Recording: Brendan Swanson & Sid Eillers

Artist: Brendan Swanson & Sid Eillers

Song: [improvisation]

Recorded at Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre (coexisDance #113), February 28, 2026.

Brendan Swanson & Sid Eillers - [improvisation]

The coexisDance series, which has been bringing together improvisers from Toronto's music and dance scenes for more than a decade, seems to have been thriving lately. Settled into Cabbagetown's CCDT, there's a proper floor and room to set up a large illuminated circle for the performances, musicians strewn around the perimemter and getting a chance to improvise with two different dance artists over the course of the evening. Raphael Roter has brought curatorial energy to the series, with a passion for bridging two vibrant communities that might not rub elbows enough. [Do note that these field recordings are, by necessity, "incomplete" without the dancers' physicality, but I think it's worth preserving this work from some excellent players in the community.]

Brendan Swanson was on piano for his pieces, here joined by Sid Eillers, who created a stereophonic narrative with moving pronouncements from across the range of the dance floor.

Recording: Avrha

Artist: Avrha

Song: [2nd section]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Day 3), August 31, 2019.

Avrha - [2nd section]

Once more, Tad Michalak's Burn Down the Capital brought a full day's worth of entertainment to the concrete canyon of Yonge-Dundas Square. Random passers-by would occasionally stop and regard the proceedings with curiosity, bemusement or disdain while in the background the thrum of the busker's amplification outside Eaton Centre seems to grow louder every year, sharing the sonic space with sirens and engine roars. Roaring back with percussive powerbursts and a multi-keyboard attack, this improvised sideline from Yamantaka//Sonic Titan's Alaska B and Brendan Swanson felt a little more determined than when I first saw 'em a couple years back, leaning hard into some zones that felt like a metal-leaning reconsideration of Bitches Brew.

Recording: Avrha

Artist: Avrha

Songs: [first piece, section 3]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (The Music Gallery's X AVANT XII – Night 4), October 14, 2017.

Avrha - [first piece, section 3]

Taking a night off from its new home base at 918 Bathurst, the Tranzac threw this Saturday night party in The Tranzac's Main Hall. More than ever, the linkages between the Festival's performances was in the overarching theme of "Resistance", and to get a different perspective on that the MG turned this night over to community-insurgent popforce LAL, who brought in the Babely Shades collective to put things together. Before the show, Babely Shades' Hana Jama led a deep and lively discussion with some of the night's artists on how their art expresses both their identities and their sense of resistance. The night also had an impressive visual component, not only with projections of Riya Jama's richly-detailed Afrofuturistic art, but also with the projections of radical shadow-puppetry ensemble Drawing With Knives.

Extracted from the axis of Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, this project strips away songs + stagecraft to give some musical exploratory space to Alaska B (drums, percussion, samples) and Brendan Swanson (keybs). Starting in a fairly delicate space, this set had a patient sense of build as it seeped out into different sonic zones — eventually finding the space-prog territory it warps into here.

Recording: Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

Artist: Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

Song: Hoshi Neko

Recorded at Artscape Gibraltar Point (ALL CAPS! Festival), August 11, 2012.

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan - Hoshi Neko

Full review to follow — but you can check out my quick notes for the festival here.