7 pm | EARTH WIND & CHOIR
Sarah Good conductor
Vocalists:
Annie Shaw • Tee Caterini • Bailey Duff • Babette de Jong • Olga Kirgidis • J Burbage • Katie Penrose • Jess Carey • Emily Sattler • Ian Challenger • Jon Dalton • Magda Tigchelaar • Marc Ysselstein • Chris Palmer • Siobhan Murphy
We will start our festival with a tradition, now in its 6th year out of the 11. The ever-evolving local vocal institution Earth Wind & Choir first introduced their fun, adventurous sound some 15 years ago. Conductor Sarah Good plays the choir of 15-20 dedicated creative vocalists like an instrument, presenting idiosyncratic takes on the most beautiful, ugly and/or interesting music the group can find—from early polyphony to avant-pop.
8 pm | UGLY BEAUTIES
Ugly Beauties explores the terrain between jazz, contemporary classical music and improvisation. Marilyn Lerner’s piano, Matt Brubeck’s cello and Nick Fraser’s drums interweave to create a boundless palette of texture and mood, and the breadth of sonic experimentation at times renders the three instruments indistinguishable from each other. Lerner, Brubeck and Fraser possess an uncanny synergy and improvisational virtuosity, allowing the music to remain free as it circulates effortlessly around groove, abstract lyricism and harmonic exploration.
A gracious treat to the ears, full of great tones and distinctive acoustic perspectives… — Touching Extremes, Italy
Happily, those experimental tendencies are offset by strong compositions and melodies, so they never descend into the tuneless racket some associate with improvised music. — NOW, Canada
Exhilarating jazz pianist/improviser Marilyn Lerner performs from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. She composes for film, theatre, radio and television. She produced "Birds Are Returning", the first contemporary Canadian jazz recording to come out of Cuba. Lerner has toured with The Queen Mab Trio across North America and Europe. Lerner conducts workshops on improvisation and on Jewish music throughout North America, Europe and the former Soviet Union. Other projects include both a recording and performances of "Shake My Heart Like a Copper Bell", Lerner's contemporary Yiddish song cycle on the poetry of Anna Margolin, scored for piano, cello, clarinet and singer Adrienne Cooper, ongoing collaborations with poet Patrick Friesen, a duet, Brass Knuckle Sandwich, with Nicole Rampersaud, and numerous solo concerts.
Matt Brubeck is a Juno-nominated performer/composer specializing in improvisation on the cello. Raised on jazz and classically trained at Yale, Matt is at ease in multiple genres and has taken his cello improvisation skills into diverse musical territories. In addition to the Ugly Beauties, Matt’s current jazz/improv projects include Brubeck Braid (with pianist David Braid) and Tallboys (with guitarist Kevin Breit and percussionist Jesse Stewart), and a duo with saxophonist David Mott. Matt continues to enjoy performing with a wide range of other musicians including Evan Parker, John Geggie, Pierre Tanguay, Natalie MacMaster, Carlos del Junco, and Yo-Yo Ma to name a few. During his years in San Francisco, Matt performed with numerous jazz and improv artists including Miles Boisen, Gino Robair, Ben Goldberg, and Pamela Z. He founded Oranj Symphonette, which recorded two CD’s for Rykodisc and went on to play the major jazz festivals, from Monterey to Montréal. In the pop/rock world, Matt’s eclectic adventures include many years of recording with Tom Waits, as well as touring with the Dixie Chicks and Sheryl Crow, among others.
Nick Fraser has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community since he moved there from Ottawa in 1995. He has worked with a veritable “who’s who” of Canadian jazz and improvised music including Justin Haynes, Mike Murley, Rich Underhill, P.J. Perry, Phil Dwyer, Michael Snow, John Oswald, Andrew Downing, Jean Martin, Christine Duncan, Lina Allemano, Quinsin Nachoff, Dave Restivo, Jim Vivian, David Braid, Ryan Driver, David Occhipinti, William Carn, Nancy Walker, Kieran Overs, Kelly Jefferson, John Geggie, Scott Thomson, Marilyn Lerner, David Mott, Lori Freedman, Jean Derome, Ron Samworth and Kirk MacDonald.
9 pm | GAYLE YOUNG
Composer Gayle Young designs and builds instruments on which she performs music for unusual tunings. Her music often includes recordings filtered by tuned resonators she designed and built to combine pitch and overtones with environmental sound. Her text-based compositions invite musicians to build rhythms and textures in response to depictions of everyday experience.
Her recent recordings As Trees Grow (works for piano) and According to the Moon (works for voice), are both available through gayleyoung.bandcamp.com. Young’s sound installations, often in collaboration with visual artist Reinhard Reitzenstein, include tuned resonators that respond to environmental sound, found objects such as resonant stones and beaver-chewed sticks, and room-sized three-dimensional string structures. Young wrote The Sackbut Blues, the biography of pioneering electronic instrument inventor Hugh Le Caine (1914–1977). As editor of Musicworks magazine over two decades, she established an inclusive perspective on the complex and multifaceted sound worlds that characterize experimental music.
Gayle will perform two short pieces on the Amaranth and solo improvisations. One of them will include lithophone stones. She will also play improvisations that include Eugene Martynec, Bill McBirnie and Bill Gilliam in different configurations. Her improvisations place interaction among musicians in the foreground of a listener’s experience, when sounds and textures are echoed, shared, and extended.
10 pm | SOPHIA JERNBERG & MATS GUSTAFSSON
2/5 of The End (playing next day!) grace our stage for the first time. Vocalist Sofia Jernberg and reedsman, flutist Mats Gustafsson perform an all too rare duet set! It's an exciting opportunity to experience the dialogue between two intense and gifted artists, in an unusual context and instrument combination.
Born in Ethiopia, now an Oslo resident, Sofia Jernberg is a Swedish experimental singer, improviser, and composer. She is widely known for expanding the "instrumental" possibilities of the voice and is active both as soloist and in various bands. Her musical partners include internationally acclaimed performers such as Peter Evans, Eve Risser, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kim Myhr and Heiner Goebbels.
Jernberg is the leader (together with the pianist Cecilia Persson) of the chamber jazz group Paavo. In 2008, the group received the "jazz group of the year" award from Swedish Radio. Jernberg also works on the contemporary classical music scene, in which she serves as both singer and composer.
Although having been adopted as a young child, Jernberg was never completely disconnected from Ethiopia. After traveling to Addis Abeba in 2000, she emerged into Ethiopian music traditions—inspired by the film Endurance, among other influences—, and soon started collaborating with legendary musician Hailu Mergia. Jernberg lives in Oslo.
Born in Umeå, Sweden, living in Nickelsdorf, Austria, Mats Gustafsson is a saxophone player, improviser and composer. He performs as a solo artist, as well as many other projects internationally touring/ playing with Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi, Peter Brötzmann, Neneh Cherry, Chrstian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, Ken Vandermark and in working groups FIRE!, THE END, LUFT, ANGUISH and Gush.
Projects include The Underflow, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Fake (the facts), BNNT, etc…. Large ensemble work ranges from FIRE! Orchestra, Klangforum Wien to the NU – ensemble. In all, over 2000 concerts and over 250 record productions in Europe, Australia, Africa, North & South America and Asia. Multidisciplinary collaborations with contemporary dance, theatre, art, poetry as well as projects with noise, electronica, contemporary rock and free jazz make Gustafsson a music and art omnivore.
$30 advance tickets (for 4 acts) via Eventbrite
$40 door
$85 festival weekend pass via Eventbrite
No one is refused admission for lack of funds
