AUDIOPOLLINATION CONCERT 3
FEATURING BILL GILLIAM & EUGENE MARTYNEC
(livestream)
JANUARY 14, 2022 @ 8PM ET
FREE
CURATED BY MICHAEL LYNN
Audiopollination is a monthly free improvisation series in association with Arraymusic featuring a smorgasbord of spontaneous/improvised/instantly composed music. The series has been running since December 2012 focusing on allowing a safe-space for artists to experiment and further their practice through improvisations in duos or trios.
Pre-Covid the series has been self-curated where artists sign up themselves to play–often with artists they had not performed with in an attempt to democratize the curation process. This season the series is focusing on presenting extended sets by improvisational artists across a variety of improvisational sensibilities in duets or trios.
PROGRAM
Bill and Eugence take the approach of building each improvisation thematically using unique sound sources within their instruments to shape the mood, contour and textures of each piece.
ABOUT
BILL GILLIAM
“Some of the technical challenges of playing inside the piano are to elicit alternative sounds that can be changed dynamically. My approach to solve this is to use soft mallets and other subtle manipulations that can be applied and removed very quickly to adjust the altered sounds of the piano.”
— Bill Gilliam
Bill Gilliam is a Toronto based composer / pianist who creates and improvises jazz and new music compositions. Bill is from London, England and after studying jazz and film composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston moved to Toronto to live and study composition. He has composed for film, dance and theatre and his compositions have been performed by Canadian new music ensembles with assistance from the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. Bill’s recordings include “Vigil” with Toronto Improvisors Orchestra, “Counterstasis – Refracted Voices” with Glen Hall & Joe Sorbara, “Entangled Pathways” with the Gilliam, Milmine, Pottie trio, “Ensorcell” (solo piano), “Memory Vision” (DVD of electroacoustic works), “Signposts” with Charlie Ringas as well as “Spirit Matter” and “Urban Undercurrents” with the Bill Gilliam Ensemble.
In June 2018 the Gilliam, Milmine, Pottie improvising jazz trio was featured at the TD Toronto Jazz Festival, Heliconian Hall. The same year Bill was invited to perform and conduct the London Improvisors Orchestra at Iklectic, London, England. The CD “Counterstasis – Refracted Voices” was produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and released in fall of 2019 in Toronto at Array Space and Montreal’s Resonance Cafe. In 2019 the Gilliam, Milmine, Pottie trio was featured at the Something Else! Festival in Hamilton.
Bill’s ongoing improvisation projects include collaborations with Kayla Milmine and Ambrose Pottie, Glen Hall and Joe Sorbara, Bill McBirnie and Eugene Martynec, Toronto Improvisors Orchestra, Penn Kemp (sound poet) with performances presented by Somewhere There, Track Could Bend, Gallery 345, Zula Presents (Hamilton), Coexisdance, Dispersion Lab, Exit Points, Audiopollination, Array Space, Silence (Guelph) and other venues.
MORE
www.bill-gilliam.com
https://torontoimprovisorsorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/vigil
EUGENE MARTYNEC
Eugene Martynec has been performing computer assisted improvised electroacoustic music for the last twenty years. He as performed solo, with small ensembles and improvising orchestras in London, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Madrid, Toronto, Wuppertal and Beijing. He studied composition, orchestration and electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto under Dr. Samuel Dolin. He is the recipient of Canada Council and Toronto Arts council awards for composition. He also enjoyed a career in commercial rock and folk music as composer, guitarist and record producer in Canada. The “instrument” he performs with is a hybrid of legacy and contemporary software and is a “work in progress”.