Recording: Peebles/Story/Saneinejad

Artist: Sarah Peebles/David Story/Saba Saneinejad

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded December 4, 2022 at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Audiopollination 10th Anniversary Bash).

Sarah Peebles/David Story/Saba Saneinejad - [excerpt]

A round number anniversary is always worth celebrating, and more so for this labour of love devoted to creative expression and community building. Kudos to Mike Lynn for putting in the work to keep Audiopollination going for a decade — definitely worth celebrating with a slice of pie and a crowded room in the Southern Cross.

David Story (keyb) and Saba Saneinejad (flute) provided the vibes here, while Sarah Peebles first ran interference on a resonator bowl before gliding in on shō.

You can check out some footage from this set over on the Audiopollination youtube channel:

[Audiopollination is back at Array Space on Friday, January 13th with sets by Mike Barber/Daisy Betlej/Tegan Dietsch / Kousha Nakhaei/Owen Kurtz / Jamie Eriksen/Adrian Russouw/Bri Clarke and Kimberly Ivany/Katheryn Merriam.]

Recording: Toronto Improvisor's Orchestra

Artist: Toronto Improvisor's Orchestra

Song: [set 2, 2nd piece] [conductor: Diane Roblin]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), October 9, 2022.

Toronto Improvisor's Orchestra - [set 2, 2nd piece]

With the cooler weather bringing out a larger crowd of musicians, the TIO was looking more like, well, an orchestra this time out, with enough bodies on hand that it made sense to add some more structure. Some of that came from a series of shifting duos and trios, but the heart of it was some conduction to co-ordinate the members. Rod Campbell conducted one piece in this set, but for this one, Diane Roblin took over, nearly dancing aross the room as she co-ordinated the note-burtsts, held together throughout with some nice circular vibe-sounds from David Story's MalletKat.

Recording: Laderoute/Urquhart/Story

Artist: Jesse Laderoute/Ashley Urquhart/David Story

Song: [last section]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 58), January 21, 2018.

Jesse Laderoute/Ashley Urquhart/David Story - [last section]

There were some different faces, including a couple rock'n'roll ringers at this edition of Audiopollination's "self-curated" series. Though best known for his work with Blonde Elvis (and assorted other projects) Jesse Laderoute is no stranger to improvisation. That said, he helped to start this night off with some volume, shredding away and opening a space for Ashley Urquhart and David Story to get loud in their own ways — the former leaning into the piano to hammer at the strings while the latter eased into a ferocious triangle solo (!). Things then settled into this section of coiled tension, unresolved like the middle part of a Necks piece.

Michael Lynn captured this whole night in black and white, so you can view the full set over on youtube:

[Audiopollination returns with the second Del Stephen-curated "Spirit of the Inner Child" show on Friday, February 23rd with spontaneous recombinative sets from Allison Cameron, Bea Labikova, Del Stephen, Jeff Sinibaldi, Julian, Mira Martin-Gray, Simone Baron and Tomasz Krakowiak. The next "self-curated" Audiopollination will be on Saturday, March 10th.]

Recording: The Trouble With Billionaires

Artist: The Trouble With Billionaires

Song: Bonhoeffer^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 4), November 5, 2016.

The Trouble With Billionaires - Bonhoeffer

Under the nominal leadership of keyboardist David Story (who provided most of the compositions on this night), this jazz quintet sizzled with veteran savvy, pulling together the efforts of Glen Hall (woodwinds), Bruce Cassidy (EWI, flugelhorn), Terry Clarke (percussion) and Keiran Overs (double bass). Cassidy's work on the under-appreciated EWI was maybe my favourite thing here, especially on this track, where the it doesn't seem to be trying to approximate any existing acoustic instrument — the tonality could be described as MIDI-ish.

^* This song's title was called out before it was played, so this educated phonetic guess could be incorrect? Please leave a comment if you know it for sure!

Recording: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Artist: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Song: Nova Express^* [words: William S. Burroughs / composition/conceptualization: Glen Hall]

Recorded at The Music Gallery, November 7, 2014.

Rub Out The Word Ensemble - Nova Express

Opening the 416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival (the other events would take place at The Tranzac) was this ambitious music suite celebrating William Burroughs' centenary. The event was conceived by Burroughs scholar Glen Hall, who played and conducted as the piece's several parts worked off each other. Not only was there an eight-piece band (Bruce Cassidy, Jim Sexton, Chris Cawthray, Rakesh Tewari, Tom Richards, Heather Segger, John Gzowski, David Story), a pair of laptop soundscapists (Ted Phillips, Matt Miller) and live-processed visuals (John Creson, Adam Rosen) at the edge of things (behind a typewriter) sat Ron Gaskin in a rumpled fedora, reading/narrating parts of the proceedings with Burroughs' own words. There was a nice ebb and flow to it such that there was never too much going on at once, even as it built to a fever dream of warped reality.

^* I'm not sure of the formal structure of this piece, so I have named this extract after the Burroughs text that is read/invoked during it.