New Hermitage
Understated Nova Scotia improvising quartet New Hermitage has steadily been gathering momentum over the past few years. Veteran critic Peter Margasak remarked in the Quietus that “the group’s fragile, gauzy chamber sound pushes against what you might expect from such an ensemble,” and indeed their unconventional instrumentation of Andrew Mackelvie (reeds), India Gailey (cello), Ellen Gibling (harp), and Ross Burns (guitar) imparts an ambient weightlessness to their music.
The ensemble's debut album was nominated for Music Nova Scotia Award, and written up by dearly departed wayward tastemaker Tiny Mix Tapes. Their 2018 performance with internationally renowned bass clarinettist/ ECM record alumnus Jeff Reilly saw subsequent commercial release and won Classical Recording of the Year at the 2019 Music Nova Scotia Awards. 2020's Unearth was widely acclaimed in publications such as Musicworks, Vital, Free Jazz Blog, the WholeNote, PanM360, and Esoteros.
In their five years together, they've been programmed alongside Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society, Angel Bat Dawid, pi'pa virtuoso Liu Fang, and prolific noise explorer i d m theft able while embarking on multiple tours of Eastern Canada.