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, delve into an inquiry re: the advent of language, and watch a video of the letter ’n’ being typed repeatedly in a word document, amongst other things. Ultimately, ñ (enye) raises the questions: What is it we hear? What is it we want to hear?

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.