Recording: Germaine Liu

Artist: Germaine Liu + co.

Songs: Keyschain + Playground + Walking on Water [composer: Germaine Liu]

Recorded at the Canadian Music Centre (Composers' Toolbox: The Joy of Play), March 27, 2018.

Germaine Liu/Heather Saumer/Bea Labikova - Keyschain

Germaine Liu/Heather Saumer/Bea Labikova - Playground

Germaine Liu + Ensemble - Walking on Water

One of the city's most beloved musicians got a chance to explain and demonstrate her artistic process in an instalment of this excellent series curated by Jonathan Adjemian. Known for her boundless curiosity and beginner's mind approach to wringing sound out of pretty much anything, Germaine Liu started by describing her method of "honouring the objects you're playing with... being as honest as possible, without feedback or looking for approval." Some of her game-like pieces were then demonstrated (along with the assistance of Heather Saumer and Bea Labikova) before drafting in the audience to try the materials and compositions for themselves, using keys, stones, pans of water, ceramics and more. As the event's subtitle implied, there was a playful spirit throughout, but that revealed the depths that can be obtained from listening to a pulse and joining in.

[As of the posting of this entry, the livestream of the whole event is still available to be watched online, which is very much worth your time:]

Recording: Buligan/Adjemian/Fava

Artist: Nicolas Buligan/Jonathan Adjemian/Matthew Fava

Songs: Burdocks, Part VI [composer: Christian Wolff] + In Memoriam Robert Ashley [composer: Allison Cameron]

Recorded at Canadian Music Centre (Composer's Toolbox: Contemporary Compositional Resources), March 16, 2017.

Buligan/Adjemian/Fava - Burdocks, Part VI

Buligan/Adjemian/Fava - In Memoriam Robert Ashley

This very tasty event at the CMC presented Allison Cameron in conversation, discussing a range of possibilities in the field of composition — especially around the use of non-traditional notation. Looking across a variety of traditions (from Korean courtly music to European modernism), Cameron considered a musical score as "a mystery that can only be realized in performance" and examined how giving up the composer's strict control can open and give life to a piece. Her points were re-examined in a short performance segment, with this "pickup band" (consisting of Nicolas Buligan on trumpet, Jonathan Adjemian on synth, and Matthew Fava on violin) tackling a few graphic scores.