Artists

The BLACK AUKS (NL) - Sound Symposium's resident improvisational ensemble

The AUKS approach their music with the delight of a group of kids with new toys in a sandbox; anything they lay their hands on becomes fodder for their explorations. Their artistic process involves weekly jams and listening sessions. Their own musical vocabulary contains elements from the varied musical backgrounds of the players - classical, bluegrass, punk, jazz, folk, etc. Wallace Hammond has been a sound experimenter and casual musician since the early 1970's. Neil Rosenberg's specialty is bluegrass - his Bluegrass: A History has been called the definitive work on this music. Craig Squires plays saxophone, keyboards, bass, percussion, noise makers, toys, etc.

Patrick Boyle Group (NL) - Patrick Boyle, trumpet, gajde; Bill Brennan, Rhodes electric piano; Mark Duggan, vibraphone, mbira, berimbau; Curtis Andrews, mrdgangam, mbira, percussion.

Travelogue - Music of Place: Musicians move from place to place not only for work, but to seek out kindred spirits and fertile musical situations. The members of this quartet have traveled the globe (Australia, Brazil, Croatia, India, South Africa) in pursuit of new timbres, textures and relationships. Their collective professional and personal experiences will be shared in this concert of new music by Patrick Boyle.
(www.patrickboyle.ca)

Bill Brennan (NL) - percussionist/pianist/composer

Always in demand as a folk and jazz pianist, Bill plays regularly with his own bands, as well as with many other performers. He has performed across North America and around the world. More than twenty years of experience have garnered Brennan a solid reputation as a player, composer and arranger of contemporary classical, jazz, folk and world music. His CD Solo Piano received nominations for ECMA "Instrumental Album of the Year." He recently released Solo Piano 2.
(www.billbrennan.ca)

Karen Bulmer (NL) - tuba

Karen Bulmer gives a performance/demonstration Voices of the Tuba, using non-tradtional ways of making sounds, drawn on indigenous material, that challenge people's ideas of what the tuba can sound like. She will premiere a commissioned work by Jennifer O'Neill that incorporates elements of Inuit music, including Inuit throat singing. Karen received a Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale University and is currently Assistant Professor of Low Brass at the MUN School of Music.

Audrey Chen (USA) - cello/voice/analog electronics

Audrey Chen focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. A large component of her music is improvised, coming from the fluxus mold of using chance techniques. Her voice can be operatic, lunatic or an imitation of her cello, startling, moving, and intense. Her haunting performance incorporates sound, movement and visual/sculptural concepts. Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan and the USA.
(www.myspace.com/audreychen)

Chris Driedzic (NL) - percussionist, educator

Chris Driedzic presents a 3-session Youth Soundscape Workshop for students ages 10-16, who will explore the basics of field recording using portable recording devices, then compose a soundscape with the recordings using audio software. A musical composition will be created and premiered on Improv Night. Chris Driedzic completed a double honours in music and theatre at Bishop's University. His credentials include experience as a musician, musical director, producer, recording engineer and music critic.
(www.sutolianstudios.ca)

Duo Schfifty-five (BC/USA)

Pianist Andrea Lodge and percussionist Brian Nesselroad explore the repertoire for amplified piano and percussion, a rarity on the concert stage, in their program Unsafe speeds: hard-driving music for percussion and amplified piano. Their aim is to solve the issues of balance between piano and percussion and to discover and commission works that present the two instruments as musical equals. Their repertoire includes works by John Psathas, Roshanne Etezady, and Andrew Byrne.

Father Daughter (Yukon)

Father Daughter is Whitehorse-based Kim Barlow and Jordy Walker. Barlow's careful knowledge and love of old time vocal and banjo styles hand-wrapped in Walker's live electro-acoustic rhythms and textures results in a sonic union that respects a significant history while revisiting the idea that nothing is fully sacred. Acoustic soundscapes and dark, modal frailing banjo give way to swelling noise squalls and feedback spikes.
(www.jordywalker.com / www.kimbarlow.ca)

Tanja Hemm (Germany) - sound artist

Tanja Hemm presents her sound installation, WC 2006 - Soundnet public toilet, being an installation created for public toilets, in which the user encounters the installation briefly and accidentally. It is a composition of nine short pieces lasting for about 12 minutes. Tanja Hemm was born in Bayreuth, Germany. She studied several instruments, then received an M.A. in American Literature/Theater (oral traditions/radio) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
(www.tanjahemm.de)

Lady Cove Women's Choir (NL)

Lady Cove Women's Choir is named after the community of Lady Cove in Trinity Bay. The name represents the spirit of the choir: a community of Newfoundland women musicians. The Choir was established by Kellie Walsh in 2003. In 2006 Lady Cove won first place in CBC's Radio Competition for Amateur Choirs in the equal voices female category. Following their performance for Sound Symposium they are heading for Hungary. (www.ladycove.ca)

Pierre-Yves Martel (QC) - double bassist, viola da gambist, and improvisor

Pierre-Yves Martel performs Engagement & Confrontation: Improvisations for Solo Prepared Double Bass. The gamba may also make an appearance. Pierre-Yves is an active member of Montreal's well-known improvisation music scene. He can often be heard playing with veterans Jean Derome, Joane Hétu, and Lori Freedman, and with the new generation of musicians. Research, experimentation and exploration are central elements of Pierre-Yves' work.
(www.myspace.com/pymartel)

McKudo (NL) - Sean Panting (guitar & stuff), Rob Power (percussion & stuff), and Adam Staple (more percussion & more stuff).

McKudo plays "comprovised" music, the product of a collective brain with an off-kilter sense of humor that has spent too many hours listening to Led Zeppelin and watching hockey. McKudo play songs about evil genius house pets, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the riveting world of washer-dryer maintenance.

The Neighbourhood Watch (NL)

The Neighbourhood Watch is an irregular St. John's sound-art project, fusing spoken word with a groove-based playing style, influenced by jazz, funk, and progressive rock. The bass and drum duo of Los Beatniko (Rick Bailey) and Doctor D (Chris Driedzic) collectively blend layers of effect loops, samples, keyboards, and other sounds into a rhythmic spectacle with soulful vocals. What's created is a sound that's dynamic, entertaining, ambient, and unpredictable. Rick is a broadcaster, musician, collage artist, and sound enthusiast. Chris is a theatre and music educator who occupies his time as a musician, producer, and sound engineer.
(www.sutolianstudios.ca)

Mary O'Keeffe (NL) - harpsichord

Mary O'Keeffe presents a concert of recent works for harpsichord by Canadian composers Chan Ka Nin, Alice Ping Yee Ho, Serge Arcuri, and Jean Lesage. She will also be joined by Michelle Cheramy (NL), flute, and Nathan Cook (NL), cello, fellow members of the recently-formed Hot Earth Ensemble, to premiere a CBC-commissioned piece for flute, cello and harpsichord by Andrew P. MacDonald. A bit of Bach and Couperin round out the program.

Kristen Roos (BC) - sound artist

Kristen Roos creates an installation that sculpts field recordings into compositions which are broadcast within the gallery space. He will also give a performance during Sound Symposium's Visions of Sound walk to give the audience a multi-layered, live soundscape collage. Presented in collaboration with Eastern Edge Gallery.
(www.microradio.ca)

Gina Ryan (QC) - percussion

Gina Ryan reflects on the inner and outer spaces of the marimba, with a new work of her own, "never-never (is)land". She also performs a world premiere by Alexandra Fol, whose piece ventures off into the outer spaces of multiple percussion land. Gina Ryan began her percussion studies at the age of ten in St. John's and studied with Don Wherry. She recently completed her Mmus at McGill University and is currently pursuing doctoral studies.

Spanner (NL) - Paul Bendzsa, saxophone and clarinet; Rob Power, percussion and toys.

Spanner are so awesome, they don't need a description. But here's one anyway: two of St. John's most respected improvisers collide to, well, improvise. Unexpected, irreverent, humorous, virtuosic, and sometimes just plain drunk. Plus a Moog and a little chew toy in the shape of a cheeseburger that squeaks. They have a CD, which proves that just about anybody can have a CD these days.

Sarah Joy Stoker (NL) - dance

Sarah Joy Stoker presents her newest solo, Sapiens lay here, a poignant exploration of that which has been, and of human inhabitancy on earth; a physical, mental and spiritual journey, a meditation on our history and future. The 45-minute solo tour de force has an original score by local award-winning composer, Lori Clarke, and light design by Robert Gauthier. The piece was performed at the InterAzioni XX Project in Sardinia, Italy in 2007 and at the 2007 Festival of New Dance in St. John's.
(www.gutsink.nf.ca)

John Taylor (England) - jazz piano

John Taylor is one of Europe's most celebrated jazz pianists. Accompanist to singer Cleo Laine in the 1970s, his unique piano style draws on the whole of the jazz pallette and from classical music, and is characterised by a sophisticated rhythmic and harmonic sensibility. In 2002 Taylor received the BBC Jazz Award for Best New Work. He is a professor of Jazz Piano at the Cologne College of Music and a Lecturer in jazz at York University, England.
(www.johntaylorjazz.com)

Marianne Trudel (QC) - solo piano

Marianne Trudel is one of the finest pianist-composers among a new generation of jazz-based improvising musicians in Canada. Based in Montreal, she is receiving national and international acclaim. Her explorations have taken her to Paris, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and Vancouver, for example, and given her the opportunity to collaborate with such luminaries as Chucho Valdes, Kenny Wheeler, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mark Dresser, and Evan Parker.
(www.mariannetrudel.com)

urbanvessel (ON) - Christine Duncan, voice & theremin, Aki Takahashi, voice & shamisen, Juliet Palmer, voice & clarinet.

urbanvessel presents The Province of Impossible, a song cycle drawing on Japanese folksong and Schubert's Die Winterreise, weaving together shouts, chants and cries with throat singing, opera and gospel. Composer Juliet Palmer and writer Anna Chatterton have crafted a set of songs exploring the tension between inner reflection and outer journeying.
(www.urbanvessel.com)

ZARI (ON) - Shalva Makharashvili, Andrea Kuzmich, and Reid Robins

ZARI is a trio of singer/instrumentalists living in Canada who specialize in the music of the Georgian Republic. Shalva Makharashvili (of Rustavi, Georgia ) and Torontonians Andrea Kuzmich and Reid Robins joined forces to concentrate their efforts on the exquisite harmony and complex polyphony of this ancient music. By turns exotic, lyrical, and powerful, ZARI brings to the stage three accomplished artists who embody the tradition and improvisational interplay of one of the world's most beautiful musics in it's most transparent form: the vocal trio.
(www.myspace.com/triozari)

Acoustic Orienteering

Acoustic Orienteering is Scott Thomson's work for a flexible ensemble of mobile improvising musicians. The score is a physical map of a St. John's neighbourhood in which the piece will be performed. Listeners can follow a player en route or watch/listen for points of musical intersection where the ambling musicians cross paths.
(www.aimtoronto.org)

Curtis Andrews (NL) - percussionist

Curtis is a Newfoundland-based musician with global persuasions. Curtis has become a recognized player of jazz, rock, reggae, funk, hip-hop, country, pop, improvisational music and world music. His personal musical journeys have extended to the villages and metropolises of Ghana, India, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and he has developed a deep knowldge of the history and performance of music from these areas. Lately he has been developing his own compositions that reflect these many experiences.

Blu Canyon Collective (USA) - Philip and Bree Valle, Duane Inglish, Jude Clark Warnisher, Diana Stanton

CQD/SOS - a multi-disciplinary performance piece integrating pre-recorded sound and music, live instrumentation, video projections, dance, and live performance. CQD/SOS proceeds from the assumption that our world is rife with audible and visual signals symptomatic of acute distress. Many of the warning signals are frequently undetectable or inaudible. The intention is to unearth these buried symptoms and use them as the subject of the performance.

John G. Boehme (BC) - visual sound artist

John G. Boehme is interested in the constant formulation and reformulation one encounters in various modes of communication. Language or paralanguage is an integral part of his work. His interactive, post-fluxus projects, Nameless (a sonic resonance/cadence created with the name of an audience member) and Priceless (sonic reading and repetition of travel receipts), will engage and entertain Sound Symposium audiences. John has upcoming exhibitons and performances in Ottawa , the Netherlands and Scotland.
(http://people.finearts.uvic.ca/~jgboehme/)

Mark Bragg & Andy Jones (NL)

Mark Bragg, musician, composer, dramatist, creates a two-man performance of music and songs for himself and that other eloquent gent, Andy Jones - "Songalogues", no holds barred interpretations of two devious characters, one born on the page and the other in song.

Millie Chen and Warren Quigley (ON) - sound artists

Millie Chen and Warren Quigley present Extreme Centre, an audio installation in the form of a maze. As visitors negotiate the twisting passages, they hear whispering voices, issued from speakers set into the passage walls. The sound ushers visitors along the passages but also engenders a range of reactions... Millie Chen exhibits and lectures internationally, her practice encompasses writing and curating. Most recently, she showed in concurrent solo exhibitions in France, Brazil, China, Canada, the USA, and Hong Kong. Warren Quigley has also exhibited across Canada, the USA, Japan, China, France and Brazil.
(www.milliechen.com)

Marlene Creates (NL) - visual artist, photographer

Marlene Creates hosts The Boreal Poetry Garden - a guided walk with site-specific readings - in the boreal forest where she lives in Portugal Cove. The forest contains bawns, crunnicks, drokes, goowiddies, tolts and tuckamores. The use of words spoken in situ reflects some of the site's particular geophysical and climatic characteristics, its plant life, wildlife and social history. Marlene Creates moved to Newfoundland, the home of her maternal ancestors, in 1985. She continues to explore the relationship between human experience and the land, and the impact they have on each other.
(www.marlenecreates.ca)

The Discounts (NL) - Neil Conway, vocals, guitar; Aneirin Thomas, bass; Curtis Andrews, drums; Patrick Boyle, trumpet; Luke Power, keys.

A very very popular group of guys.

Mark Duggan (ON) - composer, percussionist

Mark Duggan has written a piece for Sound Symposium featuring himself and clarinetist François Houle with a grant from the Toronto Arts Council. Duggan's compositions often reflect his interest in the music of non-western cultures. He has been twice nominated by both the Juno and East Cost Music Awards. He was a founding member of the Evergreen Club Gamelan.
(www.markduggan.com)

Lisle Ellis (US) - bassist/composer/improvisor

Lisle Ellis is an acoustic & electronic musician, a visual artist, and a lecturer in creative process and jazz history. As a bassist/composer/improvisor he has performed and recorded with many of the world's foremost musicians in the field of jazz, improvised, creative and new and experimental musics. Currently living in New York City, Ellis leads his own ensemble, Audible Means, whose music reflects his interest in electronic music and its applications in improvisational contexts.
(www.lisleellis.com)

Lori Freedman (QC) - clarinet, & Scott Thomson (ON) - trombone

Lori Freedman and Scott Thomson create music that spontaneously explores the combustion of soundings in any given space - clarinet and trombone improvisations that are very mobile, very grounded by the breath. Lori Freedman plays contrabass, bass, A, B-flat, C and E-flat clarinets. She plays written and improvised music, ranging in settings from orchestra, concerti, chamber ensemble and solo. Scott Thomson is an improvising trombonist. In addition to his work as a performer he is a board member of the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto. Scott and Lori released their first duo recording on Barnyard Records in 2007.
(www.lorifreedman.com)

Francois Houle (BC) - clarinet

François Houle transcends the stylistic borders associated with his instrument in all of the diverse musical spheres he embraces: classical, jazz, new music, improvised music, and world music. As an improviser, he has developed a unique language, virtuosic and rich with sonic embellishment and technical extensions. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has commissioned some of today's leading composers and has premiered over one hundred new works.
(www.francoishoule.ca)

Industrial Park Collective (NL/Nassau) - Christine Gangelhoff, flute; and Clark Ross, electronics

Industrial Park Collective perform energetic music that blends the cultures and traditions of contemporary concert and electronic music. Program includes Ross's "Industrial Park Stomp", plus compositions for flute and CD.
(www.clarkross.ca)

Jane Leibel (NL) - soprano

Jane Leibel has commissioned a new work, Polyglot Curses for voice, piano and marimba. Composer Jennifer O'Neill sets to music the poetry of Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), the American writer known for her caustic wit, wisecracks and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. Jane Leibel teaches voice, vocal pedagogy and lyric diction at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She will be joined by Tom Gordon and Ed Squires on piano and percussion. Tom Gordon (NL) is director of the School of Music at Memorial University. A musicologist and pianist, Gordon is most frequently heard as a Lieder accompanist. Ed Squires (NL) studied percussion at MUN School of Music, which makes him a Scruncheon in perpetuity, and now is pursuing work in Toronto.

Terrill Maguire (ON) - dancer

Maguire and pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico collaborate to explore the essence of the music-dance relationship. Maguire investigates the movement possibilities of Ann Southam's piece, Simple Lines Of Inquiry - "The piece has been through multiple transformations and is now honed to essentials...all that remains to complete the journey is an audience." Maguire is a choreographer, dancer, and arts educator, who teaches part-time for York University 's Dance Department in Toronto. Southam's substantial output includes much electroacoustic music on tape, as well as music for major modern dance companies and for soloists and ensembles performing on acoustic instruments.

Make It Work Ensemble (NL)

Breathe, a 30-minute outdoor movement piece, in which ten St. John's dancers explore the rhythm and spirit of breath, creating a soundscape shaped exclusively from breathing. Live breath sounds will be combined with pre-recorded audio tracks. The piece will end when the dancers literally dance themselves out of breath.

The Pathological Lovers (NL) - Jody Richardson, vocals & guitar; Grant King, keyboards & vocal; David Rowe, bass; Alex Pierson, percussion

One of St. John's hottest rock bands, influenced by low ceilings and tea.

Kevin Patton (US) - sound performer

Patton is a composer and guitarist who explores the increasingly nebulous borderlands between humans and machines in performance. The integration of interactive electronic music and machine improvisation into traditional performance contexts is at the centre of his practice. He is currently pursuing a PhD in electronic music and multimedia composition at Brown University. For Sound Symposium he will demonstrate his TaurEx sensor extension for electric guitar that can track motion and read performance gestures. For Night Music he will perform with some great St. John's musicians. (www.lajunkielovegun.com/KevinPatton)

Christina Petrowska Quilico (ON) - pianist

Quilico is a leading interpreter of 20th and 21st century music. She will premiere Soundstill - solo piano works by Ann Southam inspired by the creeks in Newfoundland. Quilico has premiered new works by celebrated composers such as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, György Ligeti, Christos Hatzis, and Alexina Louie. Her recordings have traveled into space with Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean.
(www.petrowskaquilico.com)

PED

A pseudo service bureau and an info/excer-tainment outlet from which viewer/participants may embark on free, talking-bicycle lecture tours. Each bicycle is outfitted with a pedal-activated audio system with small speakers mounted on the handlebars. As the viewer pedals, they hear a lecture, and when they stop the lecture ceases. Invigorating!
(www.milliechen.com)

Tim Posgate Hornband featuring Howard Johnson - Tim Posgate, guitars, banjo; Lina Allemano, trumpet; Quinsin Nachoff, tenor sax, clarinet, flute; and Howard Johnson, tuba, baritone sax, pennywhistle.

Tim Posgate Hornband explores the many possibilities of a three-horn, one-guitar combo. A Mexican ranchero tune, or a reggae with a bass groove, or blues and rock without any broken-heart refrains. The band can sound like a Big Band with its brass explosions, or turn quiet and intimate like chamber music. Posgate's enthusiasm makes sure that everyone has fun. Joining the Hornband for Symposium will be one of the top jazz tubists, Howard Johnson, whose career has seen him work with Charles Mingus, Hank Crawford, Archie Shepp, Gil Evans, Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition, Jimmy Heath, Bob Moses, George Gruntz's Concert Jazz Band, and frequently with Evans' orchestra, among others.
(www.guildwoodrecords.com)

Fernando Rocha (Brazil) - percussion/digital instruments, and Joseph Malloch (QC) - electronics

Fernando Rocha and Joseph Malloch perform Electronic Music for Percussion & New Digital Musical Instruments. An explosive collaboration between Brazilian percussionist Rocha and instrument creator Malloch. Rocha will perform on vibraphone, Malloch's t-stick, and the hyper-kalimba, which was first presented at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in 2007.

Debashis Sinha (ON) - post traditional percussion and sound events

Debashis Sinha introduces public ears to Kolkata Garden, an outdoor performance installation, a sound environment which re-contextualizes the urban sprawl of that great and desparate city, Kolkata. Performed in a park-like setting, it allows listeners strolling by to reinterpret their preconceived notions of urban sound by moving through a space in which small memories and clouds of sound float by.
(www.debsinha.com)

John Gzowski (ON) and Julia Aplin (ON)

Sound designer, composer, musician and instrument maker John Gzowski has been found across the globe. He's played for the opera in Banff, studied Carnatic classical music in India, played oud and guitar in jazz and folk festivals across Canada and Europe, played jazz in Japan and written for Dance in Spain. His work has won him many awards, including 4 Dora's and the Freddie Stone Award. He has run Canada's first microtonal group, touring Canada playing the works of Harry Partch. Dancer Julia Aplin, will improvise in her magical manner to John's magical music.
(www.johngzowski.com / www.fingerworks.org)

Wonderbolt Circus (NL) - Beni Malone, ring master; George Morgan, music director.

Wonderbolt Circus creates a special attraction for Sound Symposium's 25th anniversary. Music accompanying the circus is performed by George Morgan, Spanner, and Bill Brennan.
(www.wonderbolt.ca)

Gayle Young (ON) - composer, performer, designer of sound installations

Gayle Young presents "A Dip in the Lake" by John Cage. Sounds from random locations throughout Toronto are played into a hall (with 12 speakers) over a period of time. It will be set up as a walk-through installation, but there will also be a time set for a sit-down listening period. She is joined by co-presenter Bill Blakeney who was researcher, organizer, and sound editor on the project, and by George Boski.

 

(subject to change)