Ariel Llamas is a singer, musician, and songwriter. He has authored over 150 songs. He plays 13 musical instruments with varying degrees of ability and has been improvising music for dancers for more than 10 years, most commonly at REAson d'etre dance's weekly dance jam. He is an avid Contact dancer; he also attends and deejays ecstatic dances. he has also created two songs for Kathleen Rea's 2017 Men Circle dance-theatre production. www.myspace.com/thedulleyedllamashttps://youtu.be/-SsSGDNvVa8
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Cellist Cheryl O has been improvising ever since a sudden breeze blew her music away while busking in Spain. Cheryl has been part of the improvising scene in Toronto, beginning as a guest of the Planet of the Loops ensemble and soon becoming a regular performer at The Ambient Pingseries. A 2008 participant in the Banff International Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music, Cheryl had opportunities to work with Dave Douglas, Wayne Krantz, Hugh Marsh, and Thomas Morgan. With a Bachelor of Music in Performance (UFT), and studies with Matt Brubeck and Ted Quinlan, Cheryl has studied music from early Baroque to Contemporary prior to her current focus of on improv. Using her cello and looping technologies, Cheryl creates textures, rhythms, and soundscapes over which she layers her cello, creating washes of sound and colour, as well as her trademark soaring melodies. https://open.spotify.com/artist/0iM6BoAoCjeeNAuPcOKoYb
David Sait is a professional guzheng musician based out of Brampton, Ontario. David’s first guzheng was found in a used instrument store under a pile of old guitar cases. The look of this intriguing zither led to an impulse purchase, and conversion to full-time guzheng player. 20 years later, David has developed a unique voice on an instrument with a 2,000-year history through a collection of contemporary techniques & tunings.
David's father was a 40-year veteran jazz musician/composer/arranger from Liverpool, England who led an 18-piece big band and played with musical greats: Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, & more.
David has performed as a solo artist, in small & large improvising ensembles, and re-occurring duets with John Oswald, Friendly Rich, Nobuo Kubota, Michael Keith & more. He enjoys collaborating with visual artists & has been a musical guest for the REAson d’etre Contact Dance Jam since 2007. This is his 10,000-hour journey! Combining influences of African/ Asian stringed instruments with elements of Alt-Country, Classical, and other hybrid styles.
Ian Jamieson is a guitarist, singer, and composer from the Toronto area. He is currently working as a band teacher with the Toronto District School Board and works freelance as a musician for modern, contact, and improv. dancers around the city. In 2006, his guitar work "In Dreams" was used by dancer/ choreographer Takako Segawa on a dance tour of Japan. In 2003, Ian worked with an ensemble of international musicians at the Banff Centre for the Arts in a realization of his composition "Shore Pieces", created as part of a Master's of music composition obtained from York University. When playing for the Toronto contact jam, Ian will be using electric and acoustic guitars with effects.
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Janice Jo Lee is a dynamic artist. She is a second-generation Korean-Canadian settler based in Toronto, Ontario. She is a folk-soul-jazz singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound designer, spoken word poet, theatre maker, and arts and anti-oppression facilitator. Lee’s artwork has always been one with her activism. Her artistic works are immersed in issues of gender empowerment, community, climate change, the environment and antiracism. With her guitar, looping pedal, trumpet, Korean janggu drum, disarmingly funny candour and poetically-rich lyrics, Lee commands the stage. She conjures warm energy, asks questions about our times, and leaves audiences rejuvenated and aglow.
Lee has toured with her music and poetry. Highlights include Philadelphia Folk Festival, PacRim Diversity Conference (Hawaii), Hillside (Guelph), Saskatoon Poetic Arts Festival, In The Soil (St Catharines), TaiwanFest (Toronto), Toronto Korean Fest, ArtsWells (Wells, BC), Verses (Vancouver), Victorious Voices (Victoria, BC), and perverse/cite (Montreal). Her album Ancestor Song launches this year. http://janicejolee.ca and http://instagram.com/janjolee
Email: janjolee[a]gmail.com
Music is my greatest joy and longest-standing passion. Engaging in improvisation is often a transcendental experience. It is my favourite form of meditation and a means of bringing people together to have joyful, meaningful, and sometimes cathartic creative experiences. It is through music that I feel I can offer the most to the world. I aim to give back to others the supreme emotional and spiritual highs that music has given me. I seek to re-express beauty, truth, and universal experience (positive as well as challenging) through sound. I aim to elevate, stimulate, entertain and alleviate. I’ve achieved these joys through playing multiple instruments in myriad bands since the late-80s and making music for dance, film and theatre. It's been a long couple of years in rehab from an acquired brain injury that robbed my right hand of strength and sensation. But I’m inching my way back to performing and am happy to have the opportunity to co-create with my beloved community of dancers!
Jim Gelcer is a recording artist, producer, songwriter, educator, and band leader performing with the who's who of Canadian jazz. An accomplished film composer, he is also renowned in the yoga world for his meditative mantra music recordings.
Leah The Earthwalker, is a vocal-based singer-songwriter and live-looping artist from Brantford, Ontario. She draws inspiration from the earth as well as humanity’s evolving relationship with it. Her energizing, tribal, free-spirited harmony-focused sounds are intended to spark a remembrance in listeners of a greater unity with the planet.
Michelangelo Iaffaldano lives and works in Toronto. He is active in drawing, painting, puppetry, theatre, and both traditional and experimental music as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and instrument inventor.
Michael Lynn (he/they) is an improvising musician and the organizer/curator for the monthly (since 2012) music series ‘Audiopollination’ in Toronto at Array Music. Michael has been active in the improvised music scene in Toronto since 2008 as a performer, organizer, and patron. He has played in the improvisation and art rock music scene in various ensembles in festivals such as Now Now (Australia), Somewhere There (Toronto), Intersection (Toronto), RMS (Rimouski), and improvisation series such as Sound and Music (Montreal), Mardi Spaghetti (Montreal) and CoexisDance (Toronto). He has released recordings with “The Taste of Teeth” (Australia), “Side Eye” (Toronto), “Coin Operated Duo” (Toronto), and a solo album “Crinkly Fish”.
https://www.arraymusic.ca/explore/music-series/
Nilan has been active locally, nationally, and internationally for 35 years as a musician/composer/improviser, journalist, organizer/activist (in musician and media circles), conceptualist, zen Buddhist, and visual artist. He’s played with the famous, not famous, and infamous, ran activist radio stations, organized musicians collectives, and in his spare time loves to garden, bow hunt, and generally made a pest of himself. He is now a Happy Dad, a garden-collective member, and still working on the concept of art in as many forms as possible.
Shara Claire is an expressive arts therapist and creator of music for devotion and meditation. She has been studying music since her young childhood in British Columbia and has studied percussion since 1998. Some of her teachers include Chris Bertin, Arthur Hull, Ubaka Hill, Famoudou Konate, Afia Walking Tree, members of the late Babatunde Olatunji’s ensemble, and Steve Mancuso. https://www.facebook.com/sharaclaire.devotionalmusic.meditation/