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Ben Finley - Creative Director
Ben Finley is a performer-composer specializing in acoustic bass and electric bass (in multiple tunings and with effects). He grew up on a music festival farm, witnessing many ecosystems of music making. The seeds of co-creative agency were sewn; Ben aims to cultivate music that embraces the unique individual life experiences of its participants. This often manifests through improvisation, text, the human voice, electro-acoustic worlds, learning from the biosphere, and exploring multi-stylistic compositional frameworks. Ben founded and facilitates the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s international/multi-generational Performer-Composer Residency. He is a graduate of the Performer-Composer program at CalArts, and is a current PhD candidate of Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, studying music festivals as sites of environmental and existential stewardship.
Mike McCormick
Mike McCormick is an Oslo-based guitarist, laptop performer and composer originally from Yellowknife, Canada. Mike’s creative output draws from a variety of disciplines, including conceptual and performance art, electroacoustic music, twentieth-century literature, and various notated and improvised music traditions. His active projects include the improvising trio BRINICLE, the improvising laptop/saxophone duo Abelseth/McCormick, and Proxemics, his song cycle project exploring the various expressions of human intimacy.
In the spring of 2017 he completed the Nordic Masters program after studies in Oslo, Gothenburg, and Copenhagen with international luminaries such as Helge Sunde, Anders Jormin, Kasper Tranberg, Simon Toldam and Laura Toxværd. Since August 2017, he has been pursuing a Master’s degree in Music Performance Technology at the Norwegian Music Academy in Oslo under the tutelage of internationally renowned composer Natasha Barrett.
Mike has been fortunate enough to perform in India, all across central and northern Europe, and all across Canada, including performances at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Ottawa International Jazz Festival, and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He has had the pleasure of collaborating and performing with visionary artists like Kasper Tranberg, Simon Toldam, Nordic Voices, Christine Duncan, and Greta Eacott.
Kathyn Shuman
Kathryn Shuman is a versatile soprano, and composer based in Los Angeles. As an avid explorer of vocal sounds and vibrations, she is continually finding ways of implementing found techniques in her music performance—anywhere from baroque classical, opera, experimental, contemporary, and improvisatory music. She has performed with opera companies including LA’s leading avant-garde opera company, The Industry. Most recently, she has performed at the Ojai Musical Festival for a West-Coast Premier of John Luther Adams' Sila: Breath of Life, LA Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and REDCAT as a part of the "Hotel Theory" event. Shuman’s improvisatory and vocal-driven original music has been commissioned and premiered by the Contemporary Choral Collective of LA (C3LA), and has been performed at venues including the Troubadour, Automata, Art Share LA, Character Projects, the Rockwood Music Hall (NYC). As someone who craves discussion about ecological issues, Kathryn has recently created a set of music to bring awareness to particular environmental issues relating to endangered migratory species. This summer she will be embarking on an American East-Coast tour of this music via bicycle. Shuman is also a committed educator and is on the voice faculty at Pasadena City College.
Ryan Gaston
Ryan Gaston (b. 1990) is a performer and composer working primarily in the field of electronic music and electronic/acoustic collaboration. Gaston performs frequently with modular synthesizers, computers, and daxophone, and is a founding member of improvisation ensemble Burnt Dot and co-developer of the Minimally Invasive Gesture Sensing Interface (MIGSI) for trumpet. Gaston's work utilizes network music techniques to develop chaotic control and synthesis systems that obfuscate and augment the relationship between performer and instrument, embedding elements of struggle, uncertainty, and miscommunication into solo and ensemble performances. Gaston also utilizes the spectromorphological notation method to create similarly abstracted representations of sound in order to provide an interface-neutral meeting point for performers of any type of instrument, with a decided focus on the qualities of a sound rather than the techniques required to produce it. Gaston received an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices from the California Institute of the Arts in 2016.
Davy Sumner - Co-Facilitator
Davy Sumner is an installation artist, composer, improviser, and Maker based in Los Angeles. His creative works are spawned out of physics, biology, and sensory perception, often utilizing electromechanical sound devices, spatialized audio, vintage recording hardware, and feedback-based systems as key elements. He specializes in devising atypical, unpredictable instruments that incite interpersonal interaction between audience and performer. Davy’s work has been featured at Disney Concert Hall, The Eaux Claires Music Festival, and in the US National Parks.
A fiercely active and diverse collaborator, he has worked as an arranger with Grammy winning artists Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Sean Carey (S. Carey), and Rob Moose (yMusic, Ben Folds). As a consultant Sound Mixer for Disney Imagineering, he mixed the THEA award-winning Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Lands and the 2019 edition of Star Tours (coinciding with the release of the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker film).
As a Special Faculty Member at CalArts, he has designed curriculum and taught Low-Tech Prototyping, Graduate Electroacoustic Seminar, and Composition. Davy holds a Bachelor's in Music Composition from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices from CalArts.
Nahre Sol
Nahre Sol is a pianist and composer that creates music that combines a unique blend of improvisation, traditional Western form and harmony, jazz harmony, and minimalism.
As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed at venues across North America and Europe, including The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Gusman Theatre in Miami, and various locations in Canada, France, Holland, Italy, Poland, and Germany. Upon completing her undergraduate studies in 2013 at The Juilliard School, she received the Harriet Hale Woolley Grant to study piano and music composition in Paris with Gabriel Tacchino and Narcis Bonet. As a composer, her works have been premiered in New York City, Buenos Aires, Paris, and Toronto by artists such as Julian Martin, Han Chen, Jaewon Bang, Jeremy Smith, and Griffin McMahon.
With her online videos, known as "Practice Notes," she documents and shares various tips and insights related to learning and practicing music at the piano. This coming fall, she will begin a Fellowship at the Royal Conservatory of Music in partnership with the 21C Music Festival.
Molly Jones
Molly Jones improvises on saxophones, flutes, and electronics, and her compositions range from through-composed chamber works to electroacoustic structures for improvisation to multimedia installations. She can be heard on several albums including her NPR Critics' Poll nominated Microliths. A member of Polyfold musical arts collective, Rhyta Musik (Balkan brass), and Gabriel Brass Band (New Orleans brass), she lives in Detroit and directs a new multimedia performance company, Untoward Co.
Sarah Belle Reid - Co-Facilitator
Sarah Belle Reid is a Canadian performer-composer, active in the fields of electroacoustic trumpet performance, intermedia arts, music technology, and improvisation. She is a co-developer of the Minimally Invasive Gesture Sensing Interface (MIGSI) for trumpet: an open-source, wireless interface that captures performance data and provides real-time extended sonic and visual control for improvisation. Reid has presented and performed with MIGSI at institutions and festivals around the world including Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), the International Conference of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2015: Brisbane, Australia), New Media Art & Sound Summit (NMASS 2017: Austin, TX), University of Oregon, UT Austin, and UC Irvine's Women in Music Technology Symposium (2016), among others.
As a composer, Reid’s work focuses on time and memory imprints both in sound and physical performance—a fascination inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s writings on infrathin—as well as the integration of electronics, hybrid/new instruments, and found objects. Her compositions have been premiered and performed by renowned musicians and ensembles around the world, most recently pianist Vicki Ray, Caution Tape Sound Collective (supported by Association of Canadian Women Composers and SOCAN), Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and Vinny Golia. In 2017 her composition “Flux” for amplified percussion quartet won the Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Percussion Quartet’s Next Wave Composer Initiative.
Marika Galea
Marika Galea is a bassist and composer who combines jazz elements with thoughtful lyrics that move the body and soul. She brings a fresh, young voice - unafraid to take risks and engage her audience through the music of life’s stories.
Born and raised in Toronto, she has performed her music across the U.S. and Canada. As a sidewoman, she has performed with veteran jazz artists including Cyrus Chestnut, Warren Wolf, Jason Palmer and Ralph Peterson Jr. In recent years, she has been named one of CBC Music’s Top 35 Under 35 Canadian Jazz Artists, the Prince Edward County Jazz Festival’s Rising Young Star, and received a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
Marika graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2016. She is currently based in Montreal, where she is pursuing a master's degree at McGill University. She remains on faculty at the Monterey Jazz Festival and McGill Conservatory, and is preparing to record her first album.
Roozbeh Tabandeh
Roozbeh Tabandeh is an Iranian musician, born in Shiraz and now living in Montreal. Having a Master's degree in architecture, he is also known as a composer, conductor, a violinist and Iranian Santur player. He studied music composition at Concordia University under the supervision of Sandeep Bhagwati and Georges Dimitrov. At the same time, he extended his violin technique with Clemens Merkel. Before moving to Canada, He has studied music composition and performance with some of the most well-known Iranian musicians including Hossein Dehlavi, Kambiz Roshan Ravan, Arsalan Kamkar, etc. He has also participated in conducting master classes held by Manuchehr Sahbai (former conductor of Tehran symphony orchestra.)
He established “Hengam Orchestra” in Shiraz, Iran which was active for near ten years and he conducted the orchestra from 2002 to 2011. Later, he founded “Hengam string quartet” in which he played the first violin and had many performances and concert tours presenting western classical repertoire as well as the Iranian art music to the audience.
His compositions are performed and recorded by several ensembles around the globe including the Quatuor Bozzini in Montreal, Ensemble Arkea under the baton of Dina Gilbert, Orchestre Symphonique de l'Isle with Cristian Gort as the conductor, Iran string orchestra under the direction of Manuchehr Sahbai, etc.
Jaques Burtin
Born in Paris, France, Jacques Burtin is a composer, improviser, writer and filmmaker. He plays the kora, the gravi-kora and the piano, and he has issued about forty CDs. Burtin conceives multidisciplinary shows, sound or video installations with musicians, painters, poets and dancers. He directs experimental films, cinematographic poems and art documentaries. His films “What damns me saves me" and “The Dialogue of Shadows" were screened at the Festival de Cannes in 2011 and 2012. “L’Enfant de la République” ("The Child of La République") was screened at the Bilbao Short Film Festival Zinebi in 2015.
Burtin teaches kora and gives masterclasses. Between 2002 and 2012, he conducted sessions of Initiation to Interdisciplinary Creation and Performance at the Fine Arts School of the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain) along with dancer and choreographer Alicia Gómez Linares. His latest works are "Islands of Light" for kora solo and "Lazarus" for piano and soprano. He is currently working on a multidisciplinary project based on the twenty-two Major Arcana of the Tarot of Marseilles. An homage to his late colleague, harpist Susan Allen, this project explores the creative act via improvisation.