Monday Roundup #230

Concert announcements:

The New Symphony Orchestra: Cease and Desist ["for this performance, the orchestra will use excerpts from iconic works in the classical canon as the inspiration for free-improvised pieces, this time accompanied by live collage from artists Madi Cassidy and Zoe Abbott"] (feat. Zack Goldstein/Sara Constant/Sara May/Arie Verheul van de Ven/Adrian Russouw/Connor Crone/Ben Mike/Ryan Kinney/Owen Kurtz) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-16 (Monday). $pwyc/$15 recommended. [more info]

Cassiar Records presents (feat. BLOOP / Josh Cole [solo double bass]) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-17 (Tuesday). $15/notaflof. [FB event]

Music Hosted by Karen Ng (feat. Arie Verheul van de Ven / Aidan McConnell/Karen Ng/Adrian Russouw) / Wenona Lodge 2025-06-17 (Tuesday) [more info]

The Two Deaths of Ophelia [works by Linda Catlin Smith, Shawn Jaeger, Ann Southam, Wolfgang Rihm, Oliver Knussen, Charles Wuorinen, Thomas Adès, Luis Ramirez, Ryan Chase, Krzysztof Penderecki, Claude Vivier] (feat. The Happenstancers [Simon Rivard/Reilly Nelson/Danika Lorè/Jesse Blumberg/Dion Mazerolle/Luri Lee/Sienna Cho/Hee-Soo Yoon/Hezekiah Leung/Peter Eom/Travis Harrison/Lenny Ranallo/Joonghun Cho/Wesley Shen/Chris James/Aleh Remezau/Brad Cherwin/Nicolas Richard/Ryan Garbett/Declan Scott/Nikki Huang/Thomas Li]) / 918 Bathurst 2025-06-19 (Thursday). $33.28 (general admission), $free (students). [tickets & more info]

Music of Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden (feat. Lina Allemano/Ben Boye/Nate McBride/Karen Ng/Frank Rosaly/Nick Fraser) / The Emmet Ray 2024-06-19 (Thursday). $15. [more info]

Rock Plaza Central / The Baby G 2025-07-03 (Thursday). $22, 19+. [FB event]

Is your show missing from this list? Submit it via this form!

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Shows this week:

Toronto Electronic Music Open Mic (feat. Caustic Clouds / Garden of Magic / Hozerz / Eye-Duh Kho / Hexwave / Little Vanity/illicit Pulse / Lance Oullette / avisupchurch / dreamSTATE / Alissa Vox Raw / tomorrow tomorrow / BlackSmyth / Broken Pink Umbrella / Gruve Collective / Stefan Powell and Rob Cruikshank) / Handlebar 2025-06-09 (Monday). $11.30, all-ages. [more info]

Nick Adema [presenting his solo trombone album Buiksloterkerk] (Max Donaldson) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-09 (Monday). [more info]

Wesley Shen [works for solo piano by Anna Höstman and Emilie LeBel] / Array Space 2025-06-10 (Tuesday). $pwyc. [FB event]

Olivia Boring / Adam Waito / James Irwin / The Tranzac (Living Room) 2025-06-10 (Tuesday). $pwyc. [FB event]

A Failed Entertainment (feat. Anh Phung/Tara Kannangara/Leland Whitty/Luan Phung/Chris Pruden/Julian Anderson-Bowes/Mack Longpré) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2024-06-10 (Tuesday). [more info]

Selkie Sessions [Isla Craig/Sean Donald/Ivy Mairi/Andrew Patten] / Island Cafe 2025-06-11 (Wednesday) [more info]

Brodie West's Double Basses Quintet -1 [Brodie West / Josh Cole / Rob Clutton / Patrick O'Reilly] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-11 (Wednesday – early)

Never Was [Brandon Davis/Bea Labikova//Patrick O'Reilly/Adrian Russouw/Joe Sorbara] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-11 (Wednesday) [more info]

Isla Craig & the Sorry Brothers [Isla Craig/Kurt Newman/Karsten Stryker] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-12 (Thursday). $pwyc.

Audiopollination [please come out to help celebrate Mike Lynn, on his last night hosting the series after thirteen years of crucial community-building!] (feat. David Sait/Marilyn Yogarajah/Magick / cheryl o/Neil Wiernik / Heraclitus Akimbo/Laura Swankey/Judy Zhu / Mickle32 & Rod Campbell) / Array Space 2025-06-13 (Friday) [FB event]

Second Fridays (feat. Lithophonica [Gayle Young/James Harley] / Matt Brubeck & Caylie Staples / Korba Sun Collective [Georgia Korba/Yuzi Sun/Matt Aasen/Dylan Pilcher]) / Canadian Music Centre 2025-06-13 (Friday). $22.63 general admission, $17.31 student. [more info]

Not Dead Yet presents (feat. Kara-Lis Coverdale [record release] / Joseph Shabason) / 918 Bathurst 2025-06-13 (Friday). $31.56, 19+. [more info]

Hooveriii (The John Denver Airport Conspiracy) / Blood Brothers Brewing 2025-06-13 (Friday). $24.98, 19+. [FB event]

Musica Universalis (feat. William Hunt & Colin Fisher) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-13 (Friday) [more info]

The Marker Starling Band (Derrick Anthony Vella) / BSMT 254 2025-06-14 (Saturday – early). $20, 19+. [FB event]

New Chance [A Rock Unsteady record release] (Bile Sister) / The Tranzac (Main Hall) 2025-06-14 (Saturday). $28.27. [more info/tickets]

Batuki Music Society presents (feat. Coup de Coeur [Sadio Sissokho/Assane Seck/Seydina Ndiaye/ILAM/Pape Ndiaye/Carlo Birri]) / Hugh’s Room Live 2025-06-14 (Saturday). $36.63 (general admission)/$24.42 (students/arts worker/underemployed). [more info]

Art of Improv (feat. Germaine Liu & Mark Zurawinski / future proof [Bea Labikova & Raphael Roter] / Germaine Liu/Mark Zurawinski/Bill Gilliam/Eugene Martynec/Bill McBirnie) / Annette Studios 2025-06-15 (Sunday). $20/pwyc. [FB event]

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It happened this week...

• ...on June 13, 2016 at Ratio (Burn Down The Capital Presents).

Cory Latkovich & Robert Grieve - [excerpt 1]

• ...on June 15, 2016 at Monarch Tavern.

The Burning Hell - Men Without Hats

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

Recording: Icterus

Artist: Icterus

Song: Three Wars

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), September 11, 2022.

Icterus - Three Wars

This was, apparantly, the first show for this unit since 2019 — a possibly-tricky situation when involving some certainly-tricky music for nimble fingers. But given that the nimble fingers (and minds) involved here were those of Stefan Hegerat (drumkit), Rob Grieve (guitar), Patrick O'Reilly (guitar), and Mark Godfrey (bass) things were generally handled with aplomb. This long-ish piece — almost a suite — shows off several of the terrains they were capable of traversing.

Recording: Tatsuya Nakatani & Dreamed Meat

Artist: Tatsuya Nakatani & Dreamed Meat

Songs: [full set, in two parts]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Furniture Music), October 22, 2019.

Tatsuya Nakatani & Dreamed Meat - [part 1]

Tatsuya Nakatani & Dreamed Meat - [part 2]

This night closed with a short meeting between all the night's performers. Cory Harper-Latkovich seemed to be less interventionist here, reducing the intensity of his processing and letting Rob Grieve's organic guitar sounds share the space with Tatsuya Nakatani's percussion, but overall this was a quite satisfying encounter.

[Adjusting for holiday downtime, Furniture Music will be holding a special co-presentation with JAOIM on the second Tuesday this month — that's Tuesday, December 10th — with a couple unsanctioned rounds of the improvisational game Cobra conducted by Joe Sorbara. Scheduled participants include Mingjia Jessica Chen, Bea Labikova, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, Rob Grieve, Ashley Urquhart, Andrew Furlong, Raphael Roter, and Alex Fournier.]

Recording: Dreamed Meat

Artist: Dreamed Meat

Song: [excerpt from second piece]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Furniture Music), October 22, 2019.

Dreamed Meat - [excerpt from second piece]

Reactivating this duo from Cory Harper-Latkovich and Rob Grieve puts it into that category of side-excursions that have outlasted the project they were spun off from, though this time out Harper-Latkovich's manipulations of Grieve's fingertapped guitar (processed via laptop and ipad) involved some less-noisy textures, working mostly along the shimmer/sputter continuum.

[Adjusting for holiday downtime, Furniture Music will be holding a special co-presentation with JAOIM on the second Tuesday this month — that's Tuesday, December 10th — with a couple unsanctioned rounds of the improvisational game Cobra conducted by Joe Sorbara. Scheduled participants include Mingjia Jessica Chen, Bea Labikova, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, Rob Grieve, Ashley Urquhart, Andrew Furlong, Raphael Roter, and Alex Fournier.]

Recording: Davis-Grieve-Ballyk

Artist: Brandon Davis/Robert Grieve/Mark Ballyk

Song: Degradation

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), July 28, 2019.

Brandon Davis/Robert Grieve/Mark Ballyk - Degradation

A new grouping from guitarist Rob Grieve and bassist Brandon Davis featured Mark Ballyk on the skins this night, although Nick Fraser is the regular drummer. Playing some new compositions — this one, starting off a bit like a NMN record stuck in a groove, was the only one yet to get a title — the trio explored some new quiet/loud dichotomies in their jazz-metal excursions.

Recording: Bearrah Fawcett

Artist: Bearrah Fawcett

Songs: Improvisation [excerpt] + Intro to The Dog Walk + The Dog Walk

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Ornate Presents), June 11, 2019.

Bearrah Fawcett - Improvisation [excerpt]

Bearrah Fawcett - Intro to The Dog Walk

Bearrah Fawcett - The Dog Walk

One cool thing about living in this town is that there are more cool gigs to go to than you could ever have time for. The corresponding downside is that you're going to miss some stuff — and due to those Tuesday night conflicts, it had been a while since I had checked in with the Ornate Presents series at The Tranzac. This night featured a couple sets from the wryly-named Bearrah Fawcett, a casual sort of jazzish group consisting of (at least for this show) Alex Fournier (double bass), Stefan Hegerat (percussion), Rob Grieve (guit) plus Madeline Ertel and Kaelin Murphy up front on trumpets. There was a game plan here, with the group tackling a half-dozen compositions, but there was also room left for some off-script moments as well.

[The next edition of Ornate Presents (on Tuesday, August 13th) features Mike DeiCont offering some solo bass sounds.]

Recording: Pineapple

Artist: Pineapple

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Tiki Room), October 18, 2018.

Pineapple - [excerpt]

Fun times to see this trio (with Karen Ng's reeds, Alex Fournier's double bass and Rob Grieve's guitar) back in action. There were no compositions this time out, just a beautifully-flowing series of improvisations as some random snapshots (icy harbours, vacuum cleaners, Hallowe'en costumes) were projected behind them as part of the night's slideshow entertainment.

[Pineapple will be at Polish Combatants Hall next Saturday (December 8th) as part of Long Winter's all-ages/PWYC art & music fiesta.]

Recording: Unknown Guitar Quartet

Artist: Unknown Guitar Quartet

Song: Drag [composer: Patrick O'Reilly]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 2), November 11, 2017.

Unknown Guitar Quartet - Drag

The nimble 416 Festival — celebrating, as always, multiple streams of improvised and experimental music — folded itself down to two nights this year, of which I could only make it to the second. This night started with an outing from this recent collaborative effort that has appeared in a couple variations, though this time 'round it saw Brian Abbott, Patrick O'Reilly, Rob Grieve and Luan Phung sharing the stage, with each of the first three offering a composition. There was plenty microtonal pluck-drift, with each player offering their own pedalchain tone. Rob Grieve's "Plasmatic Populations" (which can be heard over at his soundcloud) hewed to a noisier aesthetic, Brian Abbott's added more guitar preparations (chopsticks, paperclips, fidget spinner) to a piece that sounded like a Raymond Scott 78 played at 33, while this offering, from Patrick O'Reilly, is spare enough in places that one could take it as the work of a single guitarist working with a loop pedal.

Recording: Pineapple

Artist: Pineapple

Songs: Did You Ever Think You'd Miss It? [composer: Karen Ng] + [first set improvisation]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), September 20, 2017.

Pineapple - Did You Ever Think You'd Miss It?

Pineapple - [first set improvisation]

After journeying across multiple continents as a touring musician for big chunks of the past year, community hero Karen Ng is back in town a bit more steadily and taking on some new projects — including some long-deferred opportunities to present some work as a composer. This first outing (alongside Rob Grieve on guit and Alex Fournier on double bass and electronics) saw this piece as well as a graphic-score-in-progress from Ng, as well as a couple of Fournier's pieces plus a couple improvisations. Lots of texture explorations, digital delay and drones underlying the pieces, which augers well for future excursions.

[Pineapple will be filling in during Josh Cole's monthly slot next Wednesday (October 18th) at The Tranzac. And meanwhile, Karen Ng's monthly slot in the Southern Cross will see another new project on October 26th, with no fewer than four saxes (Ng, Jeff LaRochelle, Brodie West and Peter Lutek) backed by percussionist Evan Cartwright.]

Recording: Imaginary Flesh

Artist: Imaginary Flesh

Song: Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis, pt. 3

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Festival – Day 2), September 3, 2016.

Imaginary Flesh - Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis, pt. 3

A lovely day, warm in the sun with a cool breeze, the Intersection Festival once again filled Dundas Square with music of all kinds, offering a counterpoint to business at usual in the ad-basked concrete canyon. With Tad Michalak (of Burn Down the Capital/Feast in the East) again taking a leading role in curating the day, the music had nods to the festival's more chamber music-intensive past while upping the noise and weirdness reverberating off the surrounding walls. That had a sort of push-pull effect on the passers-by, sometimes drawing them in, sometimes causing evident confusion and moving along.

A rare chance to check out Imaginary Flesh in the... um, something. Celebrating the digital release of their fab concept album, they played the expansive "Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis" in its entirety. Ranging from deep-space synth wubbles to some ace kosmische grooves, this was an altogether tasty journey.

[I also created a remix that enfolds some some set's quieter parts upon themselves, which you can check out on soundcloud.]

Recording: Cory Latkovich & Robert Grieve

Artist: Cory Latkovich & Robert Grieve

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Ratio (Burn Down The Capital Presents), June 13, 2016.

Cory Latkovich & Robert Grieve - [excerpt 1]

Cory Latkovich & Robert Grieve - [excerpt 2]

This pairing, whose work together has run the gamut from imaginary flesh to dreamed meat served as the pivot-point between the night's more rambunctious ensembles with their restrained tag-team work feeding Grieve's fretless guitar manipulations through Latkovich's custom Pure Data patches. There were a couple accidental noisebursts at the set's beginning and end (which I have reconfigured into the bizarro-world version of this set's proceedings) but this otherwise hit cruising altitude with a warbling glide.

Recording: Bateman/Grieve/Richards/Sorbara/Ward

Artist: Victor Bateman/Rob Grieve/Tom Richards/Joe Sorbara/Steve Ward

Song: [first piece]

Recorded at Array Space (Acoustic Laptop Music), February 16, 2016.

Victor Bateman/Rob Grieve/Tom Richards/Joe Sorbara/Steve Ward - [first piece]

This night's somewhat-counterintuitive title represents a new experiment from Mark Segger to deploy computers for improvisers not for music-making per se but as a communication tool. Plugged into a LAN hub together, each of the musicians has access to a MAX patch that allows them not only to exchange messages, but also to vote on a temporary leader for the ensemble who can send one-way directives to the players. That makes it a little easier for a larger group to stay on the same page, figure out sonic shifts on the fly, and to know when to end. It's an interestingly transparent tool, as how that plays out depends very much on the personalities of the players.

Unlike the night's earlier quintet, after walking along and feeling things out for a couple minutes, this group of players took things into groove territory and settled in there for most of their set. Featuring stereophonic dual trombones, with Tom Richards on the left and Steve Ward on the right.

Recording: BOBAN GrieviNg

Artist: BOBAN GrieviNg + the BOBAN GrieviNg Supergroup

Songs: [excerpt from first piece] + Boban is Just a Word

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), January 27, 2016.

BOBAN GrieviNg - [excerpt from first piece]

BOBAN GrieviNg Supergroup - Boban is Just a Word

Some things look quite straightforward on paper. This Wednesday evening show from Somewhere There was billed as a night with two duos — Logan Mills (piano) with Montréal's Raphael Foisy-Couture (bass) as BOBAN and Karen Ng (sax) with Robert Grieve (guitar) as GrieviNg — but things ended up being much less straightforward. Indeed, the night began with all four playing together in a sort of scuffling/banging skritchscratch clangcrunch before adding Paige Stewart for some recited wordtextures.

But then, after a break, all hell broke loose. Mills' skill-set includes an ability to draft collaborators as conspirators in anarchic free-form play and that might explain how suddenly there were nine performers on stage, including Laura Swankey (vox) and Emily Denison (trumpet) plus duelling percussionists Robert Diack and Andrew Miller facing off against each other. In the end a t-shirt was destroyed, dice were rolled, hats were exchanged, and an impromptu fire drill was narrowly avoided as a gleeful frenzy erupted — all while various members of the ensemble shouted inquiries about the true nature of Boban.

Recording: Dreamed Meat

Artist: Dreamed Meat

Song: [edited excerpts]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection 2015), September 5, 2015.

Dreamed Meat - [edited excerpts]

You can read my general notes on the festival here. This two-headed subset of Imaginary Flesh saw Cory Latkovich and Rob Grieve lead off the festival under a blindingly-hot mid-afternoon sun. Grieve's guitar and Latkovich's laptop manipulations established an abrasive tone mixing gravelwarble and synthy woops.

Recording: Imaginary Flesh

Artist: Imaginary Flesh

Songs: two sections from "Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis"^*

Recorded at Handlebar, August 22, 2015.

Imaginary Flesh - Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis [drone section]

Imaginary Flesh - Seven Haab Out of Xi Boötis [krautrock section]

Though not playing out too much (there was only one show in the interim), Cory Latkovich's Imaginary Flesh have been making immense strides through time and space since I last saw 'em. This Tad Michalak-curated gig saw the five-piece devote their entire forty-minute set to this ambitiously-sprawling new piece that heightens (and/or implodes) all previous expectations of the group — and its trajectory away from its previous incarnation. There's certainly a composerly architecture and plenty 'nuff fiddly moments to warrant the scores the musicians were consulting, but sonically more than ever this cashes out as rock music — even if one means that in the deliberately-arranged proggy way. Playing in a bar (rather than a more sedate experimental music space) also gave the band room to crank up the volume and explore the dynamics of the piece's peaks and valleys. Losing drummer D. Alex Meeks to educational leave probably means that pace of shows isn't going to pick up any time soon, but the band recently completed some recording sessions that will see the light of day by and by. For now, here's a couple sections as heard in the rough.

[Cory Latkovich and guitarist Rob Grieve will be performing as Dreamed Meat at this Saturday's Intersection festival.]

^* I understand there is a formal delineation of this piece's sections. I will update this accordingly if I can refine the titles.

Recording: Imaginary Flesh

Artist: Imaginary Flesh

Song: Tau Ceti f

Recorded at The Tranzac – Main Hall ("Somewhere There Creative Music Festival" – Show 5), February 22, 2015.

Imaginary Flesh - Tau Ceti f

Cedrixx Ten-Lui Caplan felt different. Seven haab out of Xi Boötis on this third-rate cargo transport, and that much longer to go before making planetfall, the ship felt a little smaller every cycle. When he'd signed on, Cedrixx hadn't been told that the crew were mostly Beta Kapteynoids — and they kept to their own kind, spending their hours off worktime huddled over their hyperpolytopes in their incomprehensible gambling matches, giving him cut-eye koolik glances when he passed them by.

Left to his own devices, Cedrixx tried to keep his nose clean, watching all the visies in the ship's library and exercising in the molby hammocks, but by this stage of the voyage, he was bored. He'd even taken to popping cincomeodimeths off-shift, but after he tried to disable a leak in a hallucinatory bulkhead, he'd been given an adminwarn — and given that the 2i/c was a real dzuuy-taat, another one could cost him a whole quarter-tzolkin's wages.

Exasperated, Cedrixx found himself hanging out with the quartermaster, an otherwise repulsive Proteidaen who kept an illegal still and had access to a variety of mildly illicit products. After spending nearly a full haab winning the quartermaster's friendship, he offered Cedrixx a beat-up old eroholodizer, explaining that he had lovingly restored it himself.

"The gropies?" Cedrixx asked. "Do you think I've sunk that low?"

The quartermaster croaked noncommittally and threw in some holotapes to seal the deal.

Cedrixx was unsure at first, and used the machine sparingly, feeling a little eek'hachk'as after. But it wasn't too long before he spent all his working hours reliving the scenerios, and soon he was sifting through the yáabóol-kahal looking for new holos. The quartermaster sold him a shunt through the network's sinfilters, and after fumbling around, he found a pathway to a darknet nahil with a whole datasilo of every imaginable erotosit. He even dug out his old nanowelding textbook to amp up the strength of the device's neural connectors.

Needing stronger stimulation, Cedrixx was soon trying everything he could get his hands on. The chiich-me'ex holo left him shaken for several cycles, but he was strangely attracted to the chelonaphil series he found. It went on and on, with Cedrixx drifting through each cycle, anxious during worktime, plugged into the eroholodizer otherwise when not searching for new, obscure kicks.

A tzoltik thread led him to a new datasilo in an especially dark corner of the yáabóol-kahal, and some of the wares on offer shook even Cedrixx — but he still grabbed several of them. The most innocuous of the new bunch was entitled Imaginary Flesh, and its specs demanded an even stronger boost to the neural connectors. It took two cycles to get the hardware aligned, but finally, he settled into his k'aan as he patched it in. As the visual receptors synced, a warning was scrolling by.

"What was that about irreversible effects?" Cedrixx thought to himself has he jabbed at the backscan toggle, but the holo only played on. As an abstract image began to drift into his vizfield, he felt a stabbing burst of heat and pain at the back of his skull. The neural connectors! Cedrixx tried to reach around in realspace to pull the p'ok off his head, but his arms would not respond.

Every nerve in his body seemed to be firing now, as if he were being pulled apart through obscure dimensions. His vision — no, all his senses — were hyper-acute. Something was changing, something was being shedded — as if a carapace was being pulled from his body. His ability to sense discrete ideas and objects was slipping away. As Cedrixx was pulled into unity-state, his last half-coherent word-thoughts were: give me don't give meee imaginary flessshhhhhhhh!