AMY BRANDON

Composer

Composer and guitarist Amy Brandon’s pieces have been described as ‘... mesmerizing’ (Musicworks Magazine), “Otherworldly and meditative ... [a] clashing of bleakness with beauty ...” (Minor Seventh) and ‘… an intricate dance of ancient and futuristic sounds’ (Miles Okazaki).

Her 2020-21 events included a cello concerto for Jeff Zeigler with Symphony Nova Scotia, as well as chamber works for KIRKOS Ensemble (Ireland), Exponential Ensemble (NYC) and guitarist Libby Myers, and installations and performances at Winnipeg New Music Festival. the Canadian New Music Network, Women from Space and Sound Symposium. She has received Canadian and international composition awards and honourable mentions from the Leo Brouwer Guitar Composition Competition (Grand Prize 2019), Central European String Quartet (Most Innovative 2018), and ArtsNS (Emerging Artist Award 2019). In 2020, she will also be composer-in-residence at the Hamilton Guitar Festival, a special guest at the Buffalo Guitar Festival and will conduct the Upstream Improvising Ensemble for their 30th Anniversary concert.

Her works have been performed by Ekmeles, Pro Coro, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Symphony

Nova Scotia, Yumi Suehiro, Chartreuse Trio, Zeehelden Quartet, Emma Rush, Dale Sorensen, and Sara Schabas, at venues including Chorus Festival (London, UK), National Sawdust (NYC), Trinity College (Dublin). Cerisy Castle (France), 21C Festival Toronto, and the MISE_EN Festival. Her 2016 solo guitar and electronics album Scavenger was nominated for regional awards including Music Nova Scotia and ECMAs in 2017/18. She has performed in Canada, the USA, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, the UK and at several festivals including the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, the Guitar Now Festival, Halifax Jazz Festival Spring Series, New Music Edmonton, Something Else!, the International Society for Improvised Music, BeAST FeAST, centre d’experimentation musicale and the Open Waters Experimental Music Festival. She has been a resident at the Banff Centre, the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, PIVOT and a composer participant in Interplay with the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

In addition to performance and composition, she writes and presents academic work concerning music cognition, virtual reality, improvisation and the guitar. Holding degrees in jazz guitar performance and composition, Amy is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD in music cognition at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has presented her work at conferences in Australia, USA, Switzerland, Hungary, the UK and at

Berklee College of Music, Boston and is the founder and organizer of the new music festival and academic conference, The 21st Century Guitar.

Eliot Britton Composer

Eliot Britton integrates electronic, audiovisual and instrumental music through an energetic and colourful personal language. His creative output reflects an eclectic musical experience, from gramophones to videogames, drum machines to orchestras. Rhythmic gadgetry, artistry and the colours of technology permeate his works. By drawing on these sound worlds and others, Britton’s compositions tap newly available resources of the 21st century. As a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation, Britton is passionate about Canadian musical culture, seeking new and engaging aesthetic directions that use technology to enhance expression.

Eliot Britton completed his Undergraduate Studies with Michael Matthews at the University of Manitoba and continued on to a MMus and PhD in music research and composition at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Sean Ferguson. Here, Britton has worked as a course lecturer, researcher and composer in residence for numerous ensembles. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, and research grants including SSHRC Bombardier graduate scholarships, Hugh Le Caine and Serge Garant awards and most recently a Canadian Foundation for Innovation award and a DORA for best composition and sound design.

Currently Britton is cross-appointed between Music Technology & Digital Media and Composition at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. There he is building a media research-creation facility (Centre BPMC) and renovating the historical UofT Electronic Music Studios (EMS). As co-director of Manitoba’s Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival and an independent music producer Britton continues to produce events and music in a variety of contexts. His recently completed projects include “Adizokan” a 50-minute collaboration for Orchestra, dance video and electronics for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Red Sky Performance. ebritton.com

Kathryn Brooks Bassoonist

Kathryn is Principal Bassoon of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, a position she has held since 2018. Prior to playing principal, she was

Second Bassoon of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since 2013.

Kathryn was a bassoonist with the elite training orchestra, New World Symphony in Miami for two seasons before winning her job with the WSO. Ms. Brooks was fortunate to receive a full scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music in their prestigious Orchestral Performance Program. She holds a Master’s and Bachelor’s of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

During her studies Kathryn attended many music festivals some of which include: Tanglewood Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, The Aspen Music Festival and National Repertory Orchestra.

When she’s not playing her bassoon, Kathryn enjoys hiking, working out, skiing, eating amazing food and spending quality time with her husband, Mike, their infant daughter, Lillia, and all of their cats and dogs!

CLIFF BURTON (METALLICA)

Composer

Clifford Lee Burton was an American musician who was the bassist for the thrash metal band Metallica from 1982 until his death in 1986. He performed on Kill ‘Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1984), and Master Of Puppets (1986). Regarded as a prominent musical influence, he placed ninth in a 2011 reader poll by Rolling Stone, recognizing the greatest bassists of all time. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Metallica in 2009. (Wikipedia)

Brian Eno Composer

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop, and electronica. A self-described “nonmusician”, Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music’s most influential and innovative figures.

Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesiser player in 1971. After recording two albums with Roxy Music, he departed in 1973 to record a number of solo albums, coining the term “ambient music” to describe his work on releases such as Another Green World (1975), Discreet Music (1975), and Music for Airports (1978). He also collaborated with artists such as Robert Fripp, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie on his “Berlin Trilogy”, and David Byrne, and produced albums by artists including John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads and Devo, and the no wave compilation No New York (1978).

Eno has continued to record solo albums and work with artists including U2, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Coldplay, James Blake, and Damon Albarn. Dating back to his time as a student, he has also worked in media including sound installations and his mid-70s co-development of Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring cryptic aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, Eno’s installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. In 2019, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music. Eno is frequently referred to as one of popular music’s most influential artists. Producer and film composer Jon Brion has said: “I think he’s the most influential artist since the Beatles.” Critic Jason Ankeny at AllMusic argues that Eno “forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence.” Eno has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production; his distinctive style informed a number of projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” (helping to popularize minimalism) and the albums he produced for Talking Heads

(incorporating, on Eno’s advice, African music and polyrhythms), Devo, and other groups. Eno’s first collaboration with David Byrne, 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, pioneered sampling techniques that would prove to be influential in hip-hop, and broke ground by incorporating world music into popular Western music forms. Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies have been used by many bands, and Eno’s production style has proven influential in several general respects: “his recording techniques have helped change the way that modern musicians; – particularly electronic musicians; – view the studio. No longer is it just a passive medium through which they communicate their ideas but itself a new instrument with seemingly endless possibilities.”

Whilst inspired by the ideas of minimalist composers including John Cage, Terry Riley and Erik Satie, Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work and defined the term. The Ambient Music Guide states that he has brought from “relative obscurity into the popular consciousness” fundamental ideas about ambient music, including “the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation.” His groundbreaking work in electronic music has been said to have brought widespread attention to and innovations in the role of electronic technology in recording. Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright said he “often eulogised” Eno’s abilities.

Eno’s “unconventional studio predilections”, in common with those of Peter Gabriel, were an influence on the recording of “In the Air Tonight”, the single which launched the solo career of Eno’s former drummer Phil Collins. Collins said he “learned a lot” from working with Eno. Both Half Man Half Biscuit (in the song “Eno Collaboration” on the EP of the same name) and MGMT have written songs about Eno. LCD Soundsystem has frequently cited Eno as a key influence. The Icelandic singer Björk also credited Eno as a major influence. Mora sti Fotia (Babies on Fire), one of the most influential Greek rock bands, was named after Eno’s song “Baby’s on Fire”.

In 2011, Belgian academics from the Royal Museum for Central Africa named a species of Afrotropical spider Pseudocorinna brianeno in his honour.

JOHN HADFIELD DRUMMER & PERCUSSIONIST

As a composer and percussionist, John Hadfield’s dedication to music has taken him from his native Missouri to concert halls and clubs across the world. He has released three albums of his own compositions — John Hadfield’s Paris Quartet, The Eye of Gordon and Displaced and has composed for many projects, including Heard By Others, a duo project with Lenny Pickett, Believers a trio with Brad Shepik and Sam Minaie, and For James a duo with Ron Blake. Hadfield also composed and performed in Apologue 2047, a multimedia performance art piece directed by Zhang Yimou which explored themes of the relationships of humans and technology.

John’s ability to cross genres has allowed him to perform with the Saturday Night Live Band, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and the Silk Road Ensemble. He has collaborated on more than 100 recordings, including the GRAMMY award winner Yo-Yo Ma and Friends, Songs of Joy and Peace.

Nolan Hildebrand Composer

Nolan Hildebrand is a composer, improviser, researcher, and sound artist currently based in Toronto, Canada. His musical journey which began with playing drums to his favorite metal and math-rock albums has grown to encompass composition in classical ensembles and electroacoustic music, and performance in an experimental solo noise project dubbed BLACK GALAXIE. Nolan’s music often explores aspects of improvisation/ interpretation, kinetic energy, noise, and density.

As a performer, Nolan has played at the Cluster Music Festival and the Winnipeg New Music Festival Pop Up Concerts with the University of Manitoba’s Xperimental Improv Ensemble, and NUMUS’ 2021-22 season (Waterloo, Ontario), ExitPoints

#26 (online electroacoustic concerts), and the 4th Edmonton NoiseFest (virtual) as BLACK GALAXIE. Nolan has had opportunities to work with a wide range of world-renowned artists including the ECM+ Ensemble, XelmYa Ensemble, Luca Cori, Jonny Axelsson, Nick Photinos, Aiyun Huang, Dejana Sekluic, and Nina C. Young. Nolan has been the recipient of numerous academic grants and national awards including the 2019 SOCAN Awards for Young Composers, runner up in the 2019 TORQ Percussion Composition Competition, the 2021 New Media Press Solo Percussion Composition Competition, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), and the Masters SSHRC award. His latest projects include a work for TORQ Percussion and an electroacoustic work for the University of Toronto’s TaPIR Lab. Nolan has presented his music and research at the National Student Electronic Music Event (Ithica, New York), the CUNY Conference for Graduate Students in Music (NYC, New York), the University of Toronto’s Dialogues Performance Symposium, the Anestis Logothetis Centenary Symposium (Athens, Greece), the CeReNeM Composers’ Colloquia (Huddersfield, UK), and the Korean Electro Acoustic Music Society.

Nolan is currently pursuing a DMA at the University of Toronto with a focus on graphic notation and electroacoustic music. nolanahildebrand.wixsite.com

Yuri Hooker Cellist

Principal cellist of the WSO, Yuri Hooker is well-known for his passionate and soulful interpretations of a wide range of repertoire. His frequent solo appearances have met with critical and audience acclaim: his 2007 Rococo Variations with the WSO was lauded as one of the best classical performances of the decade by the Winnipeg Free Press, and in 2011 The Strad magazine spoke of his performance of Britten as being among the “outstanding performances” of the inaugural International Cello Festival of Canada. An avid chamber musician, Yuri also appears regularly with the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society and Groundswell.

As well as performing, Yuri is an inspiring and dedicated teacher whose students are regularly recognized locally and nationally with awards and scholarships. As well as maintaining a private teaching studio, he served as the Sessional Instructor of Cello at the University of Manitoba from 2004-2008, and in the summer of 2011, he launched the Rosamunde Summer Music Academy for young string players.

Yuri holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University, which he followed with graduate studies under Janos Starker at Indiana University.

Meredith Johnson Double Bassist

Described as “a superbly gifted musician” (Winnipeg Free Press), double bassist Meredith Johnson enjoys a varied and active career of performance and teaching. Since 2004, Meredith has held the position of Principal Bass with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work with the WSO, Meredith has performed across the United States, Canada and Europe with numerous festival and professional orchestras. In 2012, he was invited to be an inaugural member of the prestigious All Star Orchestra, an ensemble which, since its inception, has garnered many educational and artistic accolades, including six Emmy Awards.

In addition to his full-time orchestral schedule, Meredith is an enthusiastic and dedicated chamber musician. Praised for his playing of “resonant, lyrical beauty,” he has been part of many critically acclaimed chamber performances and has had the privilege of collaborating with some of the finest chamber musicians in Canada and the US, including: Martin Beaver, James Campbell, Jonathan Crow, Dave Harding, Paul Marleyn, Martin Roscoe, James Sommerville and Axel Strauss. Meredith was the Principal Bassist of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra from 2004 to 2013 and was part of numerous tours and recordings with that ensemble. He frequently appears with many of Manitoba’s other premier ensembles, including Agassiz Chamber Music, Camerata Nova, GroundSwell, the Virtuosi Concert Series and the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society. He has performed numerous recitals in Winnipeg, working primarily with pianist Madeline Hildebrand. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as well as with the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.

Teaching is an ever-increasing focus of Meredith’s time and energy. In addition to a select private studio and his instruction at the University of Manitoba, Meredith maintains a professional association with Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Increasing demand as a clinician has led to masterclasses at several universities across Canada and the United States. He is also the founder of Bassitoba; an intensive three-day training and performing symposium that takes place annually in Winnipeg at the University of Manitoba.

Meredith has a wide variety of musical interests. He has been involved in numerous recording projects and performances in a variety of musical genres. He has recorded with the Nashville-based old-time band, The Bashful Mountain Broadcasters as well as Winnipeg-based Heavy Bell, on their debut album, By Grand Central Station. As a guest curator for Winnipeg new music collective GroundSwell, he organized a concert, Les Citations, that included several Canadian premieres and was featured nationally on CBC Radio’s The Signal. In 2017, he was a member of the consortium of bassists that commissioned Sueños, a multimovement work for bass and piano by Argentine composer, Andres Martin. Currently, he is spearheading a new commission project to get new chamber and solo works written for the double bass by eminent Canadian composers.

His double bass training began in Nashville, TN, serendipitously studying with Edgar Meyer, while pursuing a degree in English literature at Vanderbilt University. Upon graduation, he decided to continue his bass studies at Boston University with Boston Symphony Orchestra bassists Ed Barker and Todd Seeber, earning his master’s degree in Performance in 1996. From 1999 to 2002 Meredith held a fellowship at the New World Symphony, and upon the completion of his tenure there, he moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies with Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Bassist Hal Robinson.

His hobbies include riding bikes, cooking and tennis, and he lives in Winnipeg with his wife, violinist Susan McCallum, their three children, and the faithful family dog, Lucy.

Thomas Joiner Composer

Thomas Joiner hated music as a kid. He refused to listen regardless of genre, artist, or song and during a short period of time studying piano he refused to practise. This attitude persisted until he was 13 when he began studying composition with local Calgary composer Scott Ross-Molyneux. His new teacher had an infectious love of music that inspired Joiner and taught him to appreciate the beautiful intricacies of the vast musical repertoire we are fortunate to have access to today.

His primary instruments are trumpet and piano, which he began around the same time he began composition lessons. In addition, he has also studied voice, violin, and drums.

His first experience having a work of his performed was in 2018 when a classmate played his work Piano Sonata No. 0. Since then, he has composed music for his school’s plays, a piece produced in collaboration with a painter, a flute quartet for students at his school, and Dec 23, 2020 for Calgary’s Timepoint Ensemble. A key experience for Joiner’s view of music was spending time playing for his grandpa in a seniors’ home. The residents were sickly and dejected, but his music inspired and entertained. This experience taught him that music has the power to create happiness and hope, even in the darkest times. His newest piece Dawn, composed for the Canadian Music Centre Prairie Region’s Emerging Composers Competition, is about finding hope and happiness in the darkness of the pandemic.

Thomas Joiner is currently 18 years old, is in Grade Twelve, and attends Central Memorial High School in Calgary.

Giya Kancheli Composer

Music, like life itself, is inconceivable without romanticism. Romanticism is a high dream of the past, present, and future–a force of invincible beauty which towers above, and conquers, the forces of ignorance, bigotry, violence, and evil.

– GIYA KANCHELI

Born in Tbilisi on 10 August 1935, Giya Kancheli was one of Georgia’s most distinguished composers and a leading figure in the world of contemporary music. Kancheli’s scores, deeply spiritual in nature, are filled with haunting aural images, varied colors and textures, sharp contrasts and shattering climaxes. His music draws inspiration from Georgian folklore and sings with a heartfelt, yet refined emotion; it is conceived dramaturgically with a strong linear flow and an expansive sense of musical time. A man of uncompromising artistic integrity, Kancheli was described by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin as, “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist — a restrained Vesuvius.”

Best-known as a composer of symphonies and other large-scale works, Kancheli wrote seven symphonies and a “liturgy” for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind. His Fourth Symphony (In Memoria di Michelangelo) received its American premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yury Temirkanov conducting, in January 1978, shortly before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet artists. The advent of glasnost brought growing exposure for and recognition of Kancheli’s distinctive musical voice, leading to prestigious commissions and increasingly frequent performances in Europe and America. His passionate champions have included Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstislav Rostropovich and the Kronos Quartet. World premieres of specially commissioned works took place in Seattle (Piano Quartet in L’istesso Tempo by the Bridge Ensemble, 1998) and New York ( And Farewell Goes Out Sighing… for violin, countertenor and orchestra by the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, 1999). North American premieres of major scores by Kancheli were presented by the Philadelphia and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and at the Vancouver International New Music Festival. In May 2002, he returned to America for the eagerly awaited premiere performances of Don’t Grieve, a commission by the San Francisco

Symphony for baritone and orchestra, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky as soloist and Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. Kancheli’s compositional style owes much to his work in the theatre. For two decades he served as Music Director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi. His opera, Music for the Living, which has won considerable praise in the former Soviet Union and Western Europe following its June 1984 premiere, was written in collaboration with the Rustaveli’s director Robert Sturua. In December 1999, the original collaborators restaged the opera for the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar. Among Kancheli’s other scores are Diplipito for cello, counter-tenor and chamber orchestra, Time… and Again for violin and piano (1997), Rokwa for large symphony orchestra (1999) and Styx for viola, mixed chorus and orchestra (1999). After electrifying performances of Mourned by the Wind at the Brooklyn Philharmonic in the fall of 1993, critics raved: “superb,” “there is no denying the powerful sincerity of this music and its riveting hold on the imagination — a grip that doesn’t relent until the consoling conclusion in which the individual and his turbulent, unpredictable universe arrive at a reconciliation.”

Recordings of his music are available on the Nonesuch, Sony and ECM New Series labels.

Dislocated by political and social turbulence in his homeland, Kancheli had resided in Antwerp. He died in his home city of Tblisi in October 2019. He was 84.

KINAN AZMEH’S CITYBAND MUSICIANS

Formed in 2006 in New York City, the Kinan Azmeh CityBand immediately gained recognition for their virtuosic and high energy performance, receiving praise from critics and audiences alike.

With this New York ensemble, Azmeh strives to reach a balance between classical music, jazz, and the music of his homeland, Syria. Azmeh’s expressive clarinet meets Kyle Sanna’s rustic guitar, soaring at times over the dynamic and volatile backdrop of John Hadfield’s percussion and Josh Myers’ double bass. Each band member has come from varied backgrounds to add their personal flair to this ensemble, resulting in a thoroughly exciting and rewarding listening experience.

The quartet has toured the US, France, England, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey.