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Audiopollination In Residence
• Oct. 14, Nov. 11, Dec. 9, 2020

Curated by Michael Lynn, Audiopollination brings together a broad range of Canada’s leading improvisors for evenings of spontaneous music making.

Livestream Links

 

Wednesday October 14th 8pm

Nobuo Kubota (voice) 

Michael Snow and Diane Roblin (pianos)

Nobuo Kubota (1932) left his career as an architect in 1969 to eventually become one of Canada’s pre-eminent intermedia artists.  For the past 55 years he has produced an array of disciplinary hybrids including sound sculptures, performances, videos, installations, three dimensional poems and improvisational music. 

          In 1962, he and the artists’ of the Isaacs Gallery Gord Rayner, Bob Markle, and Graham Coughtry formed the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1974, he joined Canada’s seminal free musical improvisational group the CCMC. In 1975, the CCMC opened the Music Gallery in Toronto.

          By the 1990’s Kubota’s musical and visual sensibilities converged blurring disciplinary borders with a fully integrated intermedial creative practice. The improvisational music process combined with his cultural background and interest in sound poetry formed a unique form of public music/sound performance.  His three-dimensional poem-bookworks was a paradigm of zonal interference where seeing, reading and hearing challenged traditional taxonomies blurring disciplinary borders, creative methodologies, and accepted linguistic cultural-practice.

          Ostensibly, Kubota never completely abandoned his architectural practice, it continued throughout his career as the structural bedrock of his sculptural installations.

Music/Sound Performances:

2007 “YUXTAPOSICIONES’ Festival De Poesia Y Poliposia, Madrid, Spain

2004 “Noise Festival”, London, Ontario

2002 Vancouver New Music Festival, Vancouver, B.C.

2001 “PROPOSTA” Festival International de Poesies+Polipoesies 2001, Barcelona, Spain

2000 “WORDS & VOICES” Festival of Experimental Literature & Music, Heidelberg, Germany

1999 “POLISONNERIES” a live arts festival, Lyon, France

1999 “MOUTH MECHANICS” a solo sound performance, YYZ Gallery Toronto, ON

1998 “BOBEOBI”, Festival of Sound Poetry, Berlin, Germany

1998 “E-Werk” Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany

1997 “SIA POESIE/YESBE POETRY” Oralita in Poetry & Multimedia Events, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

1997 Container, Centro Culura Contemporanea, Firenze, Italy

1994 Concert of Sound Poetry, Villafranca di Verona, Italy with sound poets Enzo Minarelli & Alberto Vetacchio

1994 Voice/Mouth Improvisation, Saw Gallery, Ottawa

Michael Snow started a career as a jazz pianist in 1947. Since the 60’s he’s played piano, trumpet, synthesizer and other instruments in free improvisation ensembles, including CCMC of Toronto.  He has made many recordings, including Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder (1975), The Last LP (1987) and 3 Phases (2000). He has also released recordings in collaboration with CCMC, Artists Jazz Band, Alan Licht & Aki Onda, Christian Marclay.  In 2018, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra commissioned and premiered his composition, Prophecy. His other compositions include Hue Chroma Tint (1999) commissioned by the Burdocks ensemble and EVƎ (solo piano for Eve Egoyan) (2014).  Snow has played many solo piano concerts, most recently at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2019.   Snow is also a visual artist (painting, photo-works, holography, film, video and sculpture).  He has made several public artworks in Toronto including Flight Stop (Eaton Centre) and The Audience (Rogers Centre). 

Pianist, electronic musician and composer Diane Roblin has lead and played internationally with many diverse groups from Rough Trade to renowned avant-garde improviser Charles Gayle.  Her studies at York University were eclectic and wide ranging including world music, electronics and jazz improvisation; she also participated in the Ornette Coleman/Karl Berger workshop in NYC and the Dutch Improv Academy (Hans Bennick, Mary Oliver) in Amsterdam. Diane is an accomplished contemporary free-jazz/experimental music improviser and solo artist. She has been creating compositions in live time with many outstanding musicians including Michael Snow, George Koller, Hans Bennick, Nick Fraser, Charles Gayle, Jerome Cooper and Brodie West to name a few.  Recently, Diane has been performing Telematic music with international multidisciplinary artists brought together by Sarah Weaver’s NowNetArts, NYC and Doug Van Nort’s Electric Acoustic Orchestra, Toronto. “She is a facile and deeply emotional keyboardist who establishes her musical territory with muscular performance and technical skill.” Leslie Mitchell-Clarke, The Whole Note

As well, Diane is fresh off the release of her new album LIFE FORCE. Her all-star explosive band came together to explore her spirited and diverse compositions which are a mix of high energy jazz-funk and expressive improvisation with impressionistic over tones.  It has received rave reviews and international airplay.   “This much anticipated recording proves once again Diane Roblin has something unique to offer jazz fans. Fascinating compositions with a virtuosic ensemble of Canadian hotshots.” Jaymz Bee, JazzFM 91.1

Diane has performed at the Kensington Market Jazz Festival, TD Jazz, Jazz Bistro, Array Space, Lula Lounge, The Pilot, Harbourfront,  Somewhere There Festival, and in Merida, Mexico, Tennessee Plum Festival, Smalls NYC, Ronnie Scotts London UK, Amsterdam’s Bimhaus,  Cannes, Antibes/Juan les Pins. 

Wednesday November 11th 8 pm

Artwork by Jamie Thompson

Mira Matin-Gray (no input), Niamh Girling (sampler),  and Mark Zurawinski (percussion) 

Mira Martin-Gray is an improvising musician, producer, and reluctant composer/sound artist/whatever from Toronto. She performs in many collaborative contexts as well as solo, sometimes under the moniker Tendencyitis. A multi-instrumentalist, injury and chronic illness led her to find a way to continue making music accessibly. By manipulating mixing boards wired in feedback loops, she probes the intersections between noise, melody, rhythm, drone, indeterminacy, and control.

“Through her interactions, these unassuming boxes of wires become interfaces howling with electronic spirits” (The Wire). She “creates extremely unexpected work… in her own world, and for good reason, it’s a place to develop wildly original ideas. Hers is a physical sound sculpture that finds an intermediary set of patterns from an unlikely source. Martin-Gray finds tonal ambiguity in the annals of the inverse” (Toneshift). Recordings have appeared on multiple labels internationally.

Niamh Girling’s improvisation practice is focused on the tactility of the MPC sampler, creating rhythmic soundscapes from fragmented field recordings and garbled speech. She also produces dance music as SHIFFRA.

Wednesday December 9th 8pm

Heidi Chan (she/they) is a Toronto-based musician who engages in music- and sound-related work across disciplines and traditions. They currently work primarily with modular synthesizers, loopers, bamboo flutes and percussion (including Japanese taiko drums), and can play a few simple pop tunes on their tenor and bass ukuleles. They make solo electronic music under the name Bachelard, and is a theatre and film sound designer and composer. Heidi is currently a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at York University, and a graduate researcher/lab technician at Ryerson University’s Responsive Ecologies Lab.   

Aki Takahashi (aka. Ten Ten)
Aki is a Japanese traditional shamisen player, composer and folk singer. She studied traditional folk music in Kyoto, and has given shamisen and vocal performances at numerous venues and events. Since arriving in Canada, Aki has furthered her pursuit of traditional Japanese music with the addition of taiko drumming. Now Associate Artistic Director with pre-eminent Canadian taiko drumming group Nagata Shachu. She is also the founder of the Japanese folk ensemble “ten ten” , which has performed with numerous artists from a variety of other cultural backgrounds and traditions.