paul Plimley has been actively developing his music out of the continuum of American and European music traditions: composition and improvisation. He plays the piano, guitar, and vibes/marimba. He has toured with many great internationally-acclaimed improvisers and ensembles in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Plimley has released over 30 CDs, 4 LPs, and 4 TV music documentaries on BRAVO and he has won awards in computer multimedia, various music magazines and books (including 5 and 4-star ratings in both Down Beat and the Penguin Guide To Jazz), and Canada Council for the Arts. His more than 600 compositions cover orchestral, large and small jazz ensembles, solo piano/ vibes/guitar works, CD ROM, electronic music, music for choreographed works, TV, radio, and music soundtracks for film. His CV lists more than 50 great improvisers with whom he has played concerts and made recordings.

He has also been engaged since the mid-1980s as a writer, resulting in two radio plays, a large archive of poetry, and a number of comedy scenarios within the music theatre idiom.

British Columbia, Canada

Paul Watkins (DJ Techné)

Sounds to Light the Way

“Sounds to Light the Way” was recorded on an MPC Live and mixed in Logic Pro X and then performed and cued live in a single take on a Roland SP-404SX, a KORG volca fm, and an iPad running Xynthesizr. The piece is built from a number of voices and was inspired by Ornette Coleman’s statement that “Sound is to people what the sun is to light.” The pandemic has challenged us to find new ways to sound and light the way forward. The track also features voice/quotation from Pauline Oliveros, Sun Ra/John Gilmore, William Parker, and me. It’s easy to only see darkness in these difficult times, but when we sound together, we can venture towards new possibilities and that unknowable edge—the space that Sun Ra called “the other side of nowhere.”

Paul db Watkins is a Professor of English at Vancouver Island University (VIU). He is also a research team member with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). At VIU, he is the Artistic Director of the “Writers on Campus” (Nanaimo) series. He has published widely on multiculturalism, film, hip-hop, Canadian poetry, jazz, and improvisation. Under his DJ alias, DJ Techné, he has completed a number of DJ projects that explore the spaces between improvisation, poetry, hip-hop, and jazz.

Iran

Quartet Four

Quartet Four Performance

Quartet Four was formed in 2020, based on the idea of the meeting and combining of four musical points of view which may not seem to relate upon first glance. Their music is based on improvisations and the musical ideas of band members. The goal is to show that, although we are coming from different cultures with different backgrounds, we can meet each other, form musical dialogue, and make an art piece together. Each Quartet Four band member is a professional musician with years of international music experience. This quartet consists of a guitar player (Farhad Mir Mohammad Sadeghi), a tabla player (DarshanAnand), a double bass player (Mohammad Alizadeh), and a duduk/flute/ney player (Amin Rahimi).

Ontario, Canada

Racquel Rowe

Making Sweetbread with Gran

Racquel Rowe (she/her) is a Black, queer, interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados living in Canada. The notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies is essential to Rowe’s practice. As a Black artist, engaging in critical conversations around race, culture, and gender has furthered her own ability to understand and break away from colonial representations. This process of decolonisation does not come easy, even when work is created to challenge colonial and racist narratives; the critical language necessary to talk about the complexities presented does not always exist. Rowe explores the way history has shaped modern-day depictions of Black women, culture, and thus, how these things affect her lived experience. She considers performative action as a form of exploratory, open-ended research that is constantly evolving.

Quebec, Canada

Rebecca Foon

I Only Wish This For You ❤️

Rebecca Foon is a musician, activist, producer, and co-founder of Pathway to Paris. She has performed and recorded in a wide array of contexts, most notably as co-founder of the modern chamber post-rock ensemble, Esmerine, as a member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (2001–2008), Set Fire To Flames (2001–2004), Colin Stetson’s Sorrow ensemble (2015–2020), and more recently at the helm of her electro-acoustic songwriting project, Saltland. With these entities, Foon has performed around the world and released over a dozen albums on various imprints. Esmerine’s 2013 album, Dalmak, won the Canadian music industry’s Juno Award for Best Instrumental Album. Following a series of six critically-acclaimed releases by Esmerine and Saltland from 2011-2017, Foon began working on new solo music with her first album under her own name released in February 2020, with all proceeds going to Pathway to Paris. In 2014, Jesse Paris Smith and Foon founded Pathway to Paris, a non-profit organization dedicated to turning the Paris Agreement into reality. Together, they launched the 1000 Cities Initiative for Carbon Freedom in 2017, supporting cities in developing and implementing ambitious climate action plans.

Ontario, Canada

Rebecca Hennessy and Michael Herring

Unison, Sawing, and Swinging

Rebecca Hennessy is an award-winning Canadian trumpeter, singer, composer, and bandleader. In November 2020, she released her debut album as a singer-songwriter called All The Little Things You Do. She has released 8 other albums to date as bandleader or co-bandleader with Fog brass band, Hobson’s Choice, Sweet Pea, and Way North. She is also the bandleader for Massey Hall’s Women’s Blues Revue. In 2018 she won the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Jazz Artist Award and was nominated for Montréal Jazz Festival Grand Prix de Jazz in 2016. In 2017, Rebecca was commissioned by Silence in Guelph to compose new music to a selection of acclaimed author Thomas King’s new poems. In 2019, she wrote a big band arrangement of one of these commissioned pieces, “Dig Up The Stories,” for the = Jazz Orchestra & Christine Jensen at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, presented at the National Arts Centre. “Dig Up The Stories” can also be heard on All The Little Things You Do. Currently, Rebecca is working on a new album that she and her partner Michael Herring have recorded at their home studio, featuring Kevin Breit, Dave Clark, and Tim Shia.

Michael Herring is a Juno-nominated double-bassist and composer based in Toronto who writes, performs, and records across genre lines, equally comfortable in jazz as in folk, world, and pop/rock settings. Herring is a major contributor of original music to a number of groups that he leads and co-leads: Michael Herring Quartet, a chordless two-saxophone band drawing inspiration from 1960’s jazz, especially Mingus and Ellington; Way North (New York/Toronto/Ottawa collaboration with Petr Cancura, Rebecca Hennessy, and Richie Barshay) exploring folk musics through improvisation, whose album was one of Ottawa Citizen’s top Canadian Jazz albums of 2015; and Peripheral Vision, a Juno-nominated modern-jazz quartet co-led with guitarist and long-time collaborator Don Scott. Peripheral Vision has recorded five albums, maintains a busy touring schedule, and won the Galaxie Rising Star Award at the Montréal Jazz Festival. Michael Herring’s Vertigo, a modern-jazz sextet, recorded two albums featuring New York’s David Binney, the first of which was included in All About Jazz New York’s Top 5 Debut albums of 2006. Herring has also performed with The Uplifters and Harrington (New Orleans/Roots), two groups where you can hear Herring’s lyrics and lead and backing vocals. Herring has toured and recorded with such great musicians as Kevin Breit, Michael Ward Bergeman (New Orleans), Ab Baars (ICP/Amsterdam), Ken Vandermark, Dave Clark, David Braid, Mansa Sissoko (Mali, Africa), Bucky Pizzarelli, Percy Sledge, and Ernest Ranglin. He received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship (through the Ontario Arts Council) and used it for an extended stay in New York City.

Saskatchewan, Canada

The Remotions, with special guests Erin Goodpipe and Elder Lorna Standingready

215 Beginnings

The Remotions are an online “distanced” improvisation collective initiated by artist and technologist John Campbell using low latency audio and 360 degree livestreaming.

The Remotions are: Norman Adams (cello, electronics); WL Altman (found sound, electronic music, performance art); Stacey Bliss (gong and percussion); Rebecca Caines (sound art); John Campbell (digital art, video, found sound); Helen Pridmore (vocals); and Gao Yujie (live visuals). 

Special guests: 

Erin Goodpipe is a dakȟóta wíŋyaŋ / anishinaabekwe from tatanka najin oyate (Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation) and is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher. With a Bachelor of Indigenous Education from First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv, Regina). She is currently in her Masters and works on a number of health and wellness projects based on her research in kinship, ceremony, and land/sky/water-based practices. 

Elder Lorna Standingready is a direct descendent of Ka-na-hah-cha-pay-o (Skillful Archer), one of the Treaty 4 negotiators, and great-niece of Chief Peepeekisis, son of Ka-na-hah-cha-pay-o. Lorna attended three Indian Residential Schools and is a ten-year Residential School Survivor. Lorna has worked and volunteered in many capacities and is frequently called upon to present a Welcome to Treaty 4 Territory and a Blessing. 

Iran / Canada

Reza Yazdanpanah

Reza Yazdanpanah is presented by The Arboretum at the University of Guelph.

Fritillaria

Reza Yazdanpanah is an Iranian improviser, performer, composer, and educator. Since 2009, he has been a music faculty member at the University of Guilan, Iran, where he teaches Persian classical repertoire, Radif, and Improvisation on tar and setar (Persian plucked chordophones). Me, Myself, & I; Reza et Moi, Tamashay-e- Saba, Eshq Amad, and Goshayesh are his recorded improvisation/compositions based on folkloric, traditional, and classical Persian music.

In 2016, focusing on children’s music education, he established two private music schools (Yazdanpanah Music School #1 & #2) in Shiraz, Iran with his brothers. His recently published book Shur-e-Tar (published by Mashahire Honar) is a comprehensive guide for both music educators and self-teaching students geared toward the elementary level; a peer-reviewd paper about the book, “Elementary Instruction of ‘Tar’ with a Glance on Various Approaches toward Radif,” was published by the International Journal of Arts and Commerce in 2014. In September 2019, he joined the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at the University of Guelph as a grad student and he recently graduated in June 2021. His research interest is in creating musical improvisational games for children as social practice in order to equip them for their future lives.

Ontario, Canada

Richard Underhill

Sax Sound Bath

Richard Underhill’s wonderfully melodic alto sax playing, great writing and arranging skills, and in-from-the-outside soloing make him one of Canada’s most distinctive jazz performers. A founding member of Toronto’s outrageous Sun Ra-influenced Shuffle Demons, Richard won a 2003 Juno Award for his jazz debut Tales from the Blue Lounge and was nominated for the Prix du Jazz at the 2003 Montréal Jazz Festival. His latest album, Free Spirit, is a DVD/CD featuring Lincoln Center Jazz and Wynton Marsalis-alumni trombonist Ron Westray. His 3rd album, Kensington Suite, garnered significant critical acclaim and was nominated for a 2008 Juno Award. His 2nd album, Moment in Time, was also nominated for a Juno Award in 2007. A truly original jazz composer and arranger, Richard’s exciting original music captivates audiences with singable melodies, outstanding musicianship, and engaging performances. Richard was honoured to perform at Roy Thomson Hall for the state funeral of his old friend, the honourable Jack Layton.

Richard has performed and recorded with Dr. John, Taj Mahal, Molly Johnson, Colin James, Han Bennink, Kevin Breit, Julius Hemphill, Colin Linden, Hawksley Workman, Tom Cochrane, Holly Cole, Julie Michaels, Paul Cram, Terry Clarke, Mendelson Joe, Amos Garrett, Bobby Wiseman, Soul Rebels, the Mighty PoPo, the Hemispheres Orchestra, Daniel Janke, Tom Walsh, Hilario Duran and NOMA, to name a few. He leads several diverse groups including his jazz quintet, the Shuffle Demons, the Kensington Horns Community Band, the Rider Raiders, and the improvising electronic groove ensemble Astrogroove.

Ontario, Canada

Richelle Forsey

In Plain View

Richelle Forsey is an artist, urban explorer, and photographer. She draws inspiration for her work through exploring built environments, urban remains, and abandonments that she compulsively photographs and collects artifacts from. She is interested in the results of aleatory creative processes and making objects, experimental films, and images for slow looking, to spark imagination, and to make sense of the contemporary world. Her work has been shown in Canada, the US, and abroad, as well as collaboratively in the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (Toronto).

Richelle is a founding member of the photography collective TLR Club (2004), a member of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and the graphic artist for the indie experimental music label Aural Tethers. Forsey lives and works in Guelph, Ontario.

Ontario, Canada

Rob Clutton

4 Ducks

I enjoyed looking at the archive from last year’s festival—as Ana Ruiz put it, “This festival dignifies work and life itself.” I am grateful to be invited to play. Here are 4 short pieces, improvised with this Festival in mind. The first 3 are acoustic double bass, the 4th is electric bass with effects and multi tracking (if ‘2’ can be considered ‘multi’). The format is audio and I invite you to close your eyes while you listen.

Rob Clutton is a musician who works in the spaces between composition and improvisation, where the impetus to play comes from listening, allowing inspiration to reside in a sonic imaginary. In addition to composing for solo bass, the Cluttertones, Rob Clutton Trio, and Sweet Session, Rob enjoys collaborations with musicians, dancers, and theatre and performance artists.

Australia

Roger Dean

Pitching Spaces

Roger Dean is a composer/improviser and, since 2007, a research professor in music cognition and computation at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University. His research folds into his creative work, currently particularly by means of deep learning computational models for music generation.

He founded and directs the sound and intermedia creative ensemble austraLYSIS, which has appeared in 30 countries. He has performed as bassist, pianist, piano accompanist and laptop computer artist in many contexts, from the Academy of Ancient Music and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, to the London Sinfonietta, and from Graham Collier Music to duetting with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, and performing with other leading improvisers particularly from Europe and Australia.

About 70 commercial recordings and numerous online digital intermedia pieces represent his creative work and he has published more than 300 journal articles. Dean’s current research concerns improvisation and computational creativity, affect, roles of acoustic intensity and timbre, and rhythm generation and perception. With Hazel Smith and Will Luers, he won the 2018 international Robert Coover prize for a work of electronic literature. Currently, austraLYSIS is preparing a duo album of sound and intermedia featuring diverse pairings such as human/computer, human/environment, text/improviser, and image/improviser. Prior to 2007, Dean was a full professor of biochemistry in the UK; foundation CEO/Director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, researching on atherosclerosis; and then Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra.

England, UK

Ryan Heath

Ryan Heath is co-presented by Elysium.

Ritual Practice

Ryan Heath (b. 1995) live and works in Nottingham. He creates moving image, painting and sculpture. His work addresses the built environment and how it makes us think, feel and act.

Heath is a BACKLIT studio artist and former member of Chaos Magic Space. He has exhibited in the UK and internationally, receiving commissions and awards from established organisations including BACKLIT Gallery, UK New Artists, and Ignite Futures.

A strong advocate for socially-engaged art, often working with young people as a creative facilitator. Ryan’s previous partners include Nottingham Refugee Forum, Harris Museum, and Tate Modern. He has also given guest lectures and panel discussions at leading universities and institutions such as The University of Nottingham and The British Library.

Iran

Saba Yazdanpanah

Dancing on the Fears

Saba Yazdanpanah is an 18-year-old singer and pianist who also plays flute recorder. Saba started music when she was 5, learning western classical music on the piano in 2015 when she was 12 years old. By 2016, she was accompanying an orchestra as a pianist. Saba is a self-taught vocalist who has been inspired and trained through listening to pop, jazz, and blues singers like Adele, Sam Smith, and others from various countries.

USA / Mexico

Sandra Paola López Ramírez, Chris Reyman, and River Luna

Last Wake Period

The Institute for Improvisation and Social Action (ImprovISA) is an artistic and community organizing project founded by Sandra Paola López Ramírez and Chris Reyman. ImprovISA, formerly in2improv, relocated from Urbana, Illinois to the US-Mexico border in 2014 where it has enjoyed sustained growth. Throughout its 10-year history, it has reached thousands of people all over the US and in France, Denmark, Colombia, Germany, Canada, and Mexico.

Chris Reyman’s (DMA) background as a jazz musician and composer has guided the development of his career to be centred on interdisciplinary collaboration and improvisation. With a focus on improvised performance, his experience has helped shape ImprovISA’s vision, continuing to ground it in artistic practice.

Coming from a dance and performance background, Sandra Paola’s work focuses on the body as a doorway for individual and collective healing and reconnection. With an EdM focused on aesthetics and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, she has crafted her work with ImprovISA to be grounded in a solid pedagogical framework that is inclusive, embodied, and interdisciplinary.

Since its inception, ImprovISA has strived to bring together people from different backgrounds to create, play, and build together, including survivors of domestic violence, foster and homeless youth, immigrants and refugees, non-profit organizations, after-school programs, senior citizens, the LGBTQIA community, children with disabilities, independent artists, and college students.

Saskatchewan, Canada

Sbot N Wo

Pandemiconium

Sbot N Wo is Helen Pridmore and WL Altman. The voice/electronics improvisation duo was formed at the Banff Centre in 2006 and has toured and performed across Canada since then, including shows with Suddenly Listen (Halifax), Thunder and Lightning (Sackville, NB), Reflux Festival de musique et d’art sonore (Moncton), Montréal, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Regina, and Saskatoon. Sbot N Wo has also performed in Germany, the UK, and Japan. Sbot N Wo has been heard on Radio-Canada and created the soundtrack for the Vincent Trasov film “Flammable”. The CD Songs was released in 2015.

Apart from the duo, WL Altman is an active interdisciplinary artist and Helen Pridmore is a singer in contemporary scored music, experimental music, and improvisation.

Ontario, Canada

Scott Merritt

Be Not Afraid

Scott Merritt is a Canadian recording artist and music producer who has worked throughout North America since 1980. During that time he has released six albums under his own name on labels that include Duke Street Records (in Canada) and both I.R.S Records and Universal Music in the United States. He has also produced and mixed albums for other songwriters and bands at his studio, The cottaGe.

Mexico

Sentire

Punto de vista / Point of view

Sentire is a collective that incorporates the expertise of deaf theatre actors of Seña y Verbo Company and musicians of Liminar Ensemble with a long history in experimental music and improvisation.

Sentire began in 2018 thanks to an initiative of 17, Institute of Critical Studies in order to explore the intersection between music and deafness as ways to enrich our understanding of the field of listening. Sentire develops scenic and performance projects to reflect on the physical, perceptual, and cultural limitations that block listening capabilities.

After two years of continuous work, the artists of Sentire have developed a singular language to create music that combines elements of Improvisation and sign Language. Furthermore, they have experimented with the construction of instruments to approach afresh the world of sound.

Iran / Canada

Shaghayegh Yassemi

Phiale

Shaghayegh Yassemi is a filmmaker and performance artist. She earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in Theater from the Soore University of Tehran, Iran. In 2015, she moved to Montréal and finished her second Master’s, this time in Film Production at Concordia University. Since then she has been going back and forth between Canada and Iran to make her artworks. Most recently, she began work toward a PhD in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph in 2020. She is particularly fond of architecture, the surrounding environment, and the way it communicates with people. For now, she is researching how a piece with performative characteristics can create an experience of poetry.

Ireland

Shane Latimer (with Florian Walter and Achim Zepezauer)

Shane Latimer is co-presented by the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

Toy Store

“Toy Store” is made up of fragments of audio and video captured in the months of May and June 2021. All of the work was recorded in the front room of my house, which has functioned as music room/home studio/paraphernalia storage for the past number of years. The contents of this room have travelled with us through several house moves, being set up in more or less the same configuration in successive dwellings.

I am a musician based in Dublin, Ireland. For the past number of years, my focus has been on improvisation using guitar and electronics, specifically using a semiautomatic bank of samplers to generate a musical environment in which to improvise. I lecture in the Jazz and Contemporary Music program at Dublin City University and I am pursuing a PhD at Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University, Belfast.

Ontario, Canada

Shay Donovan

Quiet Down

The moments that fuel my work usually happen on late nights out with people I love, moments of just the right level of cliche, youthful angst and introspective discovery making way for something bigger. In my work, I take adolescent turbulence and boil it down into a concentrated form of identity-driven stir craze to inject into my practice. This feeling is akin to how plants grow, unruly and twisting, each branch unique to the last but ever-changing depending on the light. Vines can hold you together, weeds tear you apart from the inside, and your garden is never exactly how you want it to look no matter how much you prune and plant. My goal is to explore the cultivation of identity and fundamental “coming-of-age” experiences, especially how they affect how you perceive yourself, by use of a surreal merging of organic forms with familiar figures.

UK

Simon Nunn

Simon Nunn is co-presented by Elysium.

Where Are We Going?

“Where Are We Going?” is a collision of nostalgic imagery made at the height of the first lockdown of 2020. The film creates an audio-visual syntax with archival footage and raw materials featuring the narration of an unnamed, dying man who offers a glimmer of repetitious poetry.

Simon Nunn is a multidisciplinary visual artist focused on exploring the space between fiction and reality through subjects who are possessed by internal ideas that govern their lives. He graduated from Camberwell College of Art (UAL) in 2012 with a BA (Hons) in photography and earned an MA in moving image and sound from Norwich University of the Arts in 2018. His work in documentary and music videos has been screened at numerous film festivals such as the BFI London Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Festival.

Quebec, Canada

Skin Tone

Live in Concrete – Take 2

Skin Tone is a solo performance practice; is saxophone, voice, mbira, and electronics; is an exploration of possible futures; is a recapitulation of hi-stories erased; is an echo of free jazz, both spiritual and harsh; is Black.

Ontario, Canada

SlowPitchSound

This Time On Earth

SlowPitchSound (Cheldon Paterson) is an experimental artist with over 20 years of experience in live composition and multi-disciplinary performance. With a passion for depth and detail in his work, he is heavily inspired by environmental awareness and dystopian sci-fi. His music is like the universe: indefinable, and forever expanding.

A master turntablist, seasoned educator, and visionary artist, SlowPitchSound’s wide versatility has launched him fervidly into the worlds of opera, jazz, classical, electronic music, theatre, and dance. In 2018, he was commissioned by Soundstreams (Toronto, Canada) to compose an original score which he performed with JUNO award-winning ensemble, The Gryphon Trio. His hypnotizing performances have been featured on stages around the world including Canada, Australia, USA, United Kingdom, and Sweden.

SlowPitchSound has supported such groundbreaking artists as Kid Koala, Steve Reich, and Tim Hecker, to name a few.

Although deeply rooted around the turntable, SlowPitchSound is much more than a DJ. He is a genre-less sonic trailblazer with towering technical proficiency.

Wales, UK

Sophie Brown

A Welsh Wordscape / Colonsay Harp and Poetry Improv

Sophie Brown started playing the harp at 8 years old. She first plucked harp strings at the Eisteddfod, an ancient festival celebrating the Welsh language and culture. It was largely due to an outstanding headteacher named Harvey Jones that this initial impulse crystalised into access to training, not to mention the support of parents willing to bring an instrument larger than most furniture into their lives.

Since completing her music degree at Durham University, Sophie has been discovering new paths for her harp playing. These have included a busking tour of the UK and the steady building of a pedalboard for her electric harp, Blue. She most recently trained with Rhodri Davies, known for pushing boundaries and expectations in the decorous harp world, as in the case of the infamous ‘fire harp’ installation. Sophie has also been under the tutelage of Deborah Henson-Conant through her online mentorship and harp-playing academy, while also taking lessons in Meta-Harmony from music theorist and jazz guitarist Tom Glazebrook.

Brown’s approach to combining harp, poetry, and storytelling pulls together fascination with wordplay and a natural tendency for meandering improvisation.  She is very excited to be joining the IMPR cohort for 2021.

Ontario, Canada

standpartners

standpartners are co-presented by The Arboretum at the University of Guelph.

hidden voices, yearning for togetherness

A mix of chambercore, dream jazz, semi-traditional, and post-contemporary, standpartners weaves stringy currents of melodies that tear at the seams. Drawing from their Filipino and Iranian roots, Charity Cruz (violin/vocals/electronics) and Isaiah Farahbakhsh (cello/vocals/electronics) navigate the contrast between self-expression and cultural assimilation through a quasi-composed landscape of sound, noise, and space.

Ontario, Canada / Wales, UK

Steve Donnelly

4 postcards

Four short clips from a second year of lock-downs.

1. Snowball – A game for one on Johnston Green, Guelph.

2. Wind – Inspired by prompts from Sonia Overall’s #distancedrift, a series of Sunday morning synchronised walks via Twitter.

3. Covid-Camera (zoom outtakes) – A recently found cache of not-so-flattering zoom-test outtakes.

4. A sounding in memory of my friend and neighbour Shelly Saunders.

Steve Donnelly‘s work explores and combines his interests in improvised play, performance, popular culture, belief, humour in art, and the commons. Steve is currently an MA student in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph.

UK

Steve Johnson

Where Are We?

Steve Johnson is a musician, coder, and general creative who dabbles in most mediums. He is the bass player for the Brighton-based horror punk band, Idle Bones, and is currently getting ready to record and produce their debut album. He has also produced a couple of music videos for the artist Oli Spleen.

Germany / Bulgaria

Studio Korinsky and Petya Stoykova

3s

Korinsky is a Berlin-based artist collective in the fields of sound art, architecture, and visual intervention. The twin brothers Abel and Carlo Korinsky are working on installations, performances, and gallery and museum works. Through audio-visual installations, they are trying to evoke a different kind of perception. They create site-specific works and have worked in old factories, churches, and many other often-disused spaces. The intense environments in their installations are demanding of all the senses. They have been commissioned to create works for Ars Electronica Linz, Melbourne Biennial, Grace Cathedral San Francisco, MMCA Seoul, Kestnergesellschaft Hanover, Experimental Biennale Melbourne, and Cathedral of Berlin.

Petya Stoykova is an artistic director, choreographer, and founder of Dune Dance Company, Burgas, Bulgaria. Founded more than 30 years ago, Dune Dance Company produces various dance and cultural events and runs the Dune Dance School for Amateur Dancers. Petya Stoykova is also the founder, artistic director, and manager of WATER festival for contemporary arts, Burgas. Winner of the prestigious Burg of the Year Award 2016 for contributing to the development and popularization of the city of Burgas.

Saskatchewan, Canada / Nigeria

Taiwo Afolabi

Tripartite Thought

Taiwo Afolabi is an artist-researcher-educator who does research, creates works, performs, and teaches at the intersection of performance and human ecology. Notably, he does this through devised and participatory theatre and through socially engaged creative practices with diverse communities. 

He is the founding artistic director of Theatre Emissary International, Nigeria. He is an Assistant Professor in the University of Regina’s Theatre Department, a representative for the ITI/UNESCO Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts, a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and holds a doctorate in Applied Theatre. 

Ontario, Canada

Taylor Marie Graham

Cambridge Carrier Bag

Taylor Marie Graham (she/her) is a Dora-nominated writer, theatre artist, and educator living in Cambridge, Ontario, otherwise known as the Haldimand Tract, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral Indigenous peoples. She holds a BA in Theatre from York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, where she is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate, writing a decolonial and rural feminist analysis of the Blyth Festival Theatre.

Her creative work is often inspired by rural women and invested in the decolonization of bodies in space. Her writing has been described as “dynamic, complex, and very funny” (Judith Thompson), “an uncommonly cool theatrical experience” (Mooney on Theatre), “charmingly twisted” (John Terauds, Toronto Star), “delivering notes of comedy, irony and real feeling” (John Kaplan, NOW Magazine), and “searingly written [. . .] a significant accomplishment!” (Bill Mandel).

Recently, she directed a rural feminist digital translation of the play The Farm Show with undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Guelph as part of Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum: Rural Women’s Studies Association 14th Triennial Conference. You can catch Taylor’s latest play, Post Alice, from July 27th-August 15th at the Here For Now Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

Ontario, Canada

Ted Warren and the Vertical Squirrels

Cymbalistical

The Vertical Squirrels came together through a mixture of chance and perseverance. Long-time collaborators Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, and Lewis Melville started playing together as a group upon the arrival in Guelph of multi-talented drummer/percussionist Rob Wallace, in 2008, later adding acclaimed drummer Ted Warren to the mix in 2011. Called an “unclassifiable blast of fresh air” by the Montreal Mirror, the music of the Vertical Squirrels is group-improvised, live-in-the-moment, and draws on a potent mixture of free jazz and post-rock sensibilities with nods to Indian ragas, jazz-inflected minimalism, Zappa-esque bouts of sonic anarchy, and German rock music from the 1970s.

For their IF 2021 performance, the Vertical Squirrels consists of Gary Diggins, Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, Lewis Melville, and Ted Warren.

Wales, UK

Teifi Rowley

Teifi Rowley is co-presented by Elysium.

Bath Time

Teifi Rowley is an artist primarily working in photography, video, and makeup. They have just completed their BTEC in art and design at Cardiff and Vale College in Cardiff, Wales, and thoroughly enjoyed it, using it as an opportunity to learn so much about who they are as an artist. Their IF 2021 contribution was their final piece for their BTEC, exploring ideas and feelings of discomfort, uncertainty, and anxiety. 

Australia / Singapore

Tim O’Dwyer, Dharma, and Natalie Alexandra Tse

Tim O’Dwyer, Dharma, and Natalie Alexandra Tse are co-presented by LASALLE College of the Arts.

Cracking Up

Tim O’Dwyer is an Australian saxophonist, improviser, and composer who has been a lecturer and Head of Music at LASALLE College of the Arts since 2004. Over the past 25 years, Tim has been a prolific performer and collaborator traversing jazz, improvised, and experimental electro-acoustic music, contemporary classical music, and cross-disciplinary projects. Combining an often intense and complex approach to his performance practice with a virtuosic technique, his playing has been described by Australia’s Realtime Magazine as “the most sustained and confronting aggression I’ve heard.” For the Sydney Morning Herald, “O’Dwyer seems to cast off all sense of time, place and indeed self…”. He regularly performs with the leading contemporary musicians of our time in Europe, Asia, and Australia with ELISION Ensemble (since 1994), The Australian Art Orchestra, and many groups lead by himself and in collaboration with others. 

Dharma is the guitarist of Singapore avant rock band, The Observatory, and also presents his work as a solo guitarist and in different configurations with improvisors like Tenggara Trio, among others. Having toured Europe and Asia, he released his latest solo album, Electric Animism, in 2019. His style of playing incorporates extended techniques with various preparations and effects, besides the traditional approach to the instrument. 

Natalie Alexandra Tse is a performer, educator, and researcher whose practice as an experimental improviser has led her towards researching babies’ sonic play through her doctoral studies and motherhood. As a guzheng (Chinese zither) performer, she has been experimenting with sonic experiences, evoking different textures, ambiences, and emotions through the use of extended techniques. Natalie is the co-founder and resident artist of SAtheCollective, an arts company that investigates the relationship between man, nature, and technology through the alchemy of ritual, play, and improvisation. She founded LittleCr3atures, the company’s young audience initiative, where younglings up to 36 months get to experience pure, unadulterated play with sound and soundful objects in a safe and immersive space. Her recent works for babies include Nadam (2018), Soundmakers by LittleCr3atures (2018, 2019, 2020), and Nature in Home, Home in Nature (2021).

Ontario, Canada

Tyler Bridge

Tyler Bridge is co-presented by Hillside Festival.

Uisge beatha / The Water of Life

This piece is in the style of a Scottish piobaireachd (pi-brock). Translated from Gaelic, piobaireachd means “pipe music” and has come to represent the classical form of music for the highland bagpipe. Piobaireachd is characterized by a thematic melody and several variations that get progressively more complex. At the climax of the final variation, the player must return to the original melody. Piobaireachds have been meticulously notated and preserved since the 1800s and are primarily heard in solo bagpipe competitions where any divergence from the accepted form of a specific tune, either accidental or intentional, can mean that the player is not considered for a prize. Contrary to convention, this piece uses form, technique, articulation, and tonality borrowed from an intimate understanding of traditional piobaireachd but is improvised from start to finish. This represents the essential elements of the traditional music but contains no direct reference to the existing piobaireachd canon.

Tyler Bridge is a music educator and professional musician based in Guelph, Ontario. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Guelph where he studied jazz guitar. He is the current Pipe Major of the Guelph Pipe Band and competes regularly on the professional solo piping circuit in Ontario. 

Northern Ireland

Una Lee

Déja vu

“Déja vu” is a video performance by Una Lee, who participated in the previous edition of Improvisation Festival in 2020. This piece for IF 2021 embraces a reference to her own piece from IF 2020 while looking at a different improvisational element: ‘live writing.’ Deploying a similar strategy as last year by telling a story stemming from personal reflections on the circumstances brought on by the pandemic, the piece attempts to subvert the notions of restriction and alternative and to encourage all of us to keep looking on the bright side.

Una Lee is an artist working with sounds, stories, and sensations, in perpetual pursuit of found sound and ways for alternative storytelling. She sings, narrates, writes stories, collects field recordings, composes, and designs performances and interventions. Most of her works, whilst being primarily sound-based, incorporate interdisciplinary aspects, furthering her interest in exploring time, memories, representations, human condition, and ecology. She is a recipient of The Oram Awards 2020 and holds an MA and a PhD in Sonic Arts from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University, Belfast, at which she is currently a visiting scholar.

Northern Ireland, UK

Úna Monaghan

Úna Monaghan is co-presented by the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

The Appearance Of

Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher, and sound artist from Belfast. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art, and movement sensors. She performs with harp and electronics and released an album of her compositions, “For,” in 2018. She collaborates, improvises, and performs with poets, visual artists, computers, writers, musicians, and others.

Úna has held artist residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas Montréal, and the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic MusicFestival, Maine, USA. Úna also works as a sound engineer specializing in Irish traditional music and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide. Her compositions have been presented on BBC and RTÉ television and radio, in theatre productions, and at international festivals and conferences such as the International Computer Music Conference, York Festival of Ideas, and New York Electroacoustic Music Festival.

Úna was awarded a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast in 2015 and held the Rosamund Harding Research Fellowship in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, from 2016-2019. Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation, and interactive technologies. She received the inaugural Liam O’Flynn Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Concert Hall Dublin in 2019 and a BAN BAM award from Moving On Music and Improvised Music Company in 2020.

Ontario, Canada

Viv and Ethel Moore

Mum and I

Born in England, Viv Moore has been dancing, choreographing, and acting—both collaboratively and as a solo artist—since 1979. She co-founded Remote Control with Dave Wilson, performing and teaching in Sweden, Australia, England, and Canada; worked with community dance in London, England and in Canada; was National Coordinator of Fight Directors, Canada (Advanced Actor Combatant level in 6 weapons). Viv has taught Dance and Movement part-time at Humber College since 1985. A Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2012) took her to England, L.A., and Vienna to study Step and Clog, Bullwhip, Knife, Tomahawk, Archery, and Butoh. Her solo choreography/performance (Worcestershire Saucy) is inspired by an eclectic mix of theatrical styles. Viv has received a Harold, Paula Citron fFIDA Award (Bogie Woman), and several Dora nominations.

Selected credits: Fujiwara Dance, Sashar Zarif, Allison Cummings (Dance); Theatre Rusticle (Acting); Theatre Direct – Sanctuary Song (Choreography); Outside eye on dance and theatre productions; Movement Director (YPT’s Under The Stairs); movies The Witch (stunt double), TV series The Strain (episode); Damien (recurring role); Artistic Director and Curator for Body Percussion Festival (2014, 2017).

Born in 1919, Ethel Moore has seen many changes, but her love of Movement and Dance remains a constant. She represented her school when she was 11, doing folk dance at Cadbury’s, Birmingham. During World War 2, she learned new dances at the community centres and became a popular partner due to her dancing ability.

Ethel performed Hags, a modern theatrical dance piece, at the Toronto Fringe with her daughter, Viv. A few years later, she danced in a film called Waking the Witch which was shot in England. Ethel dances at every opportunity and is very pleased to be in the piece “Mum and I” for this festival. 

UK / Netherlands / Germany / Brazil / France / Italy / Iran

What IIIF?

WhatIIIF? 10 to 10 features various artists and is co-presented by What IIIF? festival.

WhatIIIF? 10 to 10

WhatIIIF? 10 to 10 is an excerpt from a 12-hour continuous telepoetic live performance that took place on May 15, 2021. The artists involved in this project are as follows:

Chris Parfitt (Wales) // Shelley Owen, Henry McPherson, Connor Elliman (Manchester) // Esmeralda Detmers, Loes Rietkerk (Amsterdam) // Ulrike Brand, Reinhard Gagel, Simon Rose, Ingo Reulecke (Berlin) // Oorcontact (Leiden) // Danielle Davidson (Nomadic in The Netherlands) // Kamura Obscura (London) // Clarice Rito, Mhyrna Boechat (Rio de Janeiro) // Emmanuelle Pépin (Nice) // Tomasso Rolando (Genova) // Shaghayegh Bagheri (Tehran) // Saal Frei Plattform Für Improvisationskunst (Stuttgart) // Stuttgart and Guests – Performance and Dance: Martina Gunkel, Alexandra Mahnke, Claudia Senoner, Lisa Thomas, Magda Agduelo; Music and Sound: Oliver Prechtl (piano, electronics, and diverse instruments); Kurt App (saxophone and others) // Genetic Choir: Chandana Sarma (Rotterdam), Petra Pieck (Utrecht), Thomas Johannsen (Amsterdam), Jeannette Huizinga (Amsterdam), Irene Rametta (Pisa) // VJ: Catherine Cary // Taswir Atlas : Reinhard Gagel

Ontario, Canada

Wesley Peñalosa

what’s it like to be outside inside?

COVID has changed how we experience the environment around us. “what’s it like to be outside inside?” is a performative segment that preys on field recordings of the outdoor space recorded onto cassette tapes that are manipulated and transformed by the user. The work also uses objects that are usually seen outdoors/indoors (such as a traffic light, kalimba, voice processor, and contact microphone) that engage with internal bodies to create sounds and signatures in the existing space. How do we come to negotiate what we’ve been accustomed to during this pandemic? Are our bodies continuously renewing and retracing what we’ve come to know as our new normal? This piece is a response to perpetual changes that COVID-19 has made more apparent now than ever.

Wesley Peñalosa is a Filipino-Dubaitee experimental sound artist based in Toronto. They are focused on documenting moments in time by bridging sound and kinetics to work in harmony with each other. Many of their works revolve around the storytelling of sound elements and their inherent physical effect in relation to bodies of space. Fusing performance and objects, they conduct audio investigations through the intersection of sound manipulations and field recordings by reproducing and composing them as manifestations in our everchanging environment. They remain curious about every speck of dust and crave the company of ominous and otherworldly belly-of-the-beast sounds.

Ontario, Canada

Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity through Music

Mozart in the Meadow is co-presented by the Westben Centre for Connection and Creativity through Music.

Mozart in the Meadow

Brian Finley, Artistic & Managing Director
(Conception, Direction & Piano) 

“Mozart in the Meadow” was conceived as a way of inviting young dancers to explore the beauty of the natural setting around The Barn through improvised dance. Led (more than choreographed) by local dancer Rebecca Baptista, the piece features 14 young dancers, novice to emerging, from the neighbouring communities of Cobourg and Brighton. Displaying a refreshing array of youthful imagination, the piece tries to capture the joy of finding and sharing one’s “inner Mozart” – that which makes the world a beautiful place. The music is the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A, K. 331 “Andante grazioso” (Theme & Variations), performed by Brian Finley.     

Co-founded by Donna Bennett and Brian Finley, the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity through Music (www.westben.ca) is located near Campbellford, Ontario, 2 hours east of Toronto. Its principal facility is its custom-built, timber-frame Barn situated on a beautiful 50-acre farm. Activities include Concerts at The Barn (a multi-week professional summer music festival), an international Performer-Composer Residency (Ben Finley, Creative Director) and other year-round performance and learning-based programs. 

For 22 years, Westben has focused on its mandate of bringing people together through music. The organization is deeply committed to sharing its joy of the musical experience in a beautiful place with an ever-broadening community which includes everything from top professional artists and creators to local enthusiasts and youth.