[Microsound-announce] concrete toronto

[neil wiernik]

Sunday May 25 & Sunday June 1
The Music Gallery and zoilus.com present
CONCRETE TORONTO MUSIC
As part of the soundaXis Festival

*** Toronto indie and contemporary musicians get brutalist on iconic city
buildings ***

Two concerts in two special *concrete* locations:

Sunday May 25 @ Polish Combatants Hall, 206 Beverley St.
Doors 7pm, concert 8pm
Tickets: $20 regular/$15 member + senior/$10 student

Sunday June 1 @ Ontario Science Centre, 770 Don Mills Rd.
2-5pm • FREE with admission to OSC — OR purchase tickets: $20 regular/$15
member + student INCLUDING SCHOOL BUS RIDE from Music Gallery (meet at
12:45pm)

Advance tickets available at http://www.ticketweb.ca
More info: http://www.musicgallery.org + http://www.soundaxis.ca

Performers:
• Carla Huhtanen (voice) and Wallace Halladay (saxophone) performing a newly
commissioned piece by composer Erik Ross, featuring text by Darren O'Donnell
and Carl Wilson
• CCMC (legendary improvising trio: Paul Dutton, voice; John Oswald,
saxophone; Michael Snow, keyboards) *** May 25 only
• Sandro Perri (electronics) and Tony Dekker (guitar and voice)
• Smith & Wiernik (electronics and visuals)
• Knurl (contact mic'ed concrete slabs with effects)

About Concrete Toronto Music
Concrete Toronto Music is a concert of original new music, created by
Toronto composers and musicians, in response to Toronto's Concrete
Architecture, as catalogued in the 2007 book Concrete Toronto (ERA
Architects/Coach House Books, Michael McClelland and Graeme Stewart,
editors). Many iconic buildings, such as City Hall and the Ontario Science
Centre, used concrete as their primary material during the building frenzy
that gave expression to the growth of Toronto in the decades of the 1950s to
the 1970s. The Music Gallery has commissioned a significant handful of
Toronto-based composers and musicians to create new works that pay tribute
to Toronto's concrete legacy, experiment with concrete's mutability and
explore these buildings' role in the city's psycho-geography. These two
concerts take place in two of the actual concrete buildings – the Polish
Combatants Hall (Wieslaw Wodkiewicz, architect) and the Ontario Science
Centre (Raymond Moriyama, architect). Curated by Jonathan Bunce and Carl
Wilson (zoilus.com, author of Let's Talk About Love).

CCMC: This free improvisational band and true Toronto institution has been
reinventing itself, with shifting constellations and consistent questing
spirit, for over four decades. For the last 13 years, CCMC has been the trio
of Michael Snow (piano and synthesizer), John Oswald (alto sax), and
"concrete" poet Paul Dutton (soundsinging and harmonica), who carry on the
iconoclastic practice of the original CCMC formed in 1975 by Snow and four
others. Please note: CCMC will be performing on May 25 at the Polish
Combatants Hall ONLY.

Tony Dekker
Tony Dekker is a singer/songwriter who explores the worlds of indie folk,
roots music and alt-country, with a focus on lyrics and songwriting, making
unique references to the City of Toronto's geography. Known for haunting,
somber ballads, Dekker's sound blends natural reverb with folky arrangements
and inspirational lyrics. Three albums have been released to date (the
latest, Ongiara, named for the Toronto Island Ferry), which have had Dekker
and his the band on the move for the past few years, playing venues across
Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. http://www.weewerk.com

Wallace Halladay
Canadian saxophonist Wallace Halladay captures the qualities of the modern
virtuoso, being at home in numerous styles, from the traditional to jazz and
beyond. A specialist in the performance of contemporary music, he has
commissioned and premiered numerous works. As soloist, he has performed
concerti by Ibert, Schmitt, Husa, Scelsi and Donatoni, as well as premieres
of Colgrass, Kagel and Scott Good. Wallace recorded the two saxophone
Sequenzas of Berio and the Colgrass concerto for NAXOS. He has been
presented by and performed with new music groups and orchestras across
Canada and the US. Wallace holds a doctorate from Eastman, and studied in
Amsterdam with Arno Bornkamp. Wallace is a Conn-Selmer Artist and plays
Selmer (Paris) saxophones.

Carla Huhtanen
Carla began her professional career at Teatro La Fenice (Venice) in
Gershwin's Lady, Be Good! and Cherubini's Anacreon in 2000. She sang
Angelica in Handel's Orlando and the title role in Purcell's Fairy Queen,
touring Provence. Her UK debut was for Garsington Opera — Lisetta in La
Gazzetta (2001) and Serpetta in La Finta Giardiniera (2003). Other
highlights include Bernstein's Candide with the BBC Orchestra, the Israel
Philharmonic and the National Orchestra of Malta. At home in Toronto, she
sings with Opera Atelier and Tapestry New Opera. Recent performances include
Salonen's Five Images after Sappho (KW Symphony) and Tapestry's Opera to Go.
Future engagements include Blizzard Voices (Moravec) with Opera Omaha and
Opera Atelier's Die Entführung.

Knurl, a.k.a. Alan Bloor, is one of the premier noise artists in Canada.
Knurl began as a solo project in late 1994 with the idea to take music as we
know it and strip it entirely of what we know music to be: its rhythm,
melody, and vocals. Using contact mics and scrap metal, his work is at times
reminiscent of the likes of Daniel Menche and Haters. Knurl has released
work with Alien8 Recordings, RRR and Self Abuse, among many other labels.
Recordings of Knurl are always without the assistance of computers,
synthesizers or samplers.

Sandro Perri is a Toronto-based musician/producer who has been steadily
developing a unique voice since his 1999 debut as Polmo Polpo. Utilizing
percussion, electronics, lap steel guitar or harmonica to create a rich
world of sound like dub without the reggae, his music moves across a
spectrum of styles including dance, drone, pop, minimalism, noise, jazz and
more. Recently he has dipped further into improvisation and vocal-based
songwriting, both solo and in collaboration with Great Lake Swimmers,
Glissandro 70 and Double Suicide. http://www.sandroperri.com.

Erik Ross
Dr. Erik Ross composes for all media. He has had performances of his works
in Canada, the United States, Mexico, England, Japan and Australia. He
recently completed an accordion and audio piece for Joseph Petric as well as
an ensemble piece for Toca Loca's P*P Project. Projects for this year
include a large work for the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan, an
audio/chamber piece for Wallace Halladay and Ryan Scott, and a piece for the
Hannaford Street Silver Band. http://www.erikross.com.

Smith & Wiernik is a multi-media project dedicated to the
recontextualization of urban space. A venture between Neil Wiernik & Greg J.
Smith, the collaboration is a creative vehicle for the duo's diverse
backgrounds in architecture, audio art, drawing and musical composition. The
project is an experiment in the creation of "site specific" audio-visual
pieces which document the experiential qualities, history, geometry and
character of the architectural and infrastructural spaces of the city around
us. Concrete Toronto marks the first performance of what will be an ongoing
collaboration. http://serialconsign.com + http://phoniq.net.
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