Imaginary Percussion Ensemble is the brainchild of gifted Toronto percussionist and composer Germaine Liu, and features two of the city's other foremost sonic imaginations, Joe Sorbara and Mark Zurawinski. The ensemble’s music is rooted in a deep concern for gesture, for physicality, for tactility—invested in performance as visceral exploration and co-creation, performance as an ongoing process of (re)discovering ideas and vocabulary; always in the hope of creating an inviting and inclusive space for audience and participants. Tom Beedham of Exclaim! touted their set at the 2017 X-Avant Festival as "an evening highlight," adding that their work "repeatedly challenged any academy-set definitions of just what constitutes an instrument or a musical practice."
Nilan Perera has been a part of the improvised and art music community since the mid '80s starting as the guitarist of choice for the punkfunk/No Wave scene that then infected Toronto. He has since performed and recorded with John Butcher, Evan Parker, William Parker, Jandek, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Glen Hall, John Oswald,David Toop, Sarah Peebles, Eddie Prevost, Rainer Wiens and Michael Ondaatje among many others. His decade long association with multidisciplinary artist Susanna Hood has placed him in the vanguard of experimental sound artists working in performance with three major works with Ms. Hood's company hum as well as performing and composing for many other independent dancer/choreographers and theatre companies.
Fahmid Nibesh
b. 1987, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Migrated to Toronto, Canada 1997
Multi-instrumentalist, with focus on electric guitar
Works with textural, modal, cyclic and improvisational systems
Related interests include alternate tuning systems, design and construction of sound sculptures and musical instruments, architecture related to acoustics, visual arts, poetry and Permaculture ethics and design principles.
The Fahmid/ Nilan Guitar Duo
The duo will explore sound in all its variety using guitars, electronics and sometimes text. This exploration ranges from electroacoustica, noise, free jazz, New Music and alt-folk. The music relies not only in the traditional ways for making music but explores radical context and spoken word. They also have fun!