Recording: junctQín Keyboard Collective

Artist: junctQín Keyboard Collective

Song: Nocturne [composer: Jordan Nobles]

Recorded at The Tranzac – Main Hall ("Somewhere There Creative Music Festival" – Show 4), February 22, 2015.

junctQín Keyboard Collective - Nocturne

Somewhere There continued to foster a dialogue with the city's New Music community, inviting Joseph Ferretti and Stephanie Chua — two-thirds of pronounce-it-junction trio — to play a few pieces on upright and toy piano. It was a nice little sampler of the work junctQín does, including Feldman's "Piano Three Hands", works by Karlheinz Essl for piano, electronics and kalimba, some John Cage, as well as this open score piece by Vancouver's Jordan Nobles. Especially as part of an afternoon that included a lot of electroacoustic improvisations this was a welcome change of pace and a nice addition to the festival.

[Stephanie Chua will be exploring some other creative approaches to the piano in a solo Music Galley show on Saturday, March 21st with the self-explanatory title "Hands, Fists, Arms".]

Recording: junctQín keyboard collective

Artist: junctQín keyboard collective

Song: qsqsqsqsqqqqqqqqq [composer: Tristan Perich]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (INTERsection 2014), September 6, 2014.

junctQín keyboard collective - qsqsqsqsqqqqqqqqq

Read a few thoughts about the day as a whole here. Composer Tristan Perich is interested in 1-bit electronics, which he describes as "music that never has more than one bit of information being played at any given time". This has perhaps most famously manifested in his "1-bit Symphony", an electronic composition housed in a CD jewel case. This composition for electronics and three toy pianos came from the same blippy source, filling the square with tinkling toy piano clinks and electronic blurps. (And if that weren't enough, the group followed that with the non-standard mix of melodicas and air mattress pumps.)

Recording: junctQín keyboard collective

Artist: junctQín keyboard collective

Song: "Bullbats" + "Writing on Stone" [from Grasslands, Badlands and Spirit Sands; composer: Alex Eddington]

Recorded at Gallery 345, May 27, 2013.

junctQín keyboard collective - Bullbats + Writing on Stone

Full review to follow. As I was walking down Dundas and about to turn down Sorauren to head to this gig, I was struck by an Anser mural that has appeared since the last time I was down this way. The new triptych perhaps helped prime my mind for an evening of "firsts", mostly of new compositions receiving their debuts — and mostly of works exploring ways to get three musicians working together on a single piano. That three-in-one unity is part of the stock-in-trade for Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti, and Stephanie Chua, who have been playing together as junctQín (pronounced "junction") for a few years now.

The night closed with this Alex Eddington work, which was a sort of première-in-progess, as he expects this travelogue to at least double in size from the twenty-ish minutes now extant. A meditation on some personally-resonant prairie landmarks, this eschews the typical "seas of wheat" for some of the geological outcrops that offer relief, with some animal field recordings providing the interludes in between.

Recording: junctQín keyboard collective

Artist: junctQín keyboard collective

Song: Sonic Toys in Transit [excerpt]

Recorded at Miles Nidal J.C.C. (Nuit Blanche 2010), Saturday, October 2, 2010.

junctQín keyboard collective - Sonic Toys in Transit [excerpt]

My notes for this performance can be found here. This is very much a "field recording" and the quality is a little rough.