Artist Biographies

Kristi A. Allik

Kristi A. Allik was born in Canada and has received degrees from University of Toronto (Bachelor of Music), Princeton University (M.A. in Music Composition), and University of Southern California (D.M.A. in Music Composition). She has received numerous commissions and awards, including Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants, Chalmers Award, and has won prizes from the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition and Ars Electronica.

Allik's work synthesizes the stylistic and cultural resources of atonality, jazz, and Estonian music. Her works, which include electroacoustic music, multimedia works, orchestral works, opera, and chamber music, have been performed in Europe, U.S.A., South America and Canada. Currently she is Associate Professor at Queen's University, where she is Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios and the Computer Laboratory for Applications in Music. She teaches courses in electroacoustic music composition, computer music, multimedia, and jazz arranging.

Allik's most recent compositions and performances include "~infoweaver", which was commissioned by the New Music Concerts through the Canada Council, and has been performed at numerous venues, including the Robert Gill Theatre in Toronto, thePrimavera en la Habana International Music Festival in Cuba, The Performance Arts Series at Queen's University and the Festival on the St. Lawrence. She is currently working on a digital music theatre piece titled "Hole in One".

Margaret Bárdos

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Ms. Bárdos has been involved in the musical life of Hamilton since coming to Canada in 1983, starting as a chorister in the Hamilton Children’s Choir, then Vox Nouveau, the Bach Elgar Choir, Centenary United Church - where she is a soloist and the alto section lead, as well as the chorus of Opera Ontario. Ms. Bárdos is a James Morrow Scholar and recipient of the Christine Stanton-Opera Ontario Scholarship. Recent solo performances include the re-opening gala of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Opera Ball in Kitchener-Waterloo, the alto solo in the Ontario premiere of Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man, as well as guest soloist appearances with the Canadian Orpheus Male Choir and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to several concert engagements, she made her mainstage début this spring with Opera Ontario in the role of Flora in Verdi’s La Traviata, and will be heard as Third Lady in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Symphony Guelph in the 2006/2007 Season. Ms. Bárdos continues her studies with Tom Schilling of Vocalway Studios.

Lori Beckstead

Lori Beckstead is a professor in the School of Radio & Television Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, teaching radio, audio and digital media. She spent ten years as a community radio broadcaster and has done freelance work for the CBC producing and reporting for radio and the web. She recently completed studies at the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia) where she found a new interest in interactive art that incorporates and highlights sound as the central focus.

Orly Bitov

Orly Bitov was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She studied the cello with Zvi Harel and chamber music at the Isaac Stern music centre. After she completed her Artist’s Diploma at the Royal Conservatory of Music, in Toronto, Orly travelled to Spain where she played in the Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon and to the UK where she freelanced with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Symphony and the Scottish Opera. Orly lives in Toronto and performs chamber music at the Shaw festival and the Glenn Gould Studio and contemporary music theatre with Queen of Puddings, and Ensemble Noir. She freelances with the Windsor Symphony, Orchestra London, Elmer Iseler Singers, the Amadeus Choir, and the National Ballet Orchestra.

Darren Copeland

Darren Copeland is a Canadian composer, sound and radio artist. He has created sound installations for the Open Ears Festival, McLuhan Festival, Toronto Art Fair, and Tranz-Tech New Media Biennial. His radio works include the dramas “Ich will kein inmich mehr sein” for ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, “Terror & Erebus” and “A Dream Play” for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the soundscape documentaries “Life Unseen” and “Toronto Sound Mosaic.” His concert works are available on the empreintes DIGITALes label (www.electrocd.com). Darren is also the artistic director of New Adventures in Sound Art which produces the festivals Deep Wireless, Sound Travels and SOUNDplay every year in Toronto. The multi-channel spatialization used in Copeland's work is also a trademark of New Adventures in Sound Art's events, where the world of sound is explored in a highly immersive listening context (www.naisa.ca).

Carey Dodge

Carey Dodge began his musical career blowing on bottles and making dripping sounds with his cheeks for student theatre performances in Vancouver, B.C. He has since been involved in sound engineering,
composition, max/msp, sound tech, recording, found/made instruments, soundscapes and sound sculpting across Canada and in France... Carey adds artistic producer to the list with this his most
recent project, ‘A Tree in the Middle’.

Bernhard Gál (website)

The composer and artist Bernhard Gál creates electro-acoustic music as well as compositions for acoustic instruments. In his intermedia art projects and sound installations, he combines sound, light, objects, video projections, and spatial concepts.

Born in Vienna, Austria in 1971, Gál began to nurture his interest in music and (sound) art around 1985. After studies at Vienna’s University of Music (Sound Engineering) and the University of Vienna (Musicology), and a year-long residency in New York City in 1997–98, he has focused on his compositional and artistic activities. Since 1998, Gál has worked as a freelance composer and artist. He runs the record label Gromoga Records and is director of the Austrian art organization ‚sp ce’. When not abroad, he divides his time between Berlin and Vienna.

Gal's work has been presented in concerts, sound installations and exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the Americas and performed by ensembles such as the China Found Music Workshop Taiwan, the NewTon-Ensemble Vienna, the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and the Ensemble Noamnesia Chicago. He has been invited to international music and art festivals (e.g. Wien Modern Festival; Jeunesse-Festival Vienna; Kryptonale Berlin, Donaufestival Austria; ICMC Berlin; MaerzMusik Berlin; Inventionen Berlin; MATA Festival New York; New Sound, New York-Festival, NYC; Soundfield Festival Chicago; Mutek Montreal; Musashino Public Art Festival Tokyo) and frequently gives lectures and workshops.

An important aspect of his work is the combination of music with other art forms, in solo projects as well as in in collaborations, e.g. with Yumi Kori, P. Michael Schultes, G.S. Sedlak, Akemi Takeya, and Emre Tuncer. As a (laptop) musician, Gál performs in solo concerts and has worked together with musicians such as Tung Chao-Ming and Kai Fagaschinski.

For his music and art projects Gal has received various awards and grants, including the Karl Hofer Prize Berlin 2001, an Annual Grant from SKE-Fonds Vienna 2002, a fellowship from the DAAD Artists in Berlin Programme 2003, and the Austrian State Scholarship for Composition 2004. Bernhard Gal’s music has been published by record labels such as Charhizma, Durian, Gromoga, Intransitive, Klanggalerie and Plate Lunch. In 2005, the German publishing house Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg published the comprehensive monograph ‘Installations’ (book and audio-CD), documenting Gál’s intermedia installations since 1999.

Peter Hatch

Composer, concert organiser and teacher, Peter Hatch's works are in a large number of genres, from orchestral and chamber music to instrumental theatre, electroacoustics and installations. He received a DMA degree from the University of British Columbia following MusBac and MusM degrees from the University of Toronto. His works have won recognition with composer competitions held by CBC Radio, SOCAN, the Winnipeg New Music Festival and Vancouver New Music and have been performed at festivals such as the ISCM World Music Days, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik, the Guelph Spring Festival, Scotiafest, the Vancouver New Music Festival, the Percussive Arts Society, the Vancouver Early Music Festival and the International Computer Music Conference. His works have been recorded on numerous compact discs under the CBC Musica Viva, CMC Centrediscs, Conaccord, CBC and Artifact labels.

Theatrical and multi-media elements have been incorporated into many of his works, an interest which has grown from extending traditional concert music performance practices and from collaborations with director David McMurray Smith, architect Dereck Revington and choreographers David Earle and Bill James. The writings of Gertrude Stein have also played an important role in his compositions and has resulted in such works as the full evening instrumental theatre piece 'Mounting Picasso' and his very short opera 'Asks Alice'. Recent works have investigated 'revisiting' masterworks in Western music, as heard through modern ears - affected by constant exposure to these works through movies, television and other media as well as in doctor's offices and shopping malls, in elevators and while on hold on the telephone.

As well as his compositional work, Peter has been very active as the artistic director of new music ensembles and festivals. In 1985 he founded NUMUS Concerts, a Waterloo based new music organization. He has been the Artistic Director of several festivals of new music, including the 1989 '5th Stream' Festival and the 1995 'Coming Together' festival. Peter was Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from 1999-2003 and is currently Artistic Director of the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. Peter is also Professor and coordinator of the composition programme at The Faculty of Music, Wilfrid Laurier University.

Recent and upcoming highlights includethe arrival of a second CD devoted completely to the works of Peter Hatch on the Artifact label ( 'Gathered Evidence, featuring performances by The Canadian Chamber Ensemble, The Penderecki Quartet and Cynthia Hiebert, harpsichord), a full evening performance of the chamber music of Peter Hatch by Ensemble KORE at the Sala Rossa in Montreal (March 2003) and an article by James Harley on the music of Peter Hatch for Musicworks Magazine (Summer 2003). The Ontario Arts Council has chosen Peter as one of twelve 'Ambassadors for the Arts' from across the disciplines to help celebrate their 40th anniversary. He and his work will be featured on both the OAC website and in printed publications.

Jamie Hofman

Jamie Hofman is a recent graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University where he studied European classical singing, improvisation, and writing. He is an active singer, instrumentalist, and teacher in Toronto.

Reena Katz

Reena Katz is Toronto-based violinist, composer, and audio artist. Her work explores gender, ethnicity, migration and anachronism through experimental, World, electro-acoustic and sound art formats. She focuses on the use and re-use of analog sound technologies mixed with contemporary digital software. Guided by a deep love of collaboration, her audio work focuses on inter-disciplinary projects in film, video, poetry, dance and performance art. Katz has developed an inventive and strong voice using the intersections of traditional violin and fiddle styles with contemporary sequencers, samplers and laptop software, and experiments with vintage microphones and amplification equipment. Her electro-acoustic song suite, Signals from Shadow Valley was performed at Toronto's Music Gallery as part of their 2004 etonal series.

In 2003, Katz received the Best New Artist award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival for her experimental radio documentary can you say haa?, co-produced by CBC's Outfront and New Adventures in Sound with Charles St. Video. Her audio installation and performance includes explorations into urban history, blood memory and gentrification. Her interactive installation, are we sleeping yet? was exhibited as part of Video In Vancouver's Signal and Noise Festival in April. Most recently, Katz co-produced The Parkdale Stories Project with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha as part of the Mayworks Festival for Working People and the Arts. The project used local stories to guide participants through a walking tour of Parkdale's gentrification. Reena can be contacted at: radiodress@sympatico.ca.

Emily Law

Born and raised in Toronto, Emily Law is entering her third year at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Emily was first introduced to dance at The Etobicoke School of the Arts. She has worked with Kaha:wi Dance Theatre at the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, The Power of Place festival, a Dancemakers Centre for Creation Residency, and Living Ritual World Indigenous Dance Festival. Emily has worked with The Chimera Project for the Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists and Dancing on the Edge Festival (Vancouver). She has danced and choreographed with the Parahumans Dance Theatre in programmes such as Have You Seen These Dancers, RED cabaret, Dance Ontario’s Dance Weekend and at the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival. Emily has choreographed for In a White Room 2005 with Event Horizon Dance. She is currently working in a dance film with Makeshift Productions and a new work for In a White Room 2006.

Francisco López

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the underground experimental music scene. Over the last twenty five years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, and sound installations in 50 countries of the five continents. His extended catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 140 record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded twice with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival.

Julia Male

Julia Male has recently completed the dance program at Concordia University, Montreal, and has trained previously at Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, and at The Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement in Toronto. Her most recent independent performances include Sarah Kirkpatrick’s The Continuing Saga of… at the 2005 fFIDA in Toronto, Caroline Dubois’ Conversation at KICK in Montreal, and Meagan O’Shea’s Intimate/Awkward at Toronto’s Junction Arts Festival and First Kissed. She has been a part of two youth companies in Toronto; Young Movement Inc. (YMI Dancing) and DancESAtion. For YMI she has choreographed two works; Stay With Us ‘Till Somebody Decides To Go (2002) and Pennyrhymes (2003). She has shown three choreographic works at Concordia University; A Month on a House (Dec. 2004), Qualms (Apr. 2005), and Towards Lying (Dec. 2005), the last of which was a physical exploration of the act of lying. Her current work is an exploration of incompletion and will be performed at Concordia in April of 2006.

Jane Maness received an Honours Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from the University of Toronto, where she studied tuba with Charles Daellenbach. She was a member of the National Youth Orchestra and formerly principal tuba of the Canadian Opera Company. Ms. Maness has been principal tuba of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Canadian Chamber Ensemble since 1975. She has taught at Interprovincial Music Camp and Banff Festival of Youth Orchestras and has been the Brass Adjudicator at the Ontario Music Festivals Association Provincial Finals. She revised the Royal Conservatory of Music Tuba Syllabus and the RCM sight-reading requirements for brass instruments. Ms. Maness teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo.

Jason Martorino

Jason Martorino, baritone, holds a Bachelor of Music and an Opera Diploma from Wilfrid Laurier University, where he studied under Victor Martens. A native of Toronto, Jason has been active on the stage from a young age in theatre of both spoken and musical nature. Jason has been privileged to sing with WLU Opera, The Glenn Gould Professional School, Opera Jeunesse and Arcady, among others. Opera highlights include Quince and Snug in Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Thomas Putnam in Ward's "The Crucible," L'Ogre in Aubert's "La Foret Bleue," and the Usher in the G&S operetta "Trial By Jury." In August 2005 Jason sang the role of Constable Lawson in the new canadian opera "Filumena," composed by fellow Laurier alumnus John Estacio, at the Banff Centre in Alberta. Concert appearances have included solos in Faure's Requiem in Cambridge, Ontario, Gilbert and Sullivan Highlights at the Lighthouse Theatre, Port Dover, Mozart highlights in Parry Sound, and Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel in Aliston. Jason is delighted to make his second appearance in Peter Hatch's Guerilla Sound Events.

Andra McCartney

A soundscape artist, who works with her own field recordings to create websites, CD ROMs, tape works and performances that explore the social ecology of soundscapes. Her sound works are available on CD anthologies produced by the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (Montréal), Terra Nova (MIT), Musicworks (Toronto), Deep Wireless (Toronto), Canadian Society for Independent Radio Production (Ottawa), Artemisia Gallery (Chicago), and Entartete Kunst (London, Ont), as well as online. McCartney is an associate professor in the Dept. of Communication Studies at Concordia University, teaching Sound in Media. She has a long-standing research interest in issues of gender, creation, sound, and technology. Currently, she is working on a special issue of the Canadian University Music Review, based on papers presented at the In and Out of the Sound Studio Conference at Concordia University in July 2005.

Robert C. F. Mulder

Robert C. F. Mulder was born in The Hague, Holland in the last century. After much probing he will admit to being an independent interdisciplinary artist with a passion for the real-time interaction of light, sound and imagination. This passion has resulted in a long exploratory path of discovery in the domain of live media arts ˜ the integration of visuals, music, and drama ˜ in performance utilizing new means.

He was (and still is) inspired by the interdisciplinary ideas/works of Le Corbusier & Edgar Varèse, Louis-Bertrant Castel, Thomas Wilfred, Bulat Galeyev, and Leon Theremin. Among his major commissions are new media and integrated arts commissions for the Canada Pavilion of Expo 1986, Ars Electronica Festival, (Austria 1992), the Berlin Music Biennale (Germany,1997), and New Music Concerts (1992 & 2000). He has won awards/prizes from the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition and Prix Ars Electronica. His works have been staged, screened or exhibited in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Estonia, USA, and Russia.

He is a founding member of LEARK, a live improvisatory laptop band. His most satisfying event of this Century was the creation of an interactive CD-ROM about the passing of the Millennium Year in partnership with the extended public school community of a small Ontario village.

Andrea Naccarato

Soprano Andrea Naccarato is a recent graduate of Wilfrid Laurier where she studied voice with Victor Martens. There, she appeared in excerpted versions of Britten’s Rape of Lucretia as The Female Chorus and in Verdi’s Falstaff as Nannetta, and in the Canadian premiere of Aubert’s La Foret Bleue. For three summers she was invited to sing in the exclusive Festivalensemble in Stuttgart Germany under the direction of Helmuth Rilling where she had the privilege of singing the soprano solo in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. In oratorio she has sung the soprano solo of Faure’s Requiem with Barrie Cabena, Jan Overduin, and Dr. Edward Philips and has sung Bach’s cantata Weichet Nur Betruebte Schatten with James Mason. Recently she performed as a soloist in a recital of opera at the Festival of Sound in Parry Sound, and keeps active singing in various churches around Toronto and teaching privately. She looks forward to her debut in Sound Travels.

Sarah Peebles

Sarah Peebles is a Toronto-based American composer, improviser and installation artist. She integrates sounds she has gathered from natural habitats and cityscapes in North America and other regions of the world into her works, often exploring alternative performance settings such as museums, bamboo groves, temples and parks. Peebles pursued violin, composition, and theatre studies in Minnesota, followed by a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from the University of Michigan School of Music (1988), workshops in electronic media at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto, and studies in contemporary and traditional Japanese music at Toho Gakuen School of Music (1985), and independant traditional music study and performance with various groups in Tokyo over extended periods between 1985 and 1993. Peebles has composed for a variety of media, including ensemble, electroacoustics, radio, dance, installation and video. In addition to solo work, collaborators have included Evan Parker, John Butcher, Jin Hi Kim, David Toop, Robert Cruickshank, Peter Chin, and René Highway, and extensive collaboration with "Smash and Teeny" (duo with Nilan Perera, electric guitar) and "Cinnamon Sphere" (Peebles, Perera, and calligrapher Chung Gong). She has received commissions from New Adventures in Sound Art, Radio-Canada, Radio New Zealand and David Toop, and awards include Japan Foundation Uchida Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship through the American Composers Forum, ASCAP Awards to Young Composers and BMI Student Composers Award. Her music has been featured on various films and videos, performed and broadcast internationally, and is available on Cycling '74, innova Recordings, Spool, Hornblower, and Post-Concrète.

Nilan Perera

Nilan Perera has been an active member of the Canadian creative music and performance scene since 1983. He has been involved in some of the most forward looking, influential and radical ensembles of the past 19 years including NOMA, Bill Grove's Not King Fudge, Handslang and the Excalceolators. He has also performed and recorded with Evan Parker, John Butcher, Vinnie Golia, Don Preston, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Glen Hall, John Oswald, Vinx, and Michael Ondaatje. His decade long association with guitarist/composer and iconoclast, Rainer Wiens has led him into the world of Dance/Theatre as a composer/performer/instrumentalist with Wiens and Jan Komarek in 'Sound Image Theatre' and, most recently, with Susanna Hood's 'Humprojects'. He is currently a member of trip-hop group 'LAL',prepared guitar trio 'Ferrobaci' (with Wiens and Bill Parsons), electroacoustic/improv duo 'Smash and Teeny' (with Sara Peebles), Susanna Hood's 'Humprojects' and radio art duo 'FaMished AMerika' (w/Susanna Hood) as well as performing and composing as a soloist on guitar.

Rob Piilonen

Rob Piilonen is a flute player and composer who has been active in the Toronto music scene since 1996. Rob's flute playing spans many styles, lending his unique sound to folk, pop, latin, electronic, new music, jazz and creative improvising in many settings. He has scored music for films and dance projects, and worked with a number of Toronto's leaders in various fields of the arts, music, and production, and is a member of the Board of Directors for AIMToronto (Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto). Dedicated to pushing the flute beyond the standard expected from the instrument, Rob is most proud when told by someone, "I don't usually like the flute, but I like the way you play it!".

Barry Prophet

Barry Prophet is a composer, percussionist, and sculptor whose music has appeared in galleries and theatres in Canada, United States and Europe. Creating unique sounds since 1979, he has exhibited and performed on his percussion sculptures 'Glass Box', 'Revolving Tone Door' and 'TransparentTone Arch' at the Art Gallery of Windsor (1986), Bloomsburg Theatre (1989) Bloomsburg, USA, the Art Gallery of Algoma (1989, 1991, 1992) Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay Art Gallery ((1989, 1990, 1991), White Water Gallery (1989) North Bay, McMichael Canadian Art Collection (1994) Kleinberg, Pekao Gallery, (1997) Toronto and the Canadian Sculpture Centre (2002) Toronto. Barry's micro tonally tuned glass lithophones have been featured in performance venues throughout the country and his 1997 recording 'Crystal Bones' (CD) has been choreographed to by international dance artists. Barry has led traditional and experimental percussion programs for students and educators across Canada since 1983.

Photo: Bernard Préfontaine

Stéphane Roy

The author of a book on electroacoustic music analysis (L’Harmattan, Univers musical series, Paris, 2003), Stéphane Roy holds both a doctorate degree in electroacoustic composition and a PhD in musicology from the Université de Montréal where he has taught electroacoustic techniques and auditory perception for a few years. After spending close to five years in St Louis (Missouri, USA), he comes back to Montréal to devote his time to composition, musicological thoughts, and teaching, which he does at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. He is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and vice-president of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC). Stéphane Roy’s works have received awards from international competitions in Canada, the USA, and Europe. They have been recorded on a number of labels, including empreintes DIGITALes (Kaleidos, 1996, IMED 9630 and Migrations, 2003, IMED 0373). Awardee of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Stéphane Roy has been invited to present his works in Europe and the Americas. [bio courtesy www.electrocd.com]

Jason Sharp

Jason hails from the western plains of Edmonton Alberta. After completing a Bachelor of Music in jazz performance at the University of Toronto, he continued his studies in composition at the Amsterdam Conservatorium. Mr. Sharp now calls Montreal home and has enjoyed contributing to Montreal’s vibrant music scene ever since. He has appeared in numerous local festivals including the L’Off festival, Montreal Funk and Soul festival, Suoni per il Popolo, the Montreal Reggae Festival, as well as jazz festivals across the country.

Jesse Turton

Jesse is an award-winning bassist, and has played professionally in jazz, blues, rock, and R&B bands in
both Canada and the US - since the age of 15. His preferred instruments are the upright acoustic bass
and both fretted and fretless electric bass. He presently plays in Passenger, Chipotle and the Sam
Turton Band.

Kristina Udegbunam

Kristina Udegbunam was born in Etobicoke, and raised in Mississauga, Ontario. She started taking jazz at age 12 with Maryanne Marsh and ballet with Sheona Bell at Sean Boutilier Academy of Dance. Udegbunam is a graduate of Cawthra Park Secondary School where she received a Regional Arts Program certificate in dance. There, she participated in the Repertoire Dance Company and worked with such choreographers as Gino Berti, Fanny Ghorayeb, and Nicholas Villeneuve. She was the recipient of the award for Excellence in Repertoire as well as the Frank Augustyn Dance Award.

Udegbunam is currently in her second year at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre where she is greatly influenced by such choreographers and teachers as Wendy Chiles, Rosemary James, Helen Jones, Pat Miner, Sharon Moore, Julia Sasso, Darryl Tracy, and Michael Trent. She has choreographed acted as treasurer, and front of house for the past three Coffee Houses which are student run and choreographed performances. Udegbunam has also had the pleasure of working for photographer, Cylla von Tiedemann, when she modelled for the 05/06 TO Live with Culture campaign. She currently works at numerous dance studios in Mississauga and Thornhill where she teaches both recreational and competitive ballet, hip hop and jazz. Udegbunam is interested in introducing modern to her studio classes, and also cultivates a steady practice of Moksha yoga in her spare time.

John Young

Photo: Nigel Essex

John Young was born in Christchurch (New Zealand) in 1962 to English (father) and Italian (mother) parents. He studied at the University of Canterbury, completing a doctorate on the manipulation of environmental sound sources in electroacoustic music. In 1989, with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, he travelled to the UK to further his studies of electroacoustic music composition working privately in the studios of the University of East Anglia with Denis Smalley.

He returned to New Zealand in 1990 to take up a position at Victoria University of Wellington where he became a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios. In November 2000 he became a Senior Lecturer with the Music Technology Innovation and Research Group at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK).

His main interest in composition continues to be in acousmatic music, particularly forms based on the interplay between recognizable natural sound sources and computer-based studio transformations.

He was first prize winner in the 1996 Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (for his work Inner), and has received mentions in the Prix Ars Electronica, Bourges, Noroit-Léonce Petitot and Valencia Arts XXI competitions.

He has been a visiting composer at San Jose State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), the Groupe de recherches musicales (Paris, France), the iM-PACT Center of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (USA) and, with the assistance of the Swedish Institute, at EMS (Stockholm, Sweden). [bio courtesy www.electrocd.com]

Josh Zubot

Josh Zubot currently resides in Montreal. He spends his time performing, composing and recently, he
finished his BFA in Electroacoustic studies. Josh’s instruments of choice are the violin and laptop.
Improv music, electroacoustic, jazz, classical and fusions in between are disciplines Josh focuses on.