2021 SCHEDULE

The festival’s opening event will include remarks  from local political leaders , and cultural ambassadors. Following the words of welcome   the Soundscape Workshop will begin, digitally celebrating  the world premiere of OpenEarsFM radio featuring Andrew O’Connor of DISCO3000/Parkdale Pirate Radio fame, and out-of-this-world music.

A workshop for all skill levels exploring soundscape recording and production, both from a technical and artistic perspective.  Starting with a background in the Acoustic Ecology movement, and the beginnings of soundscape composition, the class will be a guided tour through the process of listening to, and composing with, the soundscapes we create and inhabit.  The course will explore different techniques and approaches to soundscape recording, as well as the technical aspects of different microphones and recording devices.  Once we have our soundscape recordings the class will begin to focus on editing, production and mixing, working collectively on free audio editing software through the process of soundscape composition.  Each participant at the end will have created their own work that will be broadcast on OpenEarsFM during the course of the festival.

OpenEarsFM will run for the duration of the festival including interviews, new music, info 24 hours a day, and will kick off the evening featuring Andrew O’Connor from DISCO3000/Parkdale Pirate Radio.

DISCO 3000 is a weekly freeform radio program hosted and produced by Andrew O’Connor as part of his long-running clandestine radio project Parkdale Pirate Radio. The show is broadcast every Thursday night from Andrew’s home studio to the radios of Parkdale Toronto, but to kick off this year’s Open Ears Festival, DISCO 3000 is taking to the airwaves of downtown Kitchener for a special extended edition of the show.

Thursday night (June 3) from 9 pm-1 am tune your radios to 87.5FM to catch a very special 4-hour Open Ears edition of DICO 3000 featuring live to air performances from left field beatmaker Black Taffy and improv legend Kevin Drumm, plus a whole stack of curious and unclassifiable records from the DISCO 3000 vault.

Keep your radios tuned to 87.5 FM in downtown Kitchener (or streaming live anywhere through openears.ca) throughout the festival for special broadcasts, bonus content, and pirate radio happenings. For updates and throughout the festival about special broadcasts follow on Twitter @parkdalepirateradio or @openearsfest

Formed in 2013, A Wake of Vultures (WOV) is a project-based interdisciplinary performance company. WOV is a research, development, and producing vehicle for the works of its three members: Nancy Tam (music, sound design, theatre), Daniel O’Shea (film, theatre), and Conor Wylie (theatre, clown).

A new work of science fiction created by interdisciplinary performance collective A Wake of Vultures, led by Siminovitch Prize Protégé Conor Wylie. Originally planned as a live theatre performance, K BODY AND MIND has been re-envisioned as an episodic miniseries for viewing at home. Blending overloaded 90s anime and cyberpunk aesthetics with an off-kilter and mesmerizing minimalist performance style, K BODY AND MIND is an impossible sci-fi epic performed by two bodies in an abandoned 100-year-old theatre. Featuring intricately patterned lights, sound, and choreography, this special 3-episode miniseries will be available for on-demand viewing.
K BODY AND MIND was commissioned and developed through Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence program, and was filmed on location at the James Cowan Theatre thanks to the artist-in-residence program at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Learn more at kbodyandmind.com.

Our artist array is a focus on local talent, from emerging to mid-career musicians. Some are veterans of the OE stage and some are performing for the first time. This variety show will be a cleansing palette for all of life’s current obstacles. Unique performances are marbled together in a concert like nothing else at the festival. Featuring Veda Hingert-McDonald, Andrew Rinehart, Kathryn Ladano, Max Lindsay, Myke Phillips, and Seagram Synth Ensemble.

LIVE PERFORMANCE

The Remotions in Concert 

The Remotions are an online jamming experiment initiated by artist and technologist John Campbell. It seeks for new ways to improvise together across distance, inspired by both the pandemic, and our increasingly isolated lives. The Remotions use Jamulus for audio, Zoom for video, live and post-production ambisonics, with livestreaming using a 360-degree camera. The Remotions artists are: Helen Pridmore (vocals); WL Altman (found sound, electronic music, and performance art); Norm Adams (cello and electronics); Gao Yujie (live visuals); Rebecca Caines (sound art); John Campbell (360-degree video, ambisonic sound); Stacey Bliss (gong and percussion). This collective emerged from the multiPLAY project, and some of their work is featured on https://multiplay.ca/

VIDEOS 

Sonic Blankets

by Rebecca Caines, Michelle Stewart and James Harley

This video is a conversation with three artist researchers: James Harley, Rebecca Caines, and Michelle Stewart, with contributions from two participating youth artists Keisha Mohr and Tanson Pitawanakwat Acoose. It outlines the exploratory audio arts project “Sonic Blankets” that has explored sensory difference, soundscape recording, wearable audio, multichannel audio, and digital play. “Sonic Blankets” is part of a two-year national project called “multiPLAY” which explores improvisation, digital tools, and community engagement. See: https://multiplay.ca/

A Collaboration with Plants in Two Parts

by Ian Campbell

This video is an experimental documentary from Saskatchewan audio arts collective Holophon. It shows the collaboration between audio artists Ian Campbell, and Ernie Dulanowsky; and singer Helen Pridmore on the Plant Growth Sonification project. It mixes interviews with some experimental film/sound clips and technical information. Holophon’s work is part of a two-year national project called “multiPLAY” which explores improvisation, digital tools, and community engagement. See: https://multiplay.ca/

Mannlicher Carcano

by Michael Waterman, video by John Campbell

This 360-degree video documents the experimental improvisational audio collage work of radio artist Michael Waterman and the Mannlicher Carcano collective, who have been improvising together from a distance since 1987. In this video, the work is represented in 360-degree interactive video, with ambisonic sound, allowing audiences to zoom around the space as the collective creates their unique sounds and visuals. Michael Waterman’s work is part of a two-year national project called “multiPLAY” which explores improvisation, digital tools, and community engagement. See: https://multiplay.ca/

Coffee Time

by Helen Pridmore, and the The Big Sky Centre for Learning and Being Astonished, video by John Campbell

This  360-degree video shows an example of the improvisation jams that artist Helen Pridmore has been running, in partnership with the multiPLAY project, the VOICE Lab at the University of Regina, and The Big Sky Centre for Learning and Being Astonished (Astonished!).

Astonished! is an organization of young adults with (and without) complex physical disAbilities, friends, family members, facult  y and staff from the University of Regina, community members, and teachers. Astonished! work in inclusive community to address barriers facing young adults with complex physical disAbilities (core members) by creating opportunities for teaching and learning, social, recreational and cultural engagement, and for employment and housing. Helen Pridmore’s work is part of a two-year national project called “multiPLAY” which explores improvisation, digital tools,  and community engagement. See: https://multiplay.ca/

Wishing We Were Together

By John Campbell

This video explores a technological and artistic journey, finding ways to create a shared space for audiovisual artists to improvise together. Artist John Campbell will discuss his work with ambisonic sound, 360-degree video, and livestreaming. John Campbell’s work is part of a two-year national project called “multiPLAY” which explores improvisation, digital tools, and community engagement. See: https://multiplay.ca/

Eve Egoyan is one of the world’s most sought-after interpreters of contemporary new music. The story unfolds over a one-year period wherein Eve develops new work that pushes the boundaries of her art, her instrument and herself. The film weaves the personal and the private with unexpected musical moments — each one exploring the events that have shaped Eve and left their mark on who she is today.  Beautifully photographed and crisply edited, DUET FOR SOLO PIANO features collaborators and composers Nicole Lizée, John Oswald, David Rokeby, Linda Catlin Smith and Michael Snow. 68 minutes, 2020. Film website: www.DuetforSoloTheFilm.com

As a pianist, Egoyan is always seeking ways to push the piano’s limits and to find new ways to share this instrument she loves with audiences who might not traditionally attend a piano concert. Eve will be performing works that extend the piano visually and sonically, delving deeper into her dreams of what the piano can do today.

Surface Tension is a collaborative work created with media artist David Rokeby for piano and interactive video commissioned by the Open Ears Festival in 2009. In Surface Tension, Eve’s performance is transformed and interpreted by a computer into live visual images. The visuals respond to a variety of performance parameters, including dynamics, pitch, the harmonic relation between pitches, the use of the sustain pedal, and the duration of individual notes.The improvisation is shaped partly by Eve’s response to the system’s visual response to her playing. All visual activity on the screen is directly responsive to Eve. The result is an extraordinary integration of sound and image in which neither of these elements dominate the other.

Eve will also perform world premières of three compositions she has created for augmented and acoustic piano, a newly imagined instrument that delves into the space between what a piano can do and what Eve has always wished a piano could do. The core of these works is the live acoustic sound of the physical piano she is playing, but through the delicate intervention of technology, she tests (teases) the edges of the piano’s natural sound, ultimately pushing it beyond the familiar, through the impossible, and into the extraordinary. This project was generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

PROGRAMME

Surface Tension

Pool
Orbits
Tower
Tendrils
Snow

Augmented and Acoustic Piano works (world premières):

Tidal
A Doubling (poem and narration, Anne Michaels; sung voices and spoken words, the URGE collective)
Killarney/Moonlit

Eve Egoyan | www.eveegoyan.com

Eve Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed pianist. She continually re-invents her relationship with the piano through the creation and commissioning of new works. Eve began working with new technologies in 2009. Eve is presently creating a series of works for herself which delve into the space between “what a piano can do” and “what I wish a piano could do” combining acoustic piano with new technologies. She is very grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts and residencies at Avatar (Quebec City), the University of Toronto, and CMMAS (Mexico), for the development of this work.

David Rokeby | http://www.davidrokeby.com

David Rokeby is a Toronto artist who works with digital media to critically explore their impact on contemporary life. David Rokeby’s early work Very Nervous System (1982-1991) was a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments. He has exhibited and lectured extensively internationally and has received numerous international awards including a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2002), a Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art (2002), and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts “BAFTA” award in Interactive art (2000). He is the Director of the BMO Lab for AI and emerging technologies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.

Anne Michaels | www.annemichaels.ca

Anne Michaels is a novelist and poet. Her books have been translated into more than 50 languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped The World and has been adapted as a feature film. Her most recent books include All We Saw and Infinite Gradation. The lines spoken in “A Doubling” are from Infinite Gradation, with permission from Anne Michaels and Exile Editions (www.ExileEditions.com).

URGE

URGE is a collaborative multidisciplinary collective that created music-driven theatrical works from 1991 to 2006. The core of URGE is five artists – singer/teacher/writer Fides Krucker (www.fideskrucker.com), vocalist/yoga instructor Katherine Duncanson (www.kyogavoice.com), dancer/choreographer/director Marie-Josée Chartier (www.chartierdanse.com), director Joanna McIntyre, and composer Linda Catlin Smith (www.catlinsmith.com) – interested in exploring collaborative creation, particularly in the area of multidisciplinary performance, where music, spoken text, song and extended voice, movement and staging are equal partners in expression.

Each member of URGE brought with her a mature art form, sophisticated craft, and personal history, as well as what was most current in her life – tools for shared training during the development of each new work. Fresh and surprising impulses—from the repetition of a daily chore or the unusual use of everyday and sacred objects to the darker tones of life-chafing and -changing events, or the unfolding landscape of a night’s dream—became elements for improvisation in rehearsal. Importantly, URGE built improvised “play” into the fabric of each public performance, ensuring an ever-changing, evolving landscape of sound and image.

Eve would like to thank:

The Canada Council for the Arts
Richard Burrows and Open Ears
Patrice Colombe and Avatar
David Rokeby
Linda Catlin Smith
Anne Michaels
Fides Krucker
Marie-Josée Chartier
Katherine Duncanson
Rick Sacks and Arraymusic

After years growing from chamber group to full fledged electric vocal consort, Arkora brings it full circle with Cloud Chamber, a compact collaboration among five composer/performers who are central to the group’s unique sound: Tova Kardonne (viola/voice/piano), Dan Morphy (percussion), Brendon Randall-Myers (electric guitar), Sharon Lee (electric violin), and Benton Roark (microtonal keyboards/fretless bass/pedal steel). Designed to roll with the challenges of our times, Cloud Chamber is an EP’s worth of new work written and recorded completely via remote collaboration using layering, cellular development, improvisation, and telephone-chain methods, as works go round the circle with each creator making their mark and passing it along. Among many goals of the project is to deepen the artistic connection among the group and to nurture a trust when handing off an idea to another creator, an action which Kardonne calls “an exciting risk” and Randall-Myers describes as “liberating” (Musicworks, Fall 2020). Cloud Chamber will be released in June 2021 via Redshift Records. As a visual element, Toronto animator, artist, and filmmaker Karly McCloskey offers an experimental film using analogue techniques inspired by the creative process to accompany the album’s release.