Improvisation Workshops at 8EAST
Fall 2024 Improvisation Workshops
at 8EAST (8 East Pender St.)
Saturdays September 28 - October 26 2 - 3:30 pm
(12pm - 1:30pm on Saturday October 12, 3:30pm - 5pm on Saturday October 19 and October 26)
FREE for up to 15 participants with NOW Membership
Donations gratefully accepted (here).
Since 1978, the New Orchestra Workshop Society (NOW) has presented music improvisation workshops, offering space for exploration and participation. Our workshops are for improvisers of all levels of ability and ranges of experience, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race or religion. We protect privacy in our workshops and adopt the We Have Voice Collective Code of Conduct. Read more about NOW workshop policies here. Find out about the facilitator of each workshops below.
Markus Lake and Ari Swan
September 28 2 - 3:30pm
Ari Swan is a violinist, composer and music educator. Through her work she attempts to create spaces that prioritize BIPOC and Queer voices and explores how art can cause a social reckoning/social healing. She is a founding member of Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, an all-POC free improvisation group, and has performed with a number of Montreal bands. She holds a masters in music education and has been a community educator (albeit off and on) for many years. Like many musicians she maintains a day job. In hers she is a fundraising professional.
Markus Lake is a Montréal/Tiotia’ke based musician and composer. Lake’s albums, live shows and soundtrack work explore themes of attention, obscurity, visibility and repetition through the use of a constantly expanding palette of digital instruments and samples. He released his juno nominated fourth LP, “Fourth Album” on Constellation Records in October 2023. He is a graduate of the Electroacoustics program at Concordia University and has played bass in the Montréal bands Elle Barbara’s Black Space, Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, and Silver Dapple.
https://markusfloats.bandcamp.com/music
Benjamin Vergara
October 5 2 - 3:30pm
Benjamín Vergara is a Chilean trumpet player, improviser and educator, based in the city of Valdivia, Chile. His work focuses on improvised music, written contemporary music, free jazz and experimental music. Director of the Festival of experimental music –Relincha- occurring since 2014 in the city of Valdivia. Professor in music improvisation at School of Music and SoundArt of the Universidad Austral de Chile. He has collaborated with a huge range of musicians like Fred Frith, Ben Bennett, Keefe Jackson, Felipe Araya, Jim Baker, Rodrigo Castellanos, ensembles and multi disciplinary projects. His music is available in labels like Inexhaustible Editions, 577 records, Relative Pitch, Tour de Bras. https://www.benjaminvergara.com/
James Falzone
October 12 12pm - 1:30pm (Special time)
Clarinetist, penny whistle player, composer, and improviser James Falzone is an acclaimed member of the international jazz and creative music scenes, a veteran contemporary music lecturer and clinician, and an award-winning composer who has been commissioned by chamber ensembles, dance companies, choirs, and symphony orchestras around the globe. He leads his own ensembles Allos Musica, Elaía Ensemble, Renga Ensemble, and the duo Wayfaring with Chicago bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst, and is a member of the Tapestry Voice Ensemble and Pneuma, a quartet with clarinetists François Houle, Michael Winograd, and Israeli vocalist Ayelet Gottlieb. Learn more about James Falzone and his work at his website:
Anne La Berge
October 19 3:30pm - 5pm (Special time)
Anne La Berge's passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to the fringes of storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. She is a composer/performer in the Amsterdam-based ensemble MAZE, works as an improvisation and live electronics coach and teaches at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. She can be heard on the Largo, Artifact, Etcetera, Hat Art, Frog Peak, Einstein, X-OR, Unsounds, Canal Street, Rambo, esc.rec., Intackt, Data, verz, Real Music House, Relative Pitch, Carrier, Present Sounds Recordings and Splendor Amsterdam labels. Her music is published by Frog Peak Music and Alry Publications; and her Max-patch based compositions are available from her privately. She is a founding artist of the Splendor Amsterdam collective where she produces small scale concerts and she is the director of the Volsap Foundation that produces innovative music projects and international tours.
Olivia Shortt
October 26 3:30pm - 5pm (special time)
(They/Them): Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) Olivia Shortt is a storyteller and performing artist working across Turtle Island and internationally. They are a vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, video artist, drag artist, curator, administrator, and producer.
Shortt was featured in the 2020 Winter edition of Musicworks Magazine and was described as a “glittering, rising star in the exploratory music firmament.” They have appeared on CBC Kids ‘Gary the Unicorn and their voice has been used off-screen for Stephen King’s ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Season 3 of ‘Chucky’; they made their Lincoln Center debut in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble; they made their film debut, onscreen playing saxophone, in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film Guest of Honour; and recorded an album with their duo Stereoscope, two kilometres underground in the SnoLAB (an underground laboratory specializing in Neutrinos and dark matter physics in Northern Ontario, Canada). Shortt performed and premiered Raven Chacon’s (Diné) ‘For Olivia Shortt’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC) as part of Chacon’s series of solo works 'For Zitkála-Šá' during the 2022 Whitney Biennial and has performed the work at The Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC).
8EAST
