Filaments
Filaments is an ongoing collaborative project dedicated to exploring what happens when electroacoustic, multimedia, or improvisational elements stretch the boundaries of what it means to compose/perform/create works for ‘solo’ violin/performer.
Filaments are omnipresent in our lives - eyelashes flutter, blood courses, and wires become incandescent. Threads of thought, and memory endlessly unfurl/enmesh, forming pathways within our consciousness. Vibrations produced by bowing/scraping/plucking strings are not only capable of transmitting physical sonic artifacts but of imparting and evoking less easily quantifiable emotions/ideas.
Featuring creative partnerships with 7 artists from across Canada, the USA and EU, Filaments is currently in the workshopping phase and is made possible with generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the SOCAN foundation. Scroll down for more information on the progress of each featured artist and collaboration.
Alex Mah - birdcage
birdcage is a score and poetry book/live performance project in collaboration with Alex Mah, we recently previewed birdcage in San Diego (picture below). Video and music from the San Diego show will be released later this year and we are planning full-length shows for Vancouver and Toronto in 2024/25.
Photo credit: David Aguila
birdcage is an introspective multi-media and performance work that reflects on family, migration, and memory through written text (scores and poetry), lanterns, voice, and music. The publication is designed to be assembled into a simple lantern that holds the scores and poems and invites the viewer to engage with the content in a non-linear way. The scores, poems, and lanterns are also part of a live performance work for solo violin and electronic tape. Created in collaboration with violinist, photographer Ilana Waniuk.
dedicated to our grandmothers
Alex Mah – text scores, poems, concept
Ilana Waniuk- collaborator, violinist, photographer
Edition of 150
Riso printed and published by Moniker Press
ISBN 978-1-989428-13-9
Vancouver, BC – 2023
You can purchase a limited-run publication, birdcage, published with Moniker Press!
Pictured: Alex Mah with birdcage at Moniker Press
Alex Mah is an interdisciplinary artist, composer-musician, and performer in dance. He lives and practices on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His electroacoustic music investigates time and timbre and his written music explores embodied concepts such as chance, choice, and relationality in performance. He has performed in Canada, the U.S., and Germany and holds a BFA from SFU (Canada) and an MRes from Bath Spa University (U.K.).
The photo gallery showing images taken at various stages in the collaborative process.
Anna Pidgorna - Heartstrings
Heartstrings is an electroacoustic work in progress which melds Ukrainian folk song with textiles, embroidery and improvisation. Heartstrings explores multi-generational memory and displacement as brought about by the war in Ukraine. See below for a compilation video of some early workshop experiments!
Anna Pidgorna is a Ukrainian-Canadian composer, vocalist and multi-media artist who combines sound, visual arts, and writing to create works that are dramatic and picturesque. She works extensively with Ukrainian folk singing, draws inspiration from the natural soundscape, and incorporates visual elements into some of her manuscripts. Her work has been commissioned, performed and recorded by soloists and ensembles in Canada, USA, Uruguay, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Poland, Ukraine and South Korea. She holds a PhD from Princeton University, an MMus from the University of Calgary, and a BA from Mount Allison University.
Anthony Tan - Pose IX (chorus)
Pose IX for amplified violin and multi tracked violin (or violin choir) will receive its workshop premiere at the University of Victoria on February 23rd, 2024.
Working at the intersections of concert composition, electronic music, and piano improvisation Anthony Tan (Canada) combines instrumental practice with signal processing, synthesized models, sampling, and field recording, resulting in music that explores the identity of sound, and the fluidity of genre.
Recent and upcoming collaborators include Ensemble Project Morph (Germany/Korea), Scapegoat (Canada/France), Thin Edge New Music Collective (Canada), Ilana Waniuk (Canada), Maruta Staravoitava (Germany), LUX:NM (Germany), No Hay Banda (Canada), Colin McAllister (USA), Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), Ensemble Experimental (Germany).
Recognition includes a 2023 Juno nomination for classical composition of the year, the 2021 Canada Council Jules Léger Prize in Chamber Music, the audience and jury prize from the ECM+ Generation 2014, the 2011 Giga-Hertz Förder Prize, and the International Competition for live-electronics of the Hamburg Klangwerktage. Residencies include Expermentalstudio des SWR (Freiburg, Germany), and the Leighton Artist Studios at the Banff Centre (Canada).
Tan holds a Ph.D. from McGill University, Montréal, Canada, the Meisterklasse (3. Zyklus) from the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden, Germany, and was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (RI’17). He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Victoria.
Fjóla Evans - Hyphae (2024)(for violin and electronics)
“Hyphae is inspired by the underground communication system between fungi and trees. Called the mycorrhizal network, it links the wispy tendrils of tree roots to the branching filamentous hyphae of fungi. This allows them to send signals between the different organisms, connecting them in what many scientists believe is a mutually supportive symbiotic web. In Hyphae, I recorded Ilana Waniuk playing very quiet and delicate sounds on the violin, layering and weaving the wispy filaments of the quiet violin sounds together into an increasingly dense mass of connections, like the threads of the mycorrhizal web.”
-Fjóla Evans
Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer and cellist. Her work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena. Commissions and performances have come from musicians such as Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird, the Aizuri Quartet, and the Residentie Orkest of the Netherlands. Her work has been featured on the MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Gaudeamus Music Week, and the Cello Biennale Amsterdam 2020. Fjóla is currently a doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University where her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Recent and upcoming projects include Hraunflæði: a new work for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Íslenzk Ferðaflóra: a song cycle for Dúplum duo based on a taxonomy of Icelandic plant life, the release of cellist Ashley Bathgate’s recording of Augun on New Focus Recordings, and the German premiere—as performed by Ensemble Sjaella, Leipzig Ballett, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra—of Varð henni ljóð á munni: a piece for vocal sextet and chamber orchestra inspired by the women of the Icelandic sagas. www.fjolaevans.com
Past Performances: 2019 iteration of Filament
Filament
June 27, 2019
Doors 7pm/Show 8pm
Tickets Available at the door: $15 students/seniors/arts workers, $20 regular
Arrayspace, 155 Walnut Ave
facebook event
‘Filament’, is a collaborative concert project featuring 5 world premieres for violin and electronics by emerging artists/composers from across Canada: Róisín Adams and Cai, Germaine Liu, Colin Labadie, Ben Wylie and Julia Mermelstein. Each piece explores what happens when electroacoustic, multi-media, or improvisational elements stretch the boundaries of what it means to compose/perform/create works for ‘solo’ violin.
‘Filament’ is co-presented by Arraymusic with generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the SOCAN Foundation, Ontario Arts Council and Arraymusic.
photos by Terry Lim
Germaine Liu
Germaine Liu is a Toronto-based percussionist, performer and composer. Her interests primarily involve collaborations with people or the objects she plays. Her focus in composition include joyful explorations of everyday gestures and feelings through her musical relationships with her collaborators. As a percussionist, Liu has performed as a soloist and has been privileged to collaborate with many wonderful musicians, dancers and artists. Her most recent collaboration CeramiX with ceramic artist Chiho Tokita involves creating a set of compositions specific to Tokita’s ceramic work. She has participated in the 416 Festival, Guelph Jazz Festival, Nuit Blanche, Ottawa Chamber Festival, Tone Deaf Festival, NAISA's Sound Travels Festival, Suoni per il popolo, Supermusique, Toronto Jazz Festival, X-Avant festival, soundaXis festival, Music(in)Galleries, NUMUS, FTA (festival transamériques) and AIMToronto’s Leftover Daylight and Interface Series. She is part of a number of Toronto-based ensembles, including c_RL with Nicole Rampersaud and Allison Cameron, Octopus with Mark Zurawinski and Picastro. During her undergraduate degree at University of Guelph, Liu studied percussion with John Goddard and Jesse Stewart and music with Ellen Waterman, at York University in Toronto she studied composition with David Mott.
Ben Wylie
Ben Wylie is a composer, improviser, and sound artist based in Vancouver, BC. His work is concerned with tuning systems, theatricality, light, space, coded text, natural phenomena, drones, resonance, amplification, among many other things. His music has been performed in the United States, Canada, Spain, and Germany by ensembles and performers including Boston Musica Viva, the Bozzini Quartet, Ensemble 2e2m, Chris Watford, the Ludovico Ensemble, Naomi Sato, and Sylvie LaCroix, among others. He graduated with a BM in Composition from the Boston Conservatory in 2014, where he studied with Marti Epstein, Curtis Hughes, and Jan Swafford. He received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University in 2016, where he studied with composer Owen Underhill and theatre artist Steven Hill. He has participated in festivals including the Darmstadt Summer Courses, Festival Mixtur, the Arraymusic Young Composers Workshop, and the Atlantic Music Festival, among others. During these festivals he taken lessons with composers including Jennifer Walshe, Johannes Kreidler, Rebecca Saunders, Michael Pisaro, Phyllis Chen, Evan Ziporyn, and Ken Ueno. As an improviser he has created live scores for choreographers Linnea Gwiazda and Emmalena Fredriksson, he has also been featured in the 2015 Big Joy Festival, Quiet City concert series, and Sawdust Collector concert series. He has presented sound installations at the Vines Art Festival (2015, 2018) and has collaborated on installations with theatre artist Megan Stewart and interdisciplinary group The Public Swoon. He is also a co-host and producer of Soundscape, a show about experimental music on Vancouver's Co-Op Radio.
Róisín Adams
Róisín Adams (1985) is a Vancouver-based composer and pianist whose artistic interests lie in the intersection of composed and improvised music. Her music has been performed by Ellwood Epps, Vicky Mettler, Elisa Thorn, Michael James Park, NOW Society Orchestra, Rachel Iwaasa and Catherine Laub. She writes and performs regularly with her instrumental jazz quartet, Hildegard's Ghost, and collaborates with artists from all disciplines including visual arts, poetry, puppetry, filmmaking and dance.
Cai is an experimental film-maker and creative-coder. He has been creating audio-reactive and kinetic performances in collaboration with musicians and dancers. Coming from a film-making/animation background he has been trying to push film-making techniques to enhance real-time story telling experience.
Colin Labadie
Colin Labadie used to race home after school so he could secretly play his dad’s guitar before he got home from work. After mastering countless Metallica solos as an aspiring twelve year old, he eventually went on to become a Doctor (…of music).
As a composer, Colin writes notably un-classical music for classical instruments. Through simple patterning and subtle variation, he seeks to build intricate yet clear structures and sounds. As a performer, he does exactly the opposite; he creates noisy and chaotic textures, usually with mutant guitars or homemade circuits. He often roots around in thrift stores, hunting for odd sounds in the world of forgotten electronics.Somewhere between these two extremes lies his work as a sound designer. He has spent countless hours in darkened sound booths crafting rich soundscapes for productions of several theatrical works.
Colin has taught music both in classrooms and private studios. Above all, he encourages people to find their own path through music by exploring the intersections between imagination, knowledge, and technique. He is also committed to fostering music in the community, having held various administrative and organizational roles in several local arts and not-for-profit organizations.
Colin currently lives in Kitchener, Canada. He has been fortunate enough to perform or have his work performed across Canada, as well as in many non-Canadian countries. When he isn’t listening to music he can usually be found trying to sniff out a good barbecue joint.
Julia Mermelstein
Julia Mermelstein is a Toronto-based composer, originally from Halifax. Her music focuses on detailed tone colour, textures, and gestural movement that reveal evocative, immersive, and subtly changing soundscapes. She extensively works with electronics, blending acoustic and electronic sound worlds in seamless interactions. Her music takes influence from Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and ritualistic tendencies that shape her relationship to form, stillness, and sense of space. Julia’s extensive background in ballet has heavily informed her work whether choreography is explored with musicians or informing her creative process. Her work has been involved in a variety of mediums that include electronic, chamber music, orchestral, music for dance, and collaborative and multi-disciplinary works.
Julia’s music has been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles, including Blue Rider Ensemble, the Array Ensemble, Ensemble Arkea, Quatuor Bozzini, Toy Piano Composers Ensemble, Windermere String Quartet, among others. Her compositions have been presented at OUA Electronic Music Festival 2017 in Osaka Japan, NAISA’s Deep Wireless Compilation, The Movement Gallery, Festival of Original Theatre, and Open Ears Festival. Julia received a B.F.A specializing in Composition under Dr. Georges Dimitrov from Concordia University, Montréal in 2013. She continued her studies with composers Linda Catlin Smith, Brian Harman, and Juliet Palmer. Julia is an Associate Composer at the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers where she is currently Journal Editor