October 3, 2025
We are beyond thrilled to announce that Bekah Simms and Monica Pearce will join Arraymusic as Co-Curators/Composers-in-Residence beginning October 2025, with a three year term that will run through the 2027-2028 season. Both are extraordinary composers with deep connections to Arraymusic’s community, and long histories of curation in Toronto, across Canada, and abroad.
Bekah and Monica will take over the curation and artistic direction of the Array Ensemble series from Bruce A. Russell, who has served as Composer-in-Residence since 2022 and Array Ensemble Curator since 2023. Reflecting on the transition, Bruce shared:
“It’s an honour and a pleasure to pass the mantle to Bekah Simms and Monica Pearce as Arraymusic’s incoming Co-Curators/Composers-in-Residence. Their idea to share a residency is a timely one, and I can’t wait for them to bring their formidable practices as creators, arts leaders and educators into the Array community.”
Stepping into their new role this month, the pair has already begun planning for the 2026-27 season, and look for the Toronto premieres of two of their recent works on the Array Ensemble’s annual New Encounters concert (January 31, 2026).
ABOUT BEKAH SIMMS 
The music of composer Bekah Simms possesses an enormous sonic palette: timbrally vibrant and ranging from superabundant electronic grotesquerie to lush microtonal waves of sound, their varied musical output has been heralded as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music), “visceral contemporary music that enfolds external inspirations with dazzling rigor and logic” (Peter Margasak), and praised for its “sheer range of ingenious material, expressive range and sonic complexity” (The Journal of Music.) Propelled equally by wonderment and terror toward the universe, Bekah’s music creates instances of sonic fascination that focus on the raw compelling power of abstract sound, often interweaving the muscularity of metal; formal abandon of prog; tenderness of folk; and extracted fragments of other popular musics.
The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize, and a JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year (alongside two additional nominations in the same category), Bekah is one of the most lauded Canadian composers of their generation. They have been a finalist for the Gaudeamus Prize and commissioned by and performed at major festivals across Europe and North America including Wien Modern, Time:Spans, Gaudeamus Newmuziekwrek, ACHT BRÜCKEN, Music on Main, and New Music Dublin, premieres at the latter which were twice described as “highlights of the festival” by the Journal of Music in 2021 and 2024. She has worked with some of the top interpreters of contemporary music internationally, including Crash Ensemble – with with whom she was artist-in-residence from 2022-2024 – Nikel, Riot Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Eighth Blackbird, the Zöllner-Roche Duo, and Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. Their chamber orchestra + electronics album Bestiaries was released in 2022 to critical acclaim and was included on several year end best-of lists from the US, Canada, Italy, and the UK. Their music has thrice been included in the Canadian Section’s official submission to World Music Days (2016, 2019, & 2021) and in 2023 and 2024 was chosen for inclusion in the World New Music Days in the Faroe Islands and Portugal respectively as an independent submission. In 2016 the CBC included them among their annual 30 hot classical musicians under 30.
Bekah is a Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, following previous academic positions at the University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario.Their principal teachers during academic studies were Gary Kulesha and Andrew Staniland, alongside significant private study with Clara Iannotta and Martin Bédard.
ABOUT MONICA PEARCE
Monica Pearce, originally from Prince Edward Island, is a Lansing, Michigan-based composer of new classical/contemporary music with a particular affinity for solo and chamber music, opera, and works for toy piano. After completing her Bachelor of Music at Mount Allison University with a focus on piano and composition, Monica completed her Masters of Music in Composition at the University of Toronto.
Pearce’s work has been performed and commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, International Contemporary Ensemble, New Music Detroit, Chamber Cartel, Array Ensemble, Talisker Players, Essential Opera, Bicycle Opera Project, New Fangled Opera, TorQ Percussion Quartet, junctQín keyboard collective, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Ryan Scott, SHHH!! Ensemble, among others. She won the Harry Freedman Award for her harpsichord work toile de jouy, commissioned by Wesley Shen. She was named winner of the Heliconian Choir and Orchestra’s New Music Competition for Emerging Female Composers for her piece You Know Me. She also received the Canadian Music Centre’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award Honourable Mention for her project it plays (because it plays). She received the honourable mention for her toy piano solo work clangor, which was premiered by Margaret Leng Tan at the UnCaged Toy Piano Festival in New York City. She was the composer-in-residence for the O.K. Quoi?! festival in Sackville, New Brunswick, where she created a community soundscape project entitled Sounds of Sackville. Her work The Flag was chosen as winner for the Creative Women at the End of the First World War Composition Competition. She had been featured on I Care If You Listen for her works chain maille and damask.
Her operas have been performed across Canada and the United States, and toured across Ontario, and her toy piano works are frequently played internationally. In October 2022, she released her debut album Textile Fantasies, a multi-work piece that includes eight works inspired by textiles and patterns. Called “vivid,” “pleasantly intricate,” “imaginative and meaningful,” by reviewers, this recording features performances by leading Canadian musicians such as keyboardists Cheryl Duvall, Wesley Chen, Barbara Pritchard, and Joseph Ferretti, tabla player Shawn Mativetsky, as well as renowned ensembles TorQ Percussion and SHHH!! Ensemble.
Monica co-founded the emerging composer collective the Toy Piano Composers in 2008 with Chris Thornborrow. From 2008 to 2018, the Toy Piano Composers presented over 120 new works and released their debut album Toy Piano Composers.
In addition to her work as a composer, she is also active as a librettist and has worked with composer Cecilia Livingston on a Dora-nominated opera on the life of Anne Frank entitled Singing Only Softly. Her written works have been performed by Essential Opera, Loose Tea Theatre, Bicycle Opera Project, Opera Nova Scotia, Vocalypse Productions, Caution Tape Sound Collective, and the Toy Piano Composers.