First Half: Winnipeg’s darling chanteuse Sarah Jo Kirsch sings a new composition by Zach Bales while being sonically and visually transformed into a digital avatar. New York duo foci + loci bring video games off the couch and onto the stage, leading an army of technology-bearing improvisers (including the XIE) in an epic showdown between the real and the imagined.
Second Half: Gabriel Dharmoo, a Montreal composer, singer, and improviser presents his Anthropologies Imaginaires showcasing the virtuosity, versatility and strangeness of the human voice. This significant 45-minute work pits the real world Dharmoo against a projected mockumentary of experts while he sings in countless virtuosic voices from imagined cultures and folklores.
Everything must be recordedGabriel Dharmoo’s musical practice encompasses composition, improvisation and the research of South Indian Carnatic music. As a composer, he has studied composition and analysis at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal with Serge Provost and finished his studies with a “Prix avec grande distinction”, the highest honour to be awarded. He has worked with emerging and established Canadian ensembles (ECM+, SMCQ, Aventa, Arraymusic, Motion Ensemble) as well as with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart from Germany. His works have been performed on stages across Canada, the U.S.A, France, Germany and South Africa. In addition to winning 6 prizes from the SOCAN Awards for Young Composers, he was awarded the 2011 Fernand-Lindsay Prix d’Europe composition prize and the Canada Council for the Arts’ 2011 Robert Fleming Prize. He is an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre as well as a member of SOCAN and the Canadian League of Composers. As a vocal improviser, Gabriel has sung across Canada (Montreal, Québec, Vancouver, Banff) and in Berlin, Germany. Inspired by the contrasting vocal expressions in different cultures in time and space, he conceives his voice both as a primitive and a sophisticated instrument. Having researched Carnatic music with 4 renowned masters in Chennai (India) in 2008 and 2011, his personal style explores the theme of post-exotism and the interplay between tradition and novelty.MoogerFoogerThe glowing plugSarah Jo Kirschfoci + loci (Tamara Yadao and Chris Burke) received a NYSCA grant in 2013 for their game performance installation ‘Bal(l)ade’ and have given workshops at 8static in Philadelphia, the Babycastles Summit at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC) as well as lecturing on game sound and mashup culture at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and the New School. Among others, Chris and Tamara have performed at Babycastles, DistENDed Cinema at Outpost, Diapason Gallery, Handmade Music at Culture Fix, Joe’s Pub, Secret Project Robot, The Stone, Vaudeville Park, Vector Game Art Festival in Toronto and Game Play Festival 2011 at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. and Sarah Kirsch on the rightChristopher Willes (1986, Ont. Canada) is based in Toronto and Montreal. His work moves across music, performance, the visual/audible arts, and dance with a particular interest in sound and listening. He makes music, performances, installations, sound walks, concert works, and community engaged audio projects for galleries and public spaces. His current interests surround sound and listening in relation to contemporary and historical embodiments of collectivity; how voices, spaces, materials, and histories resound and perform the audible.
SELF
