Recording: Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama

Artist: Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X AVANT XIV: Forward – Night 4), October 20, 2019.

Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama - [excerpt]

Having toured to Japan and back a few times now, it was exciting to see Sound of the Mountain's Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pedersen getting an opportunity to play host to some of the kindred spirits they'd encountered there. Corresponding with a new recording, Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) and Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar) joined Pedersen and Craig to expand the SOTM template with some new clonks and whirs — that left more space for them to just play trumpet and clarinet instead of the motors, fans and other electroacoustic interventions that have joined their aresenals. That said, instruments were still disassembled mid-set and contact mics were dragged across their surfaces as the quartet created an enchanting soundfield, pushing the audience to lean in closer to try and figure out just from which musician some of those sounds were emerging.

Recording: Pedersen/Martin-Gray/Zurawinski

Artist: Craig Pedersen/Mira Martin-Gray/Mark Zurawinski

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Tiki Room (Audiopollination 72), June 1, 2019.

Craig Pedersen/Mira Martin-Gray/Mark Zurawinski - [excerpt 1]

Craig Pedersen/Mira Martin-Gray/Mark Zurawinski - [excerpt 2]

Audiopollination headed over to The Tranzac's cozy Tiki Room for this special encounter with some visiting guests bringing electroacoustic creaks and scratches. This set featured more quiet noise from percussionist Mark Zurawiski and no-input mixer specialist Mira Martin-Gray creating a bed for some contact-mic'd instrument-body trumpet sounds from Montréal's Craig Pedersen.

[Audiopollination returns to Array Space on Saturday (August 3rd) for an evening of random small groups playing improvised soundtracks to short films by Curtis Whittaker. Craig Pedersen will be back in town for the X Avant Festival (Sunday, October 20th) where his duo Sound of the Mountain will be joined by Japanese improvisers Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama.]

Recording: Pederson-styrofoamNosebleedPrincess-Maraj

Artist: Craig Pederson/styrofoamNosebleedPrincess/Kieran Maraj

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 71), May 5, 2019.

Craig Pederson/styrofoamNosebleedPrincess/Kieran Maraj - [excerpt]

An intriguing mix here of styrofoamNosebleedPrincess' percussive micro-samples (something like a digitized version of popping bubble wrap), Maraj's laptop manipulations and Pederson's trumpet. The tableau looked a bit like a strange sci-fi trial scene, with styrofoamNosebleedPrincess as the court reporter, fingers hovering over dictaphone keys, Maraj the courtroom artist, light pen in hand, and the be-hatted Pederson perhaps the accused trying to play his way out of a not-fully-understood charge.

You can watch this whole set over on Audiopollination's youtube channel:

[Audiopollination returns to Array tonight (Saturday, July 20th) to introduce visiting Australian vocalist Sonya Holowell to some local musicians; there will also a night of randomly-drawn small groups live-soundtracking short films on Saturday, August 3rd.]

Recording: Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs

Artist: Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (H.W.G. Showcase), July 14, 2018.

Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs - [excerpt]

There was a hint of sadness to this night as it was the only surviving vestige of the planned second instalment of the Eclec~Tic~Toc Fest, which was brought low by some of the perennial problems with finding suitable spaces for DIY events in this city. That was far outweighed, however, by a chance to catch up with the now-expatriated force of nature known as {AN} EeL, joyfully mashing musicians together just as he does on some his mail-art-styled recording projects.

Previously more purely focused on their practice of generating electroacoustic sounds from close-mic'd clarinet and trumpet, after spending some time in Japan and beyond Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pedersen are now mixing in an electronics kit's worth of wires and alligator clips. That added in a whole new layer of macro-focus drama, like observing the dancing of a tiny chain tossed around by a speaker magnet's invisible field, adding small currents of electronic uncertainty below the breath-sounds. All of that was an excellent match for William Davison's tape warbles and small-scale electronic manipulations and the trio found a shared space that felt like an invocation of the ghosts of broken and half-disassembled small household appliances.

Recording: Sound of the Mountain

Artist: Sound of the Mountain

Song: [edited excerpt]

Recorded at Handlebar (Track Could Bend #28), July 4, 2017.

Sound of the Mountain - [edited excerpt]

Elizabeth Millar (clarinet) and Craig Pedersen (trumpet) have been working on this electroacoustic project for awhile now, so it was no surprise to see them in full control of their extended technique, carefully mic-ing the breath-sounds and buttons of their instruments to create a living soundscape seeping into all corners of the room and creating all sorts of "effects" without the use of pedals or laptops. The pair were celebrating an excellently-crafted album (recorded by Thierry Amar at Hotel2Tango) with a westward journey across the country — an adventure as big as their sounds suggest.

[Track Could Bend returns to The Steady tonight (August 1st) with Invisible Out's social media complications, Tom Richards' shoreline synth drones and BABEL's last ever (!?) performance.]

Recording: Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra

Artist: Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra

Songs: They Rode For Them + Nonaah + [piece for solo sopranino saxophone]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XI – Night 4), October 15, 2016.

Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra - They Rode For Them

Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra - Nonaah

Roscoe Mitchell - [solo sopranino saxophone]

The X Avant Festival concluded with this extra-special event, bringing the legendary Roscoe Mitchell to town at the head of a nineteen-piece orchestra made up of top names from the Montréal and Toronto scenes.¹ The pieces that they played were derived from Mitchell's improvisations, primarily from his Conversations I + Conversations II albums — boiling down dense and compact abstractions to their essence and then blowing them up to widescreen size for the large ensemble. After a while, getting attuned to the method you could sometimes "hear" the original gestures behind the sweeping orchestrations. This was complex stuff that pushed the musicians, but it was quite often rather beautiful as well. There were a few places that lead into full-on big band free-honking, but just as striking were the moments that pulled back, including a quartet arrangement of "Nonaah" (performed by Nicolas Caloia, Yves Charuest, Lori Freedman, and Craig Pedersen) as well as a solo segment from Mitchell that opened the second set — an intense piece that spiralled outward from a drone into pure exploration that put a full lifetime's experience and technique on display. After presenting this music live in Montréal and Toronto, the ensemble also headed into the studio on the day after this show, so we can expect some formal documentation of this grand sommet to emerge in time.

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¹ For the record, the members of the orchestra were:

• Roscoe Mitchell – woodwinds, composition, direction
• Marilyn Lerner – piano
• Lori Freedman, Yves Charuest, Kyle Brenders, Jean Derome, Peter Lutek, Jason Sharp – woodwinds
• Nicole Rampersaud, Craig Pedersen – trumpets
• Tom Richards, Scott Thomson – trombones
• Julie Houle – tuba
• Jean René, James Annett – violas
• Rob Clutton, Nicolas Caloia – double-basses
• Isaiah Ceccarelli, Nick Fraser – drums
• Michael Davidson – vibraphone
• Greg Oh - conducting

Recording: Sound of the Mountain

Artist: Sound of the Mountain

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 44.2), July 24, 2016.

Sound of the Mountain - [excerpt 1]

Sound of the Mountain - [excerpt 2]

This duo project from Elizabeth Millar (clarinet) and Craig Pedersen (trumpet) takes its name from a Yasunari Kawabata novel but also hints at the geological scale (almost like a timelapse recording of tectonic shifting) of the pair's playing. Eschewing electronic processing, they instead used close-miking techniques to amplify their instruments, pushing their extended techniques (breath noise, finger taps) into electroacoustic space, creating a field of whirs, wooshes and clacks. The result was both graceful and mildly dislocating, filled with sonic elements that sounded like they'd been stretched out and backmasked.

[As always, you can check out the documentation of the whole night over at Audiopollination's bandcamp. Audiopollination is back with some awesome musicians (including a kick-ass combo of SlowPitchSound, Germaine Liu and Nilan Perera) on Saturday night.]

Recording: Dust Scored Dark

Artist: Dust Scored Dark

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), February 28, 2016.

Dust Scored Dark - [excerpt]

After a weekend of intensely-local action at the Somewhere There Festival, Sunday's unofficial wind-down in the Southern Cross featured some out-of-towners offering tasty Montréal-style improvisations. I was familiar with some of the members here (Craig Pedersen, trumpet; Vicky Mettler, guitar; Mark Molnar, cello; Bennett Bedoukian, drums) in other contexts; from what I can gather, this is a newer unit, but the players all had an easy familiarity as they ranged from scuttling atmospheric sounds to a clattering junkyard groove.