Featuring Vertrek Trio with Cassondra Murphy; Karen Shepherd; Michelle Lafferty; Shumaila Hemani and the Sufi Ensemble; Steph Patsula; Ethan Bokma; Courtney Brown; Ashley Weckesser
June 9 - 18, 2023Co*Lab, Muttart Hall, OnlineTickets
New Music Edmonton’s 12th annual festival in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣamiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton)!
Join us for this wonderful collection of events, including new classical music, multimedia performance art, free improvisation, electronic music, and more! Our team has worked with artists and the community to put together a unique portrait of what it can mean to create new sonic art in our city.
The festival opens June 9 with an extraordinary double bill: a recital by mezzo-soprano Michelle Lafferty and a program of new chamber music and songs by The Karen Shepherd / Accumulyria. This will be followed on June 10 by two multimedia performance pieces, featuring new work by Ashley Weckesser and the return to Edmonton of Steph Patsula.
We’ll also have outreach events, some new episodes of our podcast, and a room-filling performance/ installation from immersive drone artist Ethan Bokma, and an incredible performance by Courtney Brown using dinosaur skulls!
On Saturday, June 17, we’ll have a fantastic evening of improv, noise, and more, with the incredible Vertrek Trio, and their special guest, extraordinary voice artist Cassondra Murray. The festival comes to a stunning close on Sunday, June 18, when one of Alberta’s most renowned artists, Shumaila Hemani, presents a live performance of her extraordinary work, Mannat performed by Shumaila Hemani and the Sufi Ensemble.
Schedule (subject to change) – click on event to buy tickets
Co*Lab (9641 102A Ave NW): Wheelchair access at front door. All-gender single stall washrooms.
Harcourt House, 3rd Floor Gallery (10215 112 Street Northwest): Wheelchair access from the building’s underpass via the basement art studios can be arranged with Harcourt’s staff at tel. 780-426-4180. Gender single stall washrooms with handrails. Seating in the art galleries to be arranged with Harcourt’s staff upon request.
Muttart Hall (10050 Macdonald Drive, Edmonton): accessible building with gendered, multi-stall washrooms.
The Karen Shepherd / Accumulyria (Karen Shepherd, violin – Michelle Lafferty, soprano – Sara Soufisiavash, piano – Melissa Lank, cello – Tammy-Jo Mortensen, harpsichord – Diana Tayler, harp – Ben Whittier, alto sax – Rafael Tian, flute)
Lemon Creamery (fl, vln, hpschd, 4’30”)
Acimisis Nocture (vln, vcl, pno, harp, 3′)
Rumble (fl, alto sax, vcl, pno, 4′)
kinamêhitin – I find traces of you (2023, mezzo-soprano, fl, vln, vcl, pno, hpschd, harp, 8′, world premiere – commissioned by New Music Edmonton)
Songs written and performed by Karen Shepherd – She’s like a Bird * Brand New * Be here with you * Mountain Lion * Sleep is the Ocean (written with Kelly Shepherd * Puppy Blues * Hate to leave
Intermission
Songs of Kanada – Michelle Lafferty, mezzo-soprano with Sara Soufisiavash, piano
Do Náke – Michelle Lafferty 2′
City and the sea – Emilie LeBel 5′
Selections from A Breakfast for Barbarians – Ian Cusson 1,3,5. 11:50 ‘
Selections from River Tales – Beverly McKiver9.33′
Mother’s aria from Missing – Brian Current 2.30′
Program Notes
Lemon Creamery – I wrote this piece as a challenge for myself. I wanted to write a Baroque-style tune and see if I could come up with something fun, interesting, and yet still satisfying to perform.
I enjoy hearing the sounds of the harpsichord, and I enjoy hearing it in conjunction with the flute and two stringed instruments. I think the sounds mixed together bring a light heartedness and spunkiness to this danceable tune.
Baroque music was the pop music of the Baroque Era, as I’ve learned. And of course, once immersed into the style, one cannot help but be carried away within its intricacies.
This is a light tune, or so it seems. It has an edge, because why do we have light-hearted tunes to begin with? Well, it’s to stave off the dark, the foreboding, the dangers and the trials of life.
And so, this tune is to remember that with those dark moments, there should be a sweet possibility to have some Lemon Cream from a Lemon Creamery.
(B.T.W., a Lemon Creamery is a total figment of my imagination, as I know of no such place. However, I imagine a beautiful cafe that provides all sorts of delicious light lemony menu options).
Acimisis Nocture – For this composition, I took inspiration from my sweet little dog, Nikika. She had puppies on Christmas Eve, 2021. I needed to stay awake with her for the first week after birth. For at least a month following that, she would wake me up a few times at night to go for a walk. This was not necessarily a good time for me, as it was very cold in the winter and I really didn’t want to walk while there was so much blowing snow. However, this tune came into my head around these times and I was able to write the music down.
I have fairly light instrumentation for the piano and the harp. This is meant to represent tiny puppy feet that dance around.
In the opening, I tried to emulate the floating dream like quality of my surroundings while out walking. The harp line is me in the dream being drawn from my sleep by my dog. She is inviting me to come out with her. I’m a violin player, so I felt that I was the violin line. I’m humming this to myself while stumbling around in the dark.
Watching the puppies growing inspired me to write little antidotes within the music. This is where the music begins to go in different directions, much like the puppies are doing as they grow.
There is a mixture of exhaustion, walking out at 3 in the morning, trying to dream, dreaming while sleeping. Then, there are the puppies to look after and make sure everyone is accounted for. This is what I’m creating in this section.
For the last section, I’m trying to bring into order all the chaos by setting the music back to the beginning idea. This time, it is not quite the same though. This section is also a reply to all the canines. This is me balancing everyone with times of feeding, times for walking, times for attention.
I end the piece with steady calm long notes that reflect myself having a moment to calm myself enough to sleep a bit before morning, where everything begins again.
Rumble – This composition is an impression of a rumble.
The rumble is the sound of thunder
that pointed down onto a prairie grassland. The thunder begins high in the ceiling of the sky and vibrates down where the earth absorbs it. The piano’s lower notes are the thunder. The ground is the cello. The reverberations are sound waves that cause the ground to shake. These shakings cause the cellist to feel this and quiver into the bow while playing. The stomach is where the sound of saxophone comes from. There is a little anxiety and this is coming from the middle of the back of a flute player. The flute sound flies out into the air where it is picked up and absorbed by the air. The flute sound is accompanied by the saxophone’s vibrations and is swirled around.
Events don’t happen in isolation. Rumblings are felt not only physically but emotionally. These rumblings may start in one place but reverberate to many other places.
kinamêhitin – I find traces of you. This is a Nihiyaw/Cree to English translation of a acknowledgement I am making to my loved ones who are no longer walking on the earth. I love finding traces of them in the places they shared with me.
Songs of Kanada – This program includes a few of Kanada’s most illustrious Indigenous/Non-Indigenous Kanadian classical composers and music I have loved to perform such as work from Beverley McKiver, Ian Cusson, Emilie LeBel, Brian Current. Do Nake is written and composed by musician Michelle Lafferty which holds traditional themes as well in the Indigenous language of Tłicho from Michelle’s dene community in the Northwest Territories. This program hopes to highlight and create conversation of the current musical climate and continue on the work of reconciliation between Kanada and Indigenous peoples of turtle island.
The Artists
Karen Shepherd is a vocalist, musician, and composer and enrolled in the Bachelor of Music program at MacEwan University as a Composition Major. Her original music has appeared on short films and documentaries, including Nathaniel Hehir’s “The Stonekiller”(2020), Chehala Leonard’s documentary, “Living a Legacy”(2021), and she also made an arrangement for Laura Vinson’s song, “Meegwitch”. (The Awakeners, AMI, 2022). She was awarded the Dr. Trimbee Country Music Award at MacEwan University in 2022. She was chosen as one of six emerging composers to write choir work for ProCoroCanada under the Canadian League of Composer’s Pivot Program ( May 2022), in Edmonton. Her original composition entitled, “The Kraken” was featured during Andrea Menard’s and Robert Walsh’s debut Cabaret, “Rubaboo”. Karen also performed this piece on her 5-string violin during March (The Grand Theatre, London, ON), and April (The Arts Club, Vancouver, BC) of 2023.
Mezzo-soprano Michelle Lafferty, is a First Nations Indigenous woman from the Northwest Territories and graduated in 2019 from The University of Western Ontario with her Master’s in Literature and Performance. She continues to work with the Classical Indigenous Musicians Gathering curated by The Banff Centre for the Performing Arts and ongoing work with Calgary opera in the new opera lab creation Namwayut with dramaturge Marion Newman. She has worked in the improvised project Understory lead by team Parmela Attariwala, Germaine Liua and Nicole Ramperaud. She received a Dora award for her work in Sound Streams Pimooteewin/Gallabartnit as best choral ensemble. Latest performances were Tomson Highway’s Kisaageetin at the National Art Centre in Ottawa and the opera Missing by Brian Current and Marie Clements with Anchorage Opera Alaska. She is currently part of the newly formed Indigidivas which is an all Indigenous classical singers including Melody Courage, Rebecca Cuddy and guest diva’s Marion Newman and Jeremy Dutcher.
Julie Annette Ross 1962-2023 (Ashley Weckesser, with Hannah Bullock, soprano)
Julie Annette Ross passed away on May 16, 2023 at the age of 61. She will be forever cherished as a daughter, wife, mother and grandmother. Julie was a woman who lived for her family, friends and strangers. Her legacy is her exuberant love she instilled in each of us. In the warmth of the sun I can feel her love, Radiant and gentle as the mourning dove. In the toiling daisies I can see her face, Beautiful, elegant, full of grace. In the stars of the sky, I can see her light, Her true nature amidst a temporary night. In the whisper of the wind I can hear her voice, Freed from her shackles she sings her rejoice.
Sympathetic Resonance (Steph Patsula)
The harmonic phenomenon of sympathetic vibration is achieved when a passive body responds to external vibrations in a similar harmonic range. By creating a live feedback loop with her body, instruments and the acoustics of the room, Patsula creates improvisational soundscapes with the intention for vibrational reciprocity with the individuals, objects and architecture of the spaces she performs.
Artists
Ashley Weckesser is an Edmonton, AB-based composer and interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of music and sound, visual art and theater. Her goals are to design music in both the film and video game industries, as well as live performances (taking multiple forms), that turn the active listener into a participant; creating their own personal story and subsequently emoting on a transcendent level.
Hannah Bullock is an Edmonton-based Soprano vocalist. She received her Bachelor’s in Vocal performance at the University of Alberta, and has focused her training on classical singing techniques. Her interests in music extend beyond classical music however expanding to genres including meditation music, video game soundtracks, and EDM. Her passion for singing is centered around telling meaningful stories and connecting with people through vulnerable music.
Steph Patsula is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist. The projects she creates are focused across a variety of processes coalescing in a union of somatic experiencing, experimental sound creation and lens based ephemera. Patsula’s work prioritizes the creation of immersive art installations and live-performance which explore bodies as beacons and receptors in relationship to each other. Her processes embrace the unpredictable dynamics of working with new materials, spaces and bodies by corresponding with them improvisationally. A technique that reflects a personal desire for reciprocity and intimacy through an attentiveness to collaboration and adaptability.
June 11, 2023, 11 AM River Valley, at the foot of the funicular
Following on from their performance the night before, join sound artist Steph Patsula on a magical soundwalk in the amazing River Valley. This is a great chance to be outdoors and to hear what this incredible feature of our landscape sounds like. You’ll be surprised and delighted at how many things there are to listen to!
*This is an outdoor event – please come prepared for the weather – bring a hat, sufficient water, and snacks.
Space is limited, and registration is encouraged. This event is free, but donations are welcome to support our programming.
June 14, 2023 7 PM Harcourt House, 3rd Floor, 10215 – 112 Street NW
New Music Edmonton is pleased to present this engaging, practical, and highly informative workshop, Cassondra Murray brings to it an experienced voice having worked as both a peer supporter, and as a guide for others. Self-care, boundaries, consent, and honoring the right to self-determination are among the topics to be covered. As we move towards encouraging safe(r) spaces in the arts, this event is highly recommended for anyone involved in the arts: peer supporters, presenters, teachers, or artist-colleagues of marginalized persons.
Space is limited, and registration is encouraged. This event is free, but donations are welcome to support our programming.
June 15, 2023 7 PM Harcourt House, 3rd Floor, 10215 – 112 Street NW
Based on philosophies of openness, respect, experimentation, and with a joy that is unique to making sound together with the human voice, come along and be part of the Vocal X experience! This participatory session will include demos, accessible ways to conduct and improvise, and, most importantly, your voice! No experience necessary, just a willingness to enjoy and respect the value and meaning of making vocal sounds together. The workshop will include an amazing explanation and demonstration by Cassondra Murray of Inuit throat singing practices.
Space is limited, and registration is encouraged. This event is free, but donations are welcome to support our programming.
Place of Worship – An experience in longform meditative music. Three amplifiers will making longform sound while they face different directions. Audience may, if desired, move around the room to hear how the the overall sound can be perceived differently.
Hadrosaur Variations and Improvisations is an improvisatory musical performance for hadrosaur skull instrument, soprano, and laptop. A Corythosaurus is a duck-billed dinosaur, a lambeosaurine hadrosaur that scientists hypothesize used its large head crest and nasal passages for vocal call resonation. I bring these calls to life as singing dinosaur musical instruments. I give voice to these dinosaur instruments by blowing into a mouthpiece, exciting a larynx mechanism and resonating the sound through a 3D replica of the dinosaur’s nasal cavities and skull, fabricated via CT (Computational Tomography) scans of the fossil. My breath becomes the dinosaur’s breath. In a sense, the dinosaur instrument becomes a part of me, the same way a musical instrument becomes part of me as we play. The work allows physical and sounding engagement with the prehistoric past.
I use scientific research as a starting point to create a means of dinosaur sound production, or larynges, for the dinosaur skull instrument. I have a vocal box mechanism, a purely physical mechanism I developed for my instrument, Rawr! A Study in Sonic Skulls. Musicians blow into a microphone to use the hybrid larynx and in the physical model, musicians blow into a mouthpiece, like a wind instrument. I developed the physical larynx mechanism considering the hypothesized hearing and sensorimotor abilities of the particular hadrosaur skull fossil replicated in the project, as vocalizing creatures’ ears are tuned to their own voices. As dinosaur vocalization is a controversial topic due to the lack of evidence (the vocal apparatus consists of soft tissue that rarely fossilizes), I am implementing multiple models based on competing hypotheses. I also must employ informed speculation to fill in missing biological structures and parameters. This work lives in the tension of what can be known and what cannot. I collaborate with both paleontologists and designers to fabricate 3D models obtained from Computed Topology (CT) scans of hadrosaur skull fossils for use as resonators.
Hadrosaur Variations and Improvisations explores the intertwining of human and dinosaur voices. I will perform my work Hadrosaur Variations, a structured improvisation for Rawr! A Study in Sonic Skulls, soprano and laptop. Rwar! is a replica of a subadult (adolescent) Corythosaurus skull and nasal passages. I mimic the dinosaur with the soprano voice and vice versa. I became interested in coaxing melodies from the hadrosaur skull instruments because this was a challenging exercise. Sounds both environmental and lyrical will permeate the space, bringing present and past together.
The improvisations will also incorporate the live coding work, things that breathe, a revision of a much earlier work for soprano and electronics. Initially, the work reflected on being constantly in front of the computer as a coder, even dreaming in code, and being cut off from the rest of the world. Sampled animal voices are used as fragmented beats, but they are cut up and reused in ways that make it obvious that a machine is producing the sounds. During the pandemic, this piece came back to me, as it had that same feeling of being removed from the world. At the same time, I was beginning a new phase of dinosaur sound research, and as part of that, I was exploring the possibilities of the instrument that I had already made. The contrasts and similarities between this older piece and the new work I was doing became an engine for this work.
Acknowledgements and Credits
Rawr!A Study in Sonic Skulls was created by myself, Courtney Brown and Sharif Razzaque. The CT scans of the subadult skull fossil (CMN 34825) were provided by Witmer Labs, Ohio University and scientific research guided larynx creation. We also acknowledge Garth Paine, Carlo Sammarco, Sallye Coyle, Brent Brimhall and Gordon Bergfors for their contributions and funding from Arizona State University GPSA.
The Dinosaur Choir adult Corythosaurus musical instrument was created by Courtney Brown (myself) and Cezary Gajewski with considerable contributions by paleontologist Thomas Dudgeon, who provided CT scans, 3D models, and consulting. I also acknowledge David Evans for providing approval to use the CT Scans of the adult Corythosaurus (ROM 1933) for this project. We also acknowledge the Canada Fulbright, Ira Greenberg, Garth Paine, Scott Smallwood, Caleb Brown, Natalie Loveless, Phillip Currie, Corwin Sullivan, Howard Gibbons, and the rest of the University of Alberta Dinosaur Paleontology Lab for their support of this project and research. Funding sources for Dinosaur Choir includes a Southern Methodist University Research Council Grant and United States Fulbright Scholar Award to Courtney Brown as well as a NSERC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to Thomas Dudgeon.
Artists
Ethan Bokma is a multi-instrumentalist in the city of Edmonton. He first started making music on stage in 2016 with various improvisation ensembles. You may (or may not) have heard of his longer-running groups such as the free-jazz attackers Heavy Beak or perhaps the Holy Drone Travellers with their long religious jams. Today, Ethan continues to pursue the cosmic gumbo with his own project Brick Road and the Brick Road Eternity Blues Band. You might also see him tootin’ on the reeds in Mustafa Rafiq’s Takleef Ensemble.
Courtney Brown is a composer/musician, software developer, and tango dancer based in the Center of Creative Computation at Southern Methodist University. She creates new musical works and instruments giving participants and audiences glimpses into another’s experience, whether that other is human, dinosaur, or another being. Her work has been performed/exhibited in North America, Europe, and Asia including Ars Electronica (Austria), National Public Radio (NPR), Diapason Gallery (Brooklyn), CICA Museum (South Korea), NIME/BEAM Festival (London), International Computer Music Conference (Chile), and the Telfair Museum (United States). She also was a recipient a Fulbright Student Award to go Buenos Aires for her work Interactive Tango Milonga. She also received a 2015 Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention for her work Rawr! and is continuing her exploration in dinosaur sound as the 2022-23 Canada Fulbright Research Chair of Arts and Humanities in Alberta, Canada.
Content warning: This amplified performance may include extremely loud, distorted, and potentially uncomfortable vocal and other sounds. Please feel free to cover your ears as needed, or to use earplugs, which will be available free from NME.
In addition, please note that the spoken-word content of this show may include coarse and graphic language, and subject matter including, but not limited to intergenerational trauma, gender-based violence, eating disorders, grief, addiction, sucide loss. As such, some audience members may find aspects of this performance distressing and/ or triggering. While there will be no age minimums imposed for this performance, we also urge those potentially accompanying young, and/ or vulnerable folks to consider the above aspects of the performance before deciding to attend.
All who attend this performance should feel comfortable exiting the performance area at any time during this show, for any reason. Please reach out to any NME staff should assistance be necessary.
Artists
Cassondra Murray, voice
Vadim Budman, bass VI, cornet
Ron de Jong, drums, percussion
Jason Scott, guitar
Cassondra Murray (they/them) is a neurodivergent and 2SLGBTQ experimental vocal artist currently based in Newfoundland. Described as “haunting” and “anarchistic,” Cassondra’s voice delves into uncharted territories by exploring the “Other” and defying conventional forms of vocal expression. As a marginalized and underrepresented artist, Cassondra’s vocal artistry is a powerful tool for self-expression and advocacy. They challenge societal norms by using their voice to explore ancestral wounds and disenfranchised grief. They create immersive experiences for their audiences and incorporate extended vocal techniques such as contemporary throat singing into their work.
Cassondra’s recognized for their avant-garde approach to vocal artistry. Their contributions to the St. John’s Vocal Exploration Choir are mentioned in Chris Tonelis’ Voices Found: Free Jazz & Singing. Their work with VocalX further exemplifies their commitment to deep listening and social virtuosity. Cassondra Murray’s ethereal yet chaotic stage presence leaves an indelible mark on the avant-garde and experimental music scene.
Vertrek Ensemble was born in 1997 by two like minded musicians and friends, Vadim Budman and Ron de Jong out of their frustration with conventional music making and their love for ground zero free improvisation. Always a fluid entity, Vertrek Ensemble can grow in size indefinitely or be as small as two players.
Vertrek has recorded and played with such notable pioneers as Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, John Butcher, Phil Durrant, Luc Houtkamp, Ian Birse as well as many others. Traditionally, Vertrek Ensemble was made up of two core members (Vadim Budman & Ron de Jong). However, because the group is committed to creating new dynamics and interesting music, a third member was added in 2020 (Jason Scott).
What is it to dwell? According to the Oxford Dictionary, dwelling is defined as a place of residence, a habitation, or a house. A dwelling is not only a physical space or a building but signifies a basic need of humans to stay in a place to remain. We make a physical space into a home and a place to dwell through our daily activities that become rituals in that space and through the people with whom we co-habit these spaces, whom we invite into our space and with the conversations we have in the languages we speak and wisdom that we pass on. This musical experience is a deep listening experience to understand the experience of dwelling with Sufi poetry and music from Pakistan and the impact of the recent monsoons on it.
Artists
“Staying rooted within traditional forms and honouring that while also bringing in experimentation, Hemani sings Sufi epics in South Asian Sufi tradition compellingly,” (New Works Calgary). Shumaila Hemani, Ph.D. is an Alberta-based singer-songwriter, acousmatic composer and community-engaged artist sculpting with the environment’s sounds and addressing the world’s climate crisis. Hemani’s debut album, Mannat (a prayer, a Wish), is an awakening about climate emergency and the need for action. Based on Sufi poetry from South Asia and sound recordings of heavy rainfall, floods, and other environmental sounds, Mannat is an immersive experience of deep listening to soundscapes of climate change. It was applauded as “powerful” in evoking a spirit of perseverance in supporting victims of climate disaster in Pakistan and featured in the National Observer, CBC’s What on Earth, Edmonton Journal, and Calgary Herald. Hemani won the Cultural Diversity Award and Women in Music Honors in Emerging Voices (2023) and is currently serving as an Artist in Residence working on climate justice in Alberta.
James Watson (Violin)
Sujeev Chohan (Tabla)
Shumaila Hemani. Credit Jodi O Photography. Tickets
Now Hear This 2023
