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Artist Biographies
Freida Abtan
Freida Abtan is a canadian multi-disciplinary artist and composer living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her music falls somewhere in between musique concrè te and more modern noise and experimental audio. She has created visual shows for and performed with the internationally renown group Nurse with Wound and presented her own sound and visual work at festivals across Canada. Having completed degrees in both Computer Science and Fine Art, she is currently pursuing her doctorate in electronic music and multimedia at Brown University. Her first album "subtle movements" is available on United Dairies / Jnana Records.
angelusnovus.net
angelusnovus.net is a Toronto collective of electroacoustic musicians performing and presenting their work in galleries and clubs. From October 2009 to April 2010 they will be doing a residency at the NAISA Space exploring the world of spatialization.
Hector Centeno
Hector Centeno is a sound artist and music composer. He first composed exclusively for instrumental chamber music ensembles but since 2004 his work has been devoted to sound art, transforming soundscapes and other recorded sounds. His work is inspired mainly in the practices of Zen and it's ways of approaching art creation and reality through meditation, searching for a good balance between spontaneous, intuitive expression and rationality. He is also interested in sound design for theater and film, in multichannel sound spatialization and in Open Source software. His electroacoustic pieces have been performed at the Sounds Electric '05 festival in Ireland, Sound Travels and Sound Play festivals in Toronto, Nuit Blanche festival, Concordia University in Montreal and as part of the AngelusNovus.net composers collective at other venues in Toronto. He is also technical coordinator and web master at NAISA.
CONCRETE
CONCRETE is a Japan based independent art organization organizing events, exhibitions, lectures, presentations and performance opportunities internationally. The organization seeks and supports artists and academics for their creative and original philosophies to present their contribution to the field of sound art.
Contact Contemporary Music
Contact Contemporary Music is dedicated to the creation, production and presentation of contemporary music, with a focus on Canadian music, representing and recognizing diverse socio-cultural communities. Transcending stylistic boundaries while bending and blending genres, Contact Contemporary Music presents and performs the music of our time.
Darren Copeland
Darren Copeland has been a sound artist and event producer since 1985. His electroacoustic concert and radio works have been commissioned and presented worldwide, have received mentions at a diverse range of international competitions and are published on the internationally recognized empreintes DIGITALes label. As Artistic Director for New Adventures in Sound Art he has been a progressive leader in the area of concert spatialization through his work as a spatializer and workshop teacher using both the Richmond Sound Design Audiobox and the 12-channel ~spat system with Patriot controller. His focus on spatialization has also influenced his radio and composition activity, leading to the production of the first radio drama by CBC to be produced in surround sound (A Dream Play, 2000) and for multi-channel realizations of other radiophonic works. Other creative interests include the production of sound installations for site-specific locations, the creation of works drawing exclusively on soundscape recordings, and writing on soundscape perception and listening sensitivity.
Marie Côté
Marie Côté draws her inspiration from the initial experience, that the source of any form is a void. Like a pot needing to be filled, her work seeks to reveal the complex experience that links an object to space. If an empty space can easily be imagined, one cannot conceive an object without space. Her work can be seen in public and private collections.
Christopher Fox
Christopher Fox's work has been performed and broadcast world-wide and has featured in many of the leading new music festivals, from the Amsterdam PROMS to the BBC Promenade Concerts and from St Petersburg to Sidney. In recent years he has established particularly close relationships with the Ives Ensemble in the Netherlands, for whom he wrote the evening-long ensemble installation, Everything You Need To Know (2000-1) and with Apartment House in the UK. Fox's music is widely available on CD, with a portrait CD on NMC, four portrait CDs on Metier and other recordings on Artifact, BVHaast and FMR. Fox has been hailed by Andy Hamilton in The Wire as "a tantalising figure in British Music"; Paul Driver in the Sunday Times has described his music as "impressive, thoughtful, entertaining and extremely varied". Fox's work regularly extends beyond the conventional boundaries of the concert hall and includes the radio piece Three Constructions after Kurt Schwitters, commissioned by the BBC in 1993 and nominated for the Prix Italia, gallery works in collaboration with video artists and printmakers, and a number of extended ensemble works which defy categorisation. Paul Griffiths, writing in the Times, has said of Fox's work that "he takes simple ideas but he makes them sound quite wonderful".
Nick Fox-Gieg
Nick is an animator and video artist based in Toronto. His short films have been shown at the Rotterdam and Ottawa film festivals, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and on CBC TV. His projections have been featured in the Festival d'Avignon production Boxed In and the Broadway musical Squonk; he's performed his live sound and video works at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and the Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2004, and his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. He's received a Bravo!FACT commission, three U.S. state Media Arts Fellowships, and a Fulbright grant to the Netherlands; he was awarded a Toronto Arts Council grant in 2009.
Olivier Girouard
Olivier Girouard's seeks to set music in motion. He works with artists from various disciplines, notably in the areas of dance, sound art, video and visual art. At the Montréal Conservatory and under direction of Yves Daoust, he studied electroacoustic composition at the graduate level. Girouard has received a number of awards, including the Hughes-LeCaine prize, given by SOCAN. His works have been performed in Europe, and in North America.
Pierre Hébert
Pierre Hébert's work is unlike that of any other creator of animated films, springing as it does from the twin inspirations of experimental and political filmmaking. His favourite technique - scratching on film stock - and his attitude to his art make him an unusual, perhaps unique, figure. Although he is often called Norman McLaren's heir, in reality he can be assigned to no school.
His first professional films - Op Hop - Hop Op (1966), Opus 3 (1967), Autour de la perception/Around Perception (1968) - demonstrated an approach similar to that of mechanical music and his interest in mathematics and the sciences (as does Notions élémentaires de génétique, 1971). A change of attitude becomes apparent in his films during the first half of the 1970s. His political activism and his study of Marx and Brecht led him to make more engaged films. The first of these was Pè re Noé l, pè re Noé l/Santa Claus is Coming Tonight (1974), an alienation fantasy based on the story of Father Christmas. This theatrical approach is seen again in Souvenirs de guerre/Memories of War (1982), a brilliant example of his use of scratching on film for narrative purposes. Alternating this technique with that of paper cut-outs, real sound and traditional music, he produces a vivid anti-war document in which conflict is shown as a means of economic domination. The emotional impact of this film, the clarity of its argument and its continuing relevance make it a landmark in the history of animated film in Quebec.
The third period of Hébert's career is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. After leaving the NFB in 1996, he has continued to make films, collaborating with dancers (notably Louise Bédard) and musicians (especially Bob Ostertag), exploring the new possibilities offered by computerization with the enthusiasm of his earliest days.
Emilie Cecilia LeBel
Emilie is an emerging composer based in Toronto. Her compositions aim to avoid and break traditional boundaries in style, form and substance. She strives to create music that is imaginative, embraces the unusual and draws from a wide spectrum of sounds. Emilie has studied at the University of Victoria, Harris Institute for the Arts and York University. Most recently she completed a long-term composition residency at The Banff Centre. She will be starting doctoral studies in composition at the University of Toronto this fall. website: www.ceceproductions.ca
Brent Lee
Brent Lee's compositions range from orchestral music to electroacoustic pieces, and include jazz and incidental music. He has received numerous commissions, largely through the Canada Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded. His compositions and improvisations often juxtapose acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sound, and reflect his interest in the exploration of musical colours and textures.
Yasuhiro Morinaga
Yasuhiro Morinaga is a sound designer and recording artist focusing on field-recording based sounds for various art forms. His primary approach is based on the aesthetic of atmosphere through audio-visual contexts. Morinaga's sound design works for film have screened at prestigious international film festivals including Cannes, Berlin and Toronto with his frequent collaborator, Malaysian media artist & film director, Chris Chong Chan Fui. In addition to that, Morinaga contributes his works to wide range of art projects including contemporary dance, theatre and installations, presenting them around the world. In 2009, Morinaga is collaborating with Japanese Media Art Pioneer, Masaki Fujihata, for his latest 3D installation. With a grant by Japanese government, Morinaga is in charge of directing and organizing an international conference focused on recording arts in November.
Maggi Payne
Maggi Payne's works have been shown in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Australasia. She has received four honorary mentions from Bourges and one from Prix Ars Electronica.
Jean Piché
Jean Piché (1951) is a composer who has developed into a video artist over the past few years. His practice meshes moving images and music in a new hybrid form he calls videomusic. In his beginnings as an electroacoustic composer in the 1970s, he was one of the very first Canadians to employ the then emerging digital audio technologies. He has produced works in every genre of electroacoustics for mixed and acousmatic to live-electronics. His work aims for poetic expression beyond any sort of formalism. The work has been alternately described as confounding, colorful and virtuosistic. He has contributed to the presence and development of Canadian music here and abroad while working at the Canada Council where he defended the legitimacy of many alternative contemporary music practices. This inclusivist approach was highlighted when he directed the Montréal Musiques Actuelle - New Music America festival in 1990. As a teacher at the Université de Montréal since the late 1980s, he has nurtured a number of young people into diverse careers in new media and music. He keeps a hand in software development and some of his programs, notably Cecilia, are used by composers the world over.
Pleasure Dome
Pleasure Dome is a year-round film and video exhibition group dedicated to the presentation of experimental film and video. The 2008/2009 Programming Collective is: Andrea Cooper, Jon Davies, Firoza Elavia, Linda Feesey, David Frankovich , Nick Fox-Gieg , Brenda Goldstein, Oliver Husain, Jean-Paul Kelly, Jacob Korczynski, Erik Martinson, Gabrielle Moser and Ben Portis. Tom Taylor is the Program Coordinator.
Debashis Sinha
For many years known as a percussionist and composer with a number of Canada's premiere intercultural music pioneers, Debashis Sinha is forging a name for himself in the world of audio, solo performance, and new media art. Most often Sinha creates his works through a directed focus on distilling the elements of his sources into their component parts of light and sound. To him, this distillation is an expression of his own South Asian heritage, a gesture that infuses the form of classical Indian music (with its elements of mindfulness and improvisation) with content created from his own experience growing up in/between cultures and his eclectic skill set as sound designer, video maker, and musician. Through presenting and dissecting source material he re-contextualizes our perceptions and brings to the fore our expectations about sound, light, and the possibilities of identity.
Stefan Smulovitz
A truly interdisciplinary collaborator Stefan has performed and composed for film, live visuals (Pierre Hebert, Jamie Griffiths), theatre (Radix, Rumble, Theatre Replacement), dance (Noam Gagnon - The Holy Body Tattoo, Barbara Bourget - Kokoro Dance, Mascall Dance, Cheryl Prophet, Rob Kitsos), art installations (Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles), and DVD-ROMs (Confluences - work of Frank Gehry). As a performer he is renowned for his "quicksilver ability to morph and manipulate sound via digital technology" (Georgia Straight) Transforming the laptop into an instrument using his custom software Kenaxis. Stefan has performed with many of the worlds top improvisers. His electro-acoustic works have won a national Canadian award (JTTP). In 2006 he won the prestigious Vancouver New Music Chamber Music Competition for his piece for 12 players plus electronics entitled "the still unanswered question." Stefan's compositions have been performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Turning Point, Ensemble Symposium, Chor Leoni, Elektra, and at the Sonic Boom Festival from 2002-2007. Most recently the Standing Wave Ensemble premiered a new work as part of the 2008 Alcan Award for Music.
Andrew Stewart
Peter Swendson
Peter Swendson teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He studied at Oberlin, Mills College, and the University of Virginia, and was in residence at the NoTAM studios in Oslo as a Fullbright Fellow. His work focuses on soundscape composition, interdisciplinary performance practice, and interactive technologies.
Jane Tingley
Jane Tingley is a Winnipeg artist living and working in Montreal. She received her MFA at Concordia University in 2006 and uses new media, sculpture, and installation to explore ideas involving identity and contemporary experience. Jane Tingley has participated in exhibitions, and festivals in Canada, Japan, and Europe and has received support from a number of funding agencies, including The Manitoba Arts Council, le Centre Interuniversitaire des Arts Médhiatiques (CIAM), and the Canada Arts Council. Currently she is focusing on artistic production, as well as participating in Artist Residencies.
Nancy Tobin
Nancy Tobin is a sound artist and designer for stage productions. Over the past twenty years, she has developed an approach using unusual audio speakers to transform the sound qualities of her compositions. Nancy Tobin is currently finishing a work for CD called D e l a y T o y s a thematic composition based on memory, playfulness,silence and contemplation. www.mmebutterfly.com
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