Sound Travels Residency
July 19 - August 13, 2006

This year's residency for emerging artists focuses on guerilla sound events with the interdisciplinary participation of composer-musicians Nilan Perera and Debashis Sinha, and choreographer-dancers Julia Male and Emily Law. Under the mentorship of our composer in residence Peter Hatch, the four artists will create Guerilla Sound Art Events, which are short 'spontaneous' performance art pieces that draw attention to the contemporary urban soundscape.

Residency artists

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.

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.

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.

Debashis Sinha

Debashis Sinha is a percussionist who specializes in the instruments of the Arab world, Greece, Turkey and Persia. One of the emerging new wave of Canadian trans-cultural musicians, he is a member of Juno nominated world music groups Maza Mezé and autorickshaw, and leads his own post traditional free improv quartet, Ima Ensemble. His audio work incorporates both traditional musical instruments and compositional principles as well as the new sound palette of the digital studio, resulting in a sound world that is a reflection of his own experience as a performer and South Asian artist.

Composer in Residence

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.