2019 Performer-Composer Participants
Featured
A multi-faceted pianist with an eclectic musical background that ranges from traditionally classical to improvisation, and contemporary music, Erika Dohi has been described as a “dynamic” performer whose “technique is decidedly unidiomatic” (Classicalite). Most recently, Erika appeared with Wadada Leo Smith during his residency at The Stone and at his CREATE Festival in Spring 2019.
Erika is a co-founder of BLUEPRINTS piano series, a project that unites pianists from different genres for eclectic concerts that mix classical music, contemporary, jazz and improvisation. This past season, BLUEPRINTS put on the 11-concert festival In Visible Roads in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble; these innovative concerts were featured in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
Erika is also the co-founder of RighteousGIRLS with flutist Gina Izzo. The duo fuses classical, contemporary, and jazz, while inviting some of today’s most prominent composers to create genre-blurring new music. Their album gathering blue has been met with critical acclaim; Jackson Cooper from I Care If You Listen called it “…one of the most adventurous new music debut albums in recent years.” gathering blue received a 4.5 stars rating by John Ephland in DownBeat magazine.
Tova Kardonne is a Toronto-based composer, improviser, vocalist, and producer. She writes uncategorizable music for classical, electroacoustic, jazz and fusion ensembles. Her improvisational practice in heavily informed by dance and linguistics, and her composition practice spent 25 years marinating in a stew of Toronto influences before emerging as an ineradicable compulsion. She holds a Master’s of Teaching from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.
Iman Habibi, D.M.A. (Michigan), is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, and a founding member of the piano duo ensemble, Piano Pinnacle. Hailed as “a giant in talent” (the Penticton Herald), Dr. Habibi has been commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Orchestra of St. Luke's, and collaborated with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Chiara String Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, and The Calidore String Quartet, and has been programmed by Carnegie Hall, The Marilyn Horne Foundation, New York Festival of Song, The Canadian Opera Company, and Tapestry New Opera, among others. His awards include multiple wins at the SOCAN Foundation’s Awards, The International Composers’ Award at the Esoterics’ POLYPHONOS (2012), The Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards for Emerging Artist in Music (2011), Brehm Prize in Choral Music (2016), as well as numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and BC Arts Council."
Nick Hon is a native to Southern California, who's varied musical and performative interests lead to explorations in both physical and sonic space. Nick's curiosity regarding experimentation with the passage of time, the occupation of space, and social-performance tropes is guided by a deep respect and acknowledgment of Black American music, other improvisational forums, social music, and reflections on grandeur in performance. His mix-matched musical experience yields performances where conventional lines have been selectively blurred and erased to offer new territory to explore, or at the very least, a unique frame through which to view familiar places.
Rebecca Gray is a composer, soprano and violinist based in Toronto passionate about performing and creating fresh, complex and inclusive new works. She recently completed her masters in opera at the Univeristy of Toronto and holds a Bmus from the University of Ottawa, where she studied both voice and composition. She loves collaborating with writers, photographers, painters and video artists to explore how music can meaningfully interact with other art forms, and extend the scope of its expressive possibility. Her music has been performed by Ottawa’s 13 strings, the Capital Chamber Choir and Ensemble Paramirabo. She a won second prize in Toronto SongSlam 2019 in which she performed her own work, and has presented interdisciplinary works at Nuit Rose, a queer arts festival in Toronto, The Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, and the Toronto Creative Music Lab. She was a Future Music lab fellow at the Atlantic Music Festival 2018, and attended Splice Institute this June.
Rebecca’s singing credits include Donna Elvira from Don Giovanni (2017), and Diane from Orphée aux enfers by Offenbach (2016) with University of Toronto Opera. She channelled her undead self into the role of Nellie Melba, in Prima Zombie: the Diva that just wouldn't stay dead, an opera composed by students at the University of Toronto (2017). Rebecca has also performed with Esprit Orchestra, Tapestry Opera (Songbook VII and VIII) and OperaQ. In June, she premiered the lead role in Pomegranate, a new lesbian opera by Kye Marshall and Amanda Hale.
Alexis C. Lamb (b. 1993) is a composer, percussionist, and educator who is interested in fostering communities of mindful and genuine music-making. Lamb is the Education and Publications Director for Arcomusical, a non-profit organization that advocates for the artistic advancement of the Afro-Brazilian berimbau and related musical bows. Lamb’s song cycle for berimbau entitled Meia earned her a 2018 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. Other recent commissioning projects include a vocal quartet for the IAMIAMIAM Collective, a new work for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Percussion Ensemble, and a solo consortium project for multiple percussion with speaking, led by Kevin Keith.
As a percussionist, Lamb is a core member of Projeto Arcomusical, the berimbau ensemble associated with Arcomusical. Her performance has been hailed as “riveting visually as well as sonically” (Centerline). Lamb is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree in Composition at Yale University School of Music. Her undergraduate degrees in both Music Education and Percussion Performance are from Northern Illinois University. Lamb’s music can be found on Innova Recordings and National Sawdust Tracks. Her major teachers include Hannah Lash, Gregory Beyer, Ben Wahlund, Michael Mixtacki, Robert Chappell, David Maki, Brian Penkrot, and Lauren Ryals.
Eschewing the collection of traditional titles that describe single elements of her body of work, Elizabeth refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist” that embraces a constant stream of change and rebirth in practice, which expands into a variety of media, chiefly an exploration of how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles both tangible as well as intangible. Elizabeth has received recognition from press as well as scholars, for her conceptual compositions and commitment to inclusive programming. In addition to studies of her work, Elizabeth has been awarded several fellowships, grants, and residencies, in addition to sponsorships from Schoenhut Piano Company and Source Audio LLC. As an experimental filmmaker, her work has been shown at festivals including Women of the Lens (United Kingdom), and the African Smartphone International Film Festival (Nigeria). As a solo recording artist, Elizabeth is represented by Aerocade Music, her first solo album on the California-based label Quadrivium released worldwide in May 2018 to rave reviews. She is founder of the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, The New Music Conflagration, Inc., author of three books, and the subject of a number of scholarly articles, thesis papers, and other academic research. In March 2018, Elizabeth retired from nonprofit arts administration to focus on her international solo career, though she remains committed to the community through workshops and public speaking engagements.
Interested in the possibilities of musical relationality amongst people, objects, and histories, Ben Zucker crosses and intentionally plays with genre, discipline, and creative roles. As a composer, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and performer, he has performed and presented work in places including the Banff Centre (Alberta, CA), Vortex Jazz Club (London), San Francisco Center For New Music, Trinity College Dublin, Southbank Centre (London), Indeterminacy Festival (Buffalo), Westben Centre (Ontario), New York Fringe Festival, Switchboard Music Festival (SF), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), and the Darmstadt Ferienkurse (Germany). He has been called a “master of improvisation” (IMPOSE Magazine), was recognized as a ""New Composer Talent"" by the International Audio Branding Academy, and his work has won awards and commissions from the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Nucleo Musica Nova (Parana, Brazil), Constellation Men’s Ensemble (Chicago), Khorkios (NYC), San Francisco Choral Artists, and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. His solo albums combine brass, percussion, voice, and keyboards into adventurous performances acclaimed as “a testament to the power of restraint and arrangement” (Decoder Magazine), and “more than a little bit remarkable” (Free Jazz Blog). Ben studied music, performance, and philosophy at Wesleyan University, Brunel University London, and currently, as a doctoral student at Northwestern University."
Jacinta Clusellas is a guitarist, composer and arranger based in New York City. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, her music brings together South American folklore, jazz and chamber music, in the context of songs influenced by poems, nature and literature from South America. Jacinta’s debut album El Pájaro Azul was released at the Consulate of Argentina in NYC, and distributed in Japan under the record label Inpartmaint Inc. She is currently working on her second album, while also composing the score for Azul Otra Vez, a Spanish language folkloric musical (BRIClab, NYTW, Drama League, The Habitat), and arranging/music directing I Am, a play with music.
Over the past few years, Jacinta’s music has taken her to perform in renowned venues such as David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Le Poisson Rouge, Americas Society (NYC); Café Vinilo, Centro Cultural Haroldo Conti (Argentina); Mesón Nerudiano (Chile), MAAC (Ecuador) Atheneum Kelari (Greece), to name a few. She has toured the US as a performer and as a resident artist, participating in SXSW (Austin, TX), Lanesboro Emerging Artists Residency Program (Jerome Foundation, MN), A.R.T (MN), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY) and both Tofte Lake (MN) and Westben Performer - Composer Residency (Canada), coming up this summer!
Jacinta holds a B.A. in Contemporary Writing and Production at Berklee College of Music, she is a former member at the Carnegie Hall Music Educators Workshop and a current Teaching Artist at the Very Young Composers Program from the New York Philharmonic.
Justin Wright is a cellist and composer who strives to push the boundaries of new classical and experimental indie music, and to erase the lines between synthetic and acoustic sounds. A prolific collaborator in countless Montreal-based musical projects, Justin has established himself as one of the city’s most innovative and versatile cellists, performing internationally in classical concert halls and underground loft venues alike. A former molecular biology researcher, Justin takes an exploratory and experimental approach to creating music, integrating composition, production, and recording into a single process, and fostering an environment where mistakes and spontaneity are embraced as integral tools for creation.
While completing his second music residency at the prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts, Justin began his eponymous project incorporating classical instruments and analog synthesizers in a realm somewhere in between indie and contemporary classical music. He has since shared the stage with luminaries such as Colin Stetson, Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Alexandra Streliski, Mount Eerie, and Bing & Ruth. Justin returned for a third residency at the Banff Centre to record his debut full-length album, Music for Staying Warm, released in April on First Terrace Records (UK) and Sleepless Records (Canada).