Follow songwriter/composer Carmen Braden through her process of generating beautiful, short musical ideas with text as the source. This workshop series guides you through creating your words, find a musical connection to your words, and exploring the potential to grow that “seed” musical idea past the workshop end. Maybe you create a song, maybe it’s an instrumental approach, maybe it’s simply a sound idea! Hear examples of how Carmen has written her songs (ya, that she sings!) and compositions (with no singing or words at all!) – inspired by words, text, prose, poetry, improvisation, crafting… Bring your own preferred process of writing words, or come open to being guided in a new way. Bring an instrument (instruments are also available to borrow using your library card from the KPL Musical Instrument Lending Library) or just your voice. The power of words, and their ability to inspire musical creation will be at the core of this workshop – whether words end up being heard in the end or not!

Architek Percussion presents an all-new program that highlights the intersection of art music, video, and aspects of popular culture. The program, “Connective Tissue”, weaves together folklore and nostalgia in a way that both foregrounds the role technology and digital culture play in our lives today and predicates itself on the fundamentally communal—and connective—nature of human interaction. Works by Canadians Eliot BRITTON, Myriam BOUCHER, and Nicole LIZÉE as well as Wojciech KILAR (Poland) and John PSATHAS (New Zealand) lead audience members through a 70-minute audio-visual experience.

Broadcasting on 87.5FM and steaming online. Tune in for interviews, new music, info 24 hours a day for the duration of the festival.

Follow songwriter/composer Carmen Braden through her process of generating beautiful, short musical ideas with text as the source. This workshop series guides you through creating your words, find a musical connection to your words, and exploring the potential to grow that “seed” musical idea past the workshop end. Maybe you create a song, maybe it’s an instrumental approach, maybe it’s simply a sound idea! Hear examples of how Carmen has written her songs (ya, that she sings!) and compositions (with no singing or words at all!) – inspired by words, text, prose, poetry, improvisation, crafting… Bring your own preferred process of writing words, or come open to being guided in a new way. Bring an instrument (instruments are also available to borrow using your library card from the KPL Musical Instrument Lending Library) or just your voice. The power of words, and their ability to inspire musical creation will be at the core of this workshop – whether words end up being heard in the end or not!

Grace Scheele, Carmen Braden, Nancy Tam, Suzanne Kite Q&A

The sound walk is an immersive experience where audience members will be led by foot throughout the downtown region to areas featuring public art installations. At each of these stops there are musical performances, including pop-up guerilla performances that occur throughout the journey. This includes musicians in the park, street corners, rooftops, and incognito. This interactive experience is accessible and is facilitated by an OE volunteer.

wreckage upon wreckage… is a durational performance installation for solo performer accompanied by an immersive soundscape. From dusk to dawn, the performer encases her body with cling film and tape to create translucent skin-like sculptures—physically documenting her existence. Each human-shaped chrysalis is then moulted, and the process begins again. Inspired by Benjamin’s ninth thesis of the Philosophy of History, …wreckage upon wreckage… is a meditation on history, time, and the body—a constant movement toward the future while leaving behind corporeal traces of the past.

Music for the Augmented Pipe Organ is a series of compositions which merge the vibrant acoustics of the pipe organ with the techniques of electronic and post-digital music. Through computer control of the organ’s pipes and stops, methods to dissociate the timbres of the organ from its keyboard interface are used to conjure extremes of minimal and maximal soundworlds from the organ’s harmonic design. Exploring the idiosyncrasies and affordances of each particular pipe organ, the performance intertwines digital processes of controlled feedback and machine listening software to respond to the resonances between each instrument and space. Through this process of hybridizing acoustic and digital approaches, the project explores new possibilities for the world’s oldest mechanical synthesizer. The project was first developed using Vancouver’s largest pipe organ at the Pacific Spirit United Church and has also been realized upon the experimental organ at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Köln.

Spirits is a journey through composer’s reflections on the nature of creativity, meditation, scotch whiskey, and the beyond. The recital features commissioned works, previously composed music, improvisation, creative arrangements and programmatic features that create a unique and immersive concert experience.
Deemed “truly virtuosic and intense” by Confluence Concerts, SHHH!! Ensemble’s Spirits program debuted at the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto on January 31st, 2020 following an intense weeklong residency at the Centre. Since then, the program has toured at concert series and universities across Canada.

Follow songwriter/composer Carmen Braden through her process of generating beautiful, short musical ideas with text as the source. This workshop series guides you through creating your words, find a musical connection to your words, and exploring the potential to grow that “seed” musical idea past the workshop end. Maybe you create a song, maybe it’s an instrumental approach, maybe it’s simply a sound idea! Hear examples of how Carmen has written her songs (ya, that she sings!) and compositions (with no singing or words at all!) – inspired by words, text, prose, poetry, improvisation, crafting… Bring your own preferred process of writing words, or come open to being guided in a new way. Bring an instrument (instruments are also available to borrow using your library card from the KPL Musical Instrument Lending Library) or just your voice. The power of words, and their ability to inspire musical creation will be at the core of this workshop – whether words end up being heard in the end or not!

••._.••´¯“•.¸¸.•` 🎀 meet angel bby 🎀 `•.¸¸.•“¯´••._.••

Ever wonder why women and harps seem to go hand in hand? Does hearing a harp pluck take you to heaven?

On June 4, an angelic avatar, angel bby, will square off against her human creator, electroacoustic harpist Grace Scheele . Together, they will unravel and re-spin the heavenly/pastoral/fem tropes that alternately plague and buoy 21st-century harpists and their instrument.

This multimedia event is pure audiovisual indulgence, mixing memes, audio-interactive projections, electric harp, pastel gore imagery, sonic cacophony and ethereal soundscapes.

The sound walk is an immersive experience where audience members will be led by foot throughout the downtown region to areas featuring public art installations. At each of these stops there are musical performances, including pop-up guerilla performances that occur throughout the journey. This includes musicians in the park, street corners, rooftops, and incognito. This interactive experience is accessible and is facilitated by an OE volunteer.

wreckage upon wreckage… is a durational performance installation for solo performer accompanied by an immersive soundscape. From dusk to dawn, the performer encases her body with cling film and tape to create translucent skin-like sculptures—physically documenting her existence. Each human-shaped chrysalis is then moulted, and the process begins again. Inspired by Benjamin’s ninth thesis of the Philosophy of History, …wreckage upon wreckage… is a meditation on history, time, and the body—a constant movement toward the future while leaving behind corporeal traces of the past.

Carmen Braden performs songs from her latest album Seed Songs (2021).
“Through the first fall and winter of the pandemic, the minutiae and small details of everyday life were my focus. I wrote dozens of these short ‘seed song’ ideas — all connected to moments of beauty I encountered, or struggles of the day-to-day. I strived to share things that may seem ordinary or simple at first, but are actually profound, fulfilling, and nuanced,” says Carmen. “Each song has a core: a seed idea I tried to capture. They’re each a kind of vignette: a moment in time; a snapshot of joy or struggle, fragments; phrases; edges…”
Joined onstage by producer/drummer Mark Adam and local contributors, Carmen brings to life her love of her sub-Arctic environment, her experiences as a mother and spouse, and her moments as a human living in the pandemic. This concert has a dynamic range from lullaby to crash-landing, and a performance experience from thoughtful to instinctual.

Hél čhaŋkú kiŋ ȟpáye (There lies the road) is a performance by Oglála Lakȟóta artist Kite using a hair-braid musical performance interface and Machine Learning technologies in collaboration with musicians.