SUM AiR—House of Andromeda

Oct 15 – Nov 1, 2024

We’re excited to welcome House of Andromeda as a SUM-AiR artist-in-residence from October 15 – November 1, 2024. They’ll be using the gallery as their base of operations as they prepare for The Andromeda Ball 2024 on October 27 at the Birdhouse!

ABOUT HOUSE OF ANDROMEDA

The Kiki House of Andromeda is a collective of queer & trans artists, formed in 2019. Operating out of the QTBIPOC-lead Ballroom community, members support each other’s individual goals and practices not only as a creative collective, but as a necessary chosen family. Amongst the house members, the fields of dance, fashion, photography, drag and performance are woven together. Andromeda aims to always provide unique and authentic experiences that tap into the heart, the beauty, and oddity of our inner worlds colliding.

Known and Unknown—Album Release Concert

Nov 2, 7:30 pm

Join us at the Canadian Music Centre on Nov. 2nd with “piano virtuoso and avant-garde muse” Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa as she performs in recital, celebrating her recent CD, Known and Unknown: Solo piano works by Rodney Sharman. This is the first monograph recording to feature Sharman, described by Louis Andriessen as “the most distinguished Canadian composer of his generation.” The concert programme will include Sharman’s elegant Opera Transcriptions and trademark works for speaking pianist, including an uncensored rendition of his notorious collaboration with playwright Peter Eliot Weiss, The Garden, described as “a perfect combination of lust, innocence, tenderness, and yearning.” Iwaasa performs Sharman in context with work by compositional colleagues Linda Catlin Smith and Jocelyn Morlock. Download cards of Known and Unknown, released on Redshift Records, included in the ticket price.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is among Canada’s foremost contemporary music pianists, hailed as a “keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight) whose “emotional intensity” transforms music “from notes on a page to a stunning work of art” (Victoria Times Colonist). Iwaasa’s reputation has drawn many notable Canadian composers to write for her, including Hildegard Westerkamp, Nicole Lizée, Farshid Samandari, Emily Doolittle, Jeffrey Ryan, Leslie Uyeda, Jordan Nobles, and the late Jocelyn Morlock. The Canadian League of Composers recently commissioned Cris Derksen to compose a piece for her, which was chosen as the Offcial Canadian Selection for ISCM World New Music Days 2023 in Johannesburg. Iwaasa has performed with the likes of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mark Takeshi McGregor, Judith Forst, Quatuor Bozzini, Heather Pawsey, Gabriel Kahane, Caroline Shaw, and Richard Reed Parry. Rachel’s interdisciplinary adventures include work with visual artists SD Holman, Nettie Wild, Tania Willard, and Camille Georgeson-Usher; playwright/director David Bloom; choreographers Idan Cohen, Jennifer Mascall and Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg; and multi-media provocateur Paul Wong. Iwaasa has performed in the Netherlands, Germany, US and across Canada, with engagements that include the ISCM World New Music Days, Muziekweek Gaudeamus, Music on Main, Vancouver New Music, Western Front, Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Aventa Ensemble (Victoria), CONTACT Contemporary Music (Toronto), New Works Calgary, Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg), and more. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of British Columbia, a Master of Music from Indiana University Bloomington, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria, where she earned the Victoria Medal as the top graduating student in Fine Arts.

Rodney Sharman lives on traditional Musqueam territory in Vancouver, Canada. He teaches composition at the Vancouver Symphony School of Music, and is the Victoria Symphony’s Mentor-Composer. He has been Composer-in-Residence of Early Music Vancouver’s “New Music for Old Instruments”, the Victoria Symphony, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and Composer-Host of the Calgary Philharmonic’s New Music Festival, “Hear and Now”. In addition to concert music, Sharman writes music for cabaret, opera and dance. He sings, conducts, plays recorders and flutes. He works regularly with choreographer James Kudelka, for whom he has written scores for Oregon Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet and Citadel & Compagnie (Toronto). His chamber opera, Elsewhereless, with text and direction by Atom Egoyan, was staged in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa, and performed in concert excerpts in Amsterdam, New York City, Montreal, Victoria, and Rome. Sharman was awarded First Prize in the 1984 CBC Competition for Young Composers, the 1990 Kranichsteiner Prize in Music (Darmstadt, Germany), the 2013 Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding sound design/composition (Toronto), and is the recipient of the 2017 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts. Website: www.rodneysharman.com

FOREST / FLUX / FREQUENCY—Rafael Zen + Khalil Alomar

Nov 7 – 16, 2024

FOREST / FLUX / FREQUENCY is both a multimedia installation + sound performance. First, conceptually and fantastically – it is a conversation between an old tree + a cyber-bug through experimental electronic music, sound performance, hauntology, and eco-dreaming; then, materially, as an exploration of art fields that interest artists Rafael Zen and Khalil Alomar – multispecies collaboration (combining the sounds of humans + nature : birds > bugs > waves > wind), speculative environmental composition (by imagining a future when nature can only be accessed through screens and projections), and improvisational sound art (live performance of the speculative soundscape of an electro-forest).

The opening reception takes place on November 7, from 7 – 9pm, with Zen and Alomar performing live in the gallery. FOREST / FLUX / FREQUENCY runs at SUM gallery, Tuesday to Saturday from noon – 6pm, until November 16, 2024.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

RAFAEL ZEN /// The world is in convulsion, and so are we.* Rafael Zen is a queer and fiery Brazilian-Canadian multimedia artist and sound performer, currently living on the land of the Coast Salish peoples – Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam. There, he researches intersections between new media, performance, and environmental hauntology/speculative environmental composition/performance mediated with/through technology. In colonially-called Vancouver, he organizes Durations, an independent sound art and video art festival that offers an open stage for emerging artists exploring the fields of new media, sound, video art, and live performance. Academically, he holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts – Contemporary Artistic Processes, where he researches anti-colonial and anti-capitalist poetic practices, and political counterattacks through contemporary art. Currently, he is researching New Media and Sound Art at Emily Carr University. 

*Brazilian theorist Suely Rolnik (Spheres of Insurrection / 2017).

KHALIL ALOMAR /// Khalil Alomar is a queer Lebanese-Canadian artist whose creative practice primarily revolves around sound art, multimedia installation, and performance. He works through anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-establishment theory and practice. Currently, he is pursuing a degree in New Media and Sound Art at Emily Carr University. Alomar lives in the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Selíl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His recent practice is centered on sound, video/paper collage, and photography as mediums that provide a platform for critiquing systemic aggressions and abuse.


FOREST / FLUX / FREQUENCY: Sound Performance
November 16, 2-4 pm

Join us at SUM gallery for the final day of our exhibition, FOREST / FLUX/ FREQUENCY by Khalil Alomar and Rafael Zen, for a special performance by the artists. This free, improvisational sound-based performance evokes an electro-forest in a future when nature can only be accessed through screens and projections

Saturday, November 16 at 2pm

SUM gallery (#425 – 268 Keefer St.)

ñ (enye)—ilvs strauss

Nov 19 – 29, 2024

ñ (enye) is a multimedia bilingual installation / listening party by ilvs strauss (ilvs pronounced “elvis”). Visitors are asked to bring their ears for a guided journey through a labyrinth of intentional sound, audible and otherwise. Along the way, we’ll flip through the catalog of basic human needs and delve into an inquiry re: the advent of language, amongst other things. Ultimately, ñ (enye) raises the questions: What is it we hear? What is it we want to hear?

This exhibition also features strauss’ illustrated zine, “everything i heard over the course of my day all at once,” which was the original inspiration for her installation.

Join us at SUM gallery on Nov 16 for the opening reception of a new multimedia bilingual installation by ilvs strauss.

ABOUT ILVS STRAUSS

From a sociodemographic standpoint, I am a 45 year old educated, queer, mixed-race, white-passing, female bodied, Honduran-American artist. From a non-sociodemographic standpoint, I’m still those things, but manifest in 3D by the ethereal: experience, values, judgement, desire, need, love, motivation, inspiration, etc. The list goes on, but for now I’ll focus on the last three. 

I love language and how it relates to the body.

I love surtitles, subtitles, and translation studies. 

I love blurring the line between technician and performer.

I love the science and philosophy of sound – What is sound even? What are the effects of sound on our body, in our minds? How do our bodies/brains receive and interpret sound?

I’m motivated by considerations of accessibility – the show I am working on relies heavily on projected text, it is a lot to ask of an audience, to read for a sustained amount of time. How can I change the work to become accessible to those of different vision/hearing levels while maintaining the spirit and integrity of the piece?

The physics of sound inspires me. Sound is not a singular tiny object that travels along a wavy line from Point A to Point B. It is vibration – not a thing at all. Something (a voice, the slamming shut of a book, bird song) makes a molecule vibrate, which in turn makes the adjacent molecules vibrate, etc. A chain reaction radiating out in 3D. This has been a vital paradigm shift for me, a shift from thinking of singular entities on solo journeys to communities of entities vibrating in an iterative process.

I’m inspired to stop calling my ‘solo’ show a ‘solo’ show, for there is absolutely nothing I have done or will do that does not require the help/contribution/support/assistance of another.

SUM AiR—SJ Kirsch

Sept 5 – 27, 2024

We’re excited to welcome SJ Kirsch as a SUM-AiR artist-in-residence from September 5 – 27, 2024. SJ will use this residency to expand their fluency in a number software programs, providing the foundation of their multimedia, interdisciplinary project, Enbian Love Songs: experiential odes for the liminally-inclined. This site-specific project will explore liminality as a safe space through community sound gatherings, installation, and performances.

ABOUT

An accomplished interpreter of western art music, SJ Kirsch (they/she) has performed across Canada, in Europe and West Asia as a soloist and collaborator. They have been hailed as “…one of the finest contemporary dramatic vocalists in Canada today,” (Calgary Herald) “…with the ability to get under the skin of everything she sings,” (Winnipeg Free Press).

Beyond opera and oratorio, SJ curates and produces sociopolitically relevant art song experiences of works from the last three centuries. An avid and capable interpreter of new music, they have premiered more than 30 new works for voice by Canadian composers. Chorally, SJ currently serves as a section leader for the Vancouver Bach Choir family and will join the ranks of Musica Intima for the 2022-23 season.

As a creator/composer, SJ weaves electroacoustic tapestries inspired by the primally physical nature of resonance. As a pundit, they lecture on the ins and outs of western art music, wholistic programming, and vocal liberation for cultural and educational institutions, on podcasts, and on CiTR 101.9 FM. As a pedagog, they keep a small studio of private students from around the world.

SJ earned their BMus at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music and MMus from the University of Manitoba Desautels Faculty of Music. They are also a laureate of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition and have received project and commissioning support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg and many generous individuals for whom they are deeply grateful.

A Generosity of Abundance—Valérie d. Walker and Jack Page

Feb 22 – Apr 5, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: FEB 22, 6 to 8 pm
PERFORMANCE by JACK PAGE & THEO BLUE: MAR 16, 2 pm

As our community navigates a world of unprecedented environmental and political upheaval – all transpiring against the backdrop of a lingering pandemic –Transmedia Fibres-rooted artist and Indigo Griot Valérie d. Walker has responded by transforming SUM gallery into a sanctuary of Queer Joy: a place where “Queer reality is infused with self love and the power of environmental transformation.” Walker, whose work is shaped and informed by her African Diasporic, Scottish, Japanese, and Indigenous Hawaiian heritage, has envisioned A Generosity of Abundance as an immersive exploration of the restorative power of Water. Finding inspiration in the metaphysical transformations caused by traversing a Labyrinth, Walker’s large-scale indigo-dyed fibre pieces invite the viewer to explore and flow along an uninterrupted sensorial path towards meditative and therapeutic relief, much like water’s uncanny ability to seek out a path of least resistance; while fibre-art sculpture/installations create interior “indigo refuges”. 

In keeping with the spirit of Queer, joyous transformation, on March 16 the exhibition expands to include the work of Vancouver artist Jack Page, whose practice encompasses illustration, altered book art, papermaking, printmaking, photography, musical performance art, and Dis/Ability, Mad/Neurodiverse and 2SLGBTQIA+ community-based projects. His multimedia triptych, Flowers for MeToo, speaks to how all genders experience gender violence, especially trans and nonbinary people, using gold leaf to mark the healing body as divine and flowers as a form of healing and transforming trauma. Like Walker, who is well known for her enviro-conscious dye work, Page’s material art practice focuses on minimizing waste by incorporating used, natural, and foraged materials, and upcycling waste products, such as paper and medical waste.


Running from February 22 to April 5, A Generosity of Abundance spans two key events in the QTBIPOC calendar: Black History Month (February) and International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31). To this end, the exhibition is punctuated by an opening reception on Thursday, February 22, from 6 – 8pm and a musical performance piece by Jack Page and guitarist Theo Blue on Saturday, March 16 at 2pm.


Join artist Valérie d. Walker for a discussion with April Sumter-Freitag and Addena Sumter-Freitag on Queer Black history in Vancouver.

Join us at SUM gallery on Saturday, March 9 at 2pm for Black Every Day of the Year: a special discussion panel featuring A Generosity of Abundance artists Valérie d. Walker, Addena Sumter-Freitag, and April Sumter-Freitag. As seventh- and eighth-generation Black Canadians, Addena and April Sumter-Freitag hold a special place in Canadian Queer Black art and history; with Walker, they will imagine, joyously laugh, celebrate Historical Black Strathcona, and create Afro-Futuristic visions that extend well beyond Black History Month. The afternoon includes a special screening of April Sumter-Freitag’s short film, Out, Black + Proud in BC, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.


A musical performance piece by Jack Page and guitarist Theo Blue, Flowers for MeToo speaks to how all genders experience gender violence.

Join us at SUM gallery on March 16 for a special musical performance by Jack Page and Theo Blue, marking the expansion of our exhibition, A Generosity of Abundance.

As we transition from Black History Month to International Transgender Day of Visibility, our duo exhibition featuring the work of Valérie d. Walker and Jack Page expands to include Page’s beautiful triptych, Flowers for MeToo. We celebrate the arrival of Jack’s work with an in-gallery performance of the song Flowers for MeToo, composed and performed by Jack, with his musical collaborator Theo Blue.

Be among the first to experience the final manifestation of our exhibition and hear this intensely personal performance by Page and Blue.


When I Stop Saying Your Name – Five Songs of Grief and Grieving

SUM gallery + Little Chamber Music present:
When I Stop Saying Your Name – Five Songs of Grief and Grieving

World premiere of new works by Leslie Uyeda
Featuring Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano
Poetry reading by Lorna Crozier

Thursday, March 16
Two showtimes: 7 pm & 8:30 pm (each performance approx. 45 min)
Celebration Hall at Mountain View Cemetery (5455 Fraser St.)

Free admission

On March 16, we return to Mountain View Cemetery in partnership with our friends at Little Chamber Music to present a new song cycle by Vancouver composer Leslie Uyeda. Featuring acclaimed mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó, poetry by Lorna Crozier (OC), and a chamber ensemble of Vancouver’s finest, When I Stop Saying Your Name – Five Songs of Grief and Grieving will be presented twice in the same evening, alongside readings by Crozier and the premiere of a new instrumental work by Uyeda, Grief Lies Onward.

The Celebration Hall at Mountain View Cemetery is the perfect location for this musical examination of the difficult process of grief and grieving. 

Performing Memories with pianist Michael Park

Performing Memories with Michael Park

Unravelling a queer boy’s coming out, through recollections at the piano
Co-presented by Erato Ensemble Solo Series and Queer Arts Festival + SUM gallery
Jan 19, 7:30 pm
Tickets: $25 regular admission, $15 concession (plus fees), free for students & First Nations patrons

Performing Memories is a 35-minute solo piece blending speech and piano, written by Michael Park during the pandemic. In recounting the first moment he looked back at objects from his past, the narrator takes the audience on a journey of self-discovery through themes of isolation, shame, fear and death; but also joy, love, exploration and belonging. The performance includes works by composers Cecilia Livingston, Edward Grieg, and Richard Greig. Park has collaborated with director Esteban Guti to create a film version of the piece incorporating performance footage, dramatic reenactment, and illustration/animation by Héctor Rivera. This event features the world premiere screening of the Performing Memories film.

This project was made possible by the generous support of the BC Arts Council and Canadian Council for the Arts.

ABOUT Michael Park
Michael Park (he/they) is a pianist and composer with a keen interest in speech, humour, and improvisation. His aim is to give audiences an experience beyond the realm of traditional concert-going.

Michael is a passionate champion of new music. He’s performed dozens a of B.C. premieres as resident pianist with Vancouver’s Erato Ensemble, and supported the creation of more than 100 world premieres as founder and co-director of Art Song Lab, an innovative program that teams composers, poets, and world-class performers.

For more than a decade, Michael has collaborated with dancers, choreographers, and companies including Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Ballet BC. Taking inspiration from the movement style at hand, Michael has developed a fluency in improvisation that has been praised by dancers and teachers alike.

Michael’s own compositions have been performed in Vancouver at the VSO’s Jean Coulthard Reading Session, Sonic Boom Music Festival, Songfire Festival of Song, Queer Arts Festival, and Music on Main. His music has also been performed across North America, with notable premieres in Winnipeg, Boston, and New York.
www.michaelpark.ca

sticky extensions: Romi Kim in Collaboration with Queer Based Media

sticky extensions: Romi Kim in collaboration with Queer Based Media

Exhibition runs Oct 13 to Dec 8
Gallery hours: Tue–Sat, 12 to 6pm
Opening reception & performance: Oct 13, 6pm | SOLD OUT
Rhythms dance workshop: Oct 6, 6pm | SOLD OUT
Home meal feast workshops: Oct 26 & Nov 9, 6pm | SOLD OUT
Re: check in performance from SKIM & Bongganisa: Nov 24, 6pm | SOLD OUT

Romi Kim’s SUM gallery exhibition debut explores relationships through transformations of drag and play within created spaces. sticky extensions hosts collaborations with fellow artists Romeo Villanueva III, and Queer Based Media – Chris Reed and Kendell Yan – through performance, video and installations. Through video they explore the legacy and precarious existence of Warehouse, a DIY event space that has transformed endlessly for the Eastside queer racialized and trans communities. The exhibition opening night holds a meditative performance of care with drag artists SKIM, Maiden China and Continental Breakfast.

Throughout the course of the show, Romi and Romeo will be inviting participants to attend workshops exploring the communing experience of eating together and moving with one another. sticky extensions will evolve throughout its exhibition run, marked by performances from drag artists Bongganisa, SKIM, Maiden China and Continental Breakfast in the gallery. The artists will explore their relationship with one another in various ways throughout the exhibition. sticky extensions navigates Romi Kim’s extensions through spaces such as Warehouse, their relationships and their own body extending through materials. It will be a sticky experience.

Stickiness is tacky. It attaches one’s body or object to another body or object, sensation and feeling. It can create emotions of annoyance, disgust and fascination. sticky extensions explores the burden of 情 정: an untranslatable word that expresses attachment, feelings of connection and warmness that provoke social reciprocity. 情 encourages being present in your actions in order to create understanding. It grows over time. Kim’s exhibition is centred in thinking through relationality and thinking about their body made up with connections around them. As the exhibit continues, the space transforms over time through acts of performance, world building and homemaking. 


sticky extensions is made possible by the generous the support of Metro Vancouver’s Regional Cultural Project Grants program and The Hamber Foundation.

Exhibition Workshops & Events:

Artists Romi Kim & Romeo Villanueva III hosts an intimate dance and movement workshop in advance of their sticky extensions exhibition opening.

This 2-hour dance workshop brings participants along a movement journey following a “wave” of rhythms. The 5Rhythms* are called flow, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. This workshop will create a safe space for people of all dance experience and encourage dancers to ground themselves in their body and share a space of togetherness.

*5Rhythms is a movement meditation practice devised by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s. It draws from indigenous and world traditions using tenets of shamanistic, ecstatic, mystical and eastern philosophy. It also draws from Gestalt therapy, the human potential movement and transpersonal psychology. Fundamental to the practice is the idea that everything is energy, and moves in waves, patterns and rhythms.

In this intimate, 4-person workshop, guests will be invited into the space and be provided with a meal made by artists Romi Kim and Romeo Villanueva III. Attendees are asked to bring their own small, sharable food item to the meal. For second-generation Asians, food is often a strong connection to culture and a form of showing love. This first of two home feast meals focuses on the Korean jal meokgetseumnida. Romi and Romeo wish to share this communal experience with workshop participants. Please note that the meal provided will likely include meat, fish or seafood.

  • Kain Tayo (Filipino food workshop experience 2) – Nov 9, 6pm

In this intimate, 4-person workshop, guests will be invited into the space and be provided with a meal made by artists Romi Kim and Romeo Villanueva III. Attendees are asked to bring their own small, sharable food item to the meal. For second-generation Asians, food is often a strong connection to culture and a form of showing love. This second of two home feast meal workshops focuses on the Filipino Kain Tayo. Romi and Romeo wish to share this communal experience with workshop participants. Please note that the meal provided will likely include either meat, fish or seafood.

Re: check in by Bongganisa and SKIM explores through drag, materiality and performance what it means to maintain a relationship. The two artists started their friendship in 2011 after meeting each other at a weeklong summer camp. Bongganisa lived in Maple Ridge at the time and SKIM in Armstrong. They emailed each other everyday for an entire year. Their journey’s have since brought them to live and work with one another in the same place. 

SKIM defines drag as a performance of gender, explored through fantasy and play. Bongganisa sees drag as creative radical expression through queerness and transformation. Both believe drag is political and important in thinking through possibilities of how a person resides in everyday life.   

Re: check in is an intimate inquiry into the politics of being in drag and focuses on the importance of Bongganisa and SKIM’s relationship in order to offer various ways of understanding one’s being, knowing and doing.

This event is ASL-interpreted.

ABOUT ROMI KIM

김새로미, Romi Kim or SKIM in drag, is a queer, genderfluid, second-generation Korean. They identify themselves in recognizing these words as verbs rather than nouns or adjectives—constantly in action, and in flux. They are an uninvited settler living and working on the unceded xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel íl ̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Kim explores personal histories, vulnerability, and intimacy within colonial spaces within their work. They are interested in transforming the power of a story and privileges within language. Kim has a collaborative artistic practice as part of the House of Rice, an all-Asian drag house in Vancouver and a solo one. Kim has shown works in South Korea, in the United Kingdom, and across Canada. They have performed in South Korea, Vietnam, online internationally, and in Vancouver. Kim received a BFA in Visual Arts and Gender Studies at the University of Victoria in 2017 and they are currently studying at the University of British Columbia as an MFA candidate.

ABOUT QUEER BASED MEDIA

Queer Based Media is a QTPOC multimedia production company that provides videography, photography, projection installation, and design work for queer creators on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl  ̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (so-called Vancouver, BC). Queer Based Media has produced award winning work for non-binary drag collective, The Darlings; The Transform Cabaret Festival, Indigiqueer filmmaker Rylan Friday, and Lantern Films. In addition to producing content, Queer Based Media provides a digital venue on their website for mutual aid and social equity fundraisers, such as Rainbow Refugee, and Visible. Queer Based Media is Vee Pho, Chris Reed, and Kendell Yan. https://www.queerbasedmedia.com/

ABOUT ROMEO VILLANUEVA III

Romeo Villanueva III (he/him) is a visual artist and drag performer working on the traditional territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver). His work explores identity and expression by reflecting on past experiences and reimagining those experiences through illustration, costume, or performance. He has received a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts from the University of Victoria, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from the University of British Columbia. Throughout Vancouver, Villanueva can be seen performing as his drag persona Bong Ganisa (gah-NEE-sah) in shows such as Commercial Drag and Ricecake, and was named Commercial Drag All Star 2020. Dong’s work has also been seen online in events such as QMUNITY’s Virtual 16th IDAHOT Breakfast, New West Pride, and the Vines Art Festival.

Read the press release for sticky extensions.

Queering the Air with Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa

QUEERing the air with rachel kiyo iwaasa
Sept 23, 7:30pm
An evening of music by Queer and Trans composers, performed by pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
SUM Gallery


Featuring three exclusive world premieres, by composers Cris Derksen, Annette Brosin and Rodney Sharman!

+ works written for Rachel Iwaasa, by Leslie Uyeda, Mary Jane Coomber and Russell Wallace.

Co-presented by Canadian Music Centre BC and Queer Arts Festival + SUM gallery.
Tickets: $25 regular admission, $15 concession, free for students and First Nations patrons. All tickets proceeds will go towards Out in Schools.

Cris Derksen’s commission the bells was funded by the Canadian League of Composers as an initiative of the Canadian Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). 

Russell Wallace’s piece, A Clean Start, was named after Rachel (which means Innocent, like a lamb) and Kiyo (Pure, like clear running water). The name speaks to hope. Hope for a life washed clean of intergenerational trauma. Hope for a post-pandemic restart that has learned its lessons (that Black Lives Matter, that we are interconnected, that what happens to the most vulnerable affects everyone). Hope that as the number of unmarked graves exposed at former Residential Schools continues to rise, Canadians will learn to reconcile the difference between what we were taught and the history we can no longer deny. Hope for a way forward in shared respect, reciprocity, and responsibility.

ABOUT RACHEL KIYO IWAASA

Hailed in the press as a “keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight) with the “emotional intensity” to take a piece “from notes on a page to a stunning work of art” (Victoria Times Colonist), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is recognized among Canada’s foremost contemporary music pianists.  Selected to close the ISCM World New Music Days 2017 in Vancouver, Rachel has performed in the Netherlands, Germany, US and across Canada, with engagements including Muziekweek Gaudeamus, Music TORONTO, Music on Main, Vancouver New Music, Redshift, Western Front, Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony, the Aventa Ensemble (Victoria), CONTACT contemporary music (Toronto), New Works Calgary, Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg), and Vancouver Pro Musica.

Rachel has commissioned or premiered works by many of Canada’s most eminent composers, such as Hildegard Westerkamp, Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Jordan Nobles, Jeffrey Ryan, Farshid Samandari, Marci Rabe, and Emily Doolittle. One half of the acclaimed contemporary flute/piano duo Tiresias with Mark Takeshi McGregor, Rachel has also collaborated with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Judith Forst, Heather Pawsey, the Bozzini Quartet, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, and Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. Her interdisciplinary adventures have led to work with photo-based artist SD Holman, playwright/director David Bloom, choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, and multi-media provocateur Paul Wong.

ABOUT CRIS DERKSEN

Juno-nominated Cris Derksen is an internationally respected Indigenous Cellist and Composer. In a world where almost everything — people, music, cultures — get labelled and slotted into simple categories, Cris Derksen represents a challenge. Originally from Northern Alberta, she comes from a line of chiefs from NorthTall Cree Reserve on her father’s side and a line of strong Mennonite homesteaders on her mother’s. Derksen braids the traditional and contemporary, weaving her classical background and her Indigenous ancestry together with new school electronics to create genre-defying music.

As composer ,Derksen has a foot in many worlds. 2020 compositions include: Napi and the Rocks – A symphonic story commissioned by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra; Same Wave – an 8-part choral piece, commissioned by Camerata Nova Choir; The Triumph of the Euro-Christ, an 8-part choral piece commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario. 2019 compositions include: Maada’ookii Songlines – a mass choral piece for 250 singers, commissioned by Luminato Festival; Rebellion – a short symphonic piece commissioned by the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra; Iron Peggy – a theatre piece commissioned by the Vancouver Children’s Festival; and a new performance art piece commissioned by the National Art Gallery of Canada, Ikumagiialit.

Derksen performs nationally and internationally, solo and with some of Canada’s Finest, including; Tanya Tagaq, Buffy Sainte Marie, Naomi Klein, and Leanne Simpson, to name a few. Recent performance destinations include Hong Kong, Australia, Mongolia, Sweden, and a whole lot of Canada; the place Derksen refers to as home.