21 September 2007 | 8pm
Curated by Aki Onda; featuring Atsuhiro Ito, Kanta Horio and Fuyuki Yamakawa
Scotiabank Dance Centre

Electronic musician, composer, producer and photographer Aki Onda curates this no-holds-barred sound art extravaganza, featuring three of the most urgent, inventive performers now operating in Tokyo’s notorious underground electronic art and music scene. You won’t be experiencing an evening of sound creation like this again any time soon.

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17-20 October 2007
Show starts 8pm each night
Artist panels 7:15 – 7:45pm each night
Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street

For 2007, the Vancouver New Music Festival assembles an international conglomerate of some of the most innovative voices in guitar music today. From indie to abstract, acoustic to outlandish, Guitars! Guitars! will bring to your city a plethora of guitarists currently working to define or transcend their own respective performance tradition. 16 guitarists. 1 stage. Overkill? We think not.

Featuring performances by Oren Ambarchi (Australia), Paolo Angeli (Italy), Sir Richard Bishop (USA), Nicolas Bragg (Van), Bernard Falaise (Mtl), Bill Frisell (USA), Gord Grdina (Van), Her Jazz Noise Collective (Van), Annette Krebs (Germany), Rene Lussier (Mtl), Donald Miller (USA), James Plotkin (USA), Keith Rowe (UK), Tony Wilson (Van) and Walter Zanetti (Italy).

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Vancouver New Music presents two free Soundwalks - FREE guided listening tours in Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Listening and relistening
Sunday, September 30, 2007
2 – 3:30 pm
Led by by Zoe Gordon
Meeting Point: Georgia and Heatley, southwest corner of MacLean Park
Bus route: 10, 16, or 20(look for the “Astoria” hotel marquee)
Wheelchair accessible

This soundwalk is an opportunity to cultivate listening on a route that returns on itself, allowing participants to listen and re-listen to a circular route through Vancouver's dynamic Strathcona neighbourhood.

Found/Roaming the Railbed
Sunday, October 7, 2007
2 – 3:30 pm
Led by Jacky Sawatzky and Chris O’Connor
Meeting Point: Northeast corner of 1st and Fir (near Granville Island)
Bus route: 4, 7, 50, 84
Not wheelchair accessible

An audio and video enhanced soundwalk where participants are invited to imagine what was, is, and could be lying beyond an old railbed.  

In Fig Trees, a contemporary video-opera, artists John Greyson and David Wall take their fondness for experimenting with theatrical time and space literally into another dimension. This is a brave foray into unexplored territory: one dependent on a physical interaction with the audience. What is more, it is a sumptuous play of Greyson's words, images and movement, supported by Wall's affecting musical scores. A combination of creativity and synthesis gives Fig Trees life and vitality as gradually evolving patterns and images coalesce. As Greyson says, "It is an opera that both questions and demonstrates the troubled relationship between an elite art form and a kind of grubby street activism." Ultimately Fig Trees is a provocation to collaborate on many levels - physically, intellectually, emotionally - critically.

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Musicians play their way through a score made up of thirty-seven boxes, each box calling for a special effect – sometimes a calculated improvisation, sometimes a response to another performer – in all encouraging creative music-making and careful listening on the part of each ensemble member.

Minimusic is part of Vancouver Vibrates – a celebration of the works and influence of R. Murray Schafer.

20 - 23 February 2008 | 8pm
Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables Street
Tickets $24 + surcharges from Ticketmaster

Winner of the 2008 Alcan Performing Arts Award, Marginalia wishes to create an opportunity for the public to consider aspects and values of art making, Kiyooka’s multiple practice and the inspiration stemming from its richness and diversity. The idea of referring to different works by Kiyooka, consists then of composing a form in which these layered differences can become a practical piece. Simultaneity, polycentricity and overlapping points of view will be the characteristic elements of Marginalia. BC composers Jocelyn Morlock, Stefan Smulovitz, Stefan Udell and Hildegard Westerkamp will be the commissioned artists who will be writing the four new works within a strong relationship to Kiyooka’s works. The new compositions will take cues and motivations from specific characters, ideas and passages in Kiyooka’s works and will become an organic stimulus for an inner dialogue between Kiyooka, his displayed works, the composers, the performing musicians and the audience. Like a musical palimpsest the dialogue among the various components of Marginalia will not be just an echo of Kiyooka’s work, not simply a response; it will have a life of its own in the interactive relation between the composers and Kiyooka, his cross-cultural and polymorphic artistic approach and his inner dialogue and research.

This production is made possible by the generous support of the Alcan Performing Arts Award (Winner – Music 2008). 

Remembering Roy Kiyooka – a discussion of his life and works
10 February 2008 | 4 – 5: 30pm
Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables St.

Vancouver New Music celebrates creativity and sound with Marginalia, a project inspired by the work of Roy Kiyooka (1926-1994). As a second-generation Japanese Canadian, Kiyooka remains a singular and important figure in the artistic landscape of our country. His diversified and extremely creative approach through a multitude of new forms and media challenged and enlightened notions of what contemporary art can be, celebrated the everyday, made the personal political, and found beauty in an endless process of invention.

Join friends and family of Roy Kiyooka in the Cultch lobby on Sunday, February 10, 2008 from 4 – 5:30pm for an informal discussion of his life and works. Come to listen in, or join the discussion and share your own thoughts and stories.

Guests include Maria Hindmarch, Maxine Gadd, Fumiko Kiyooka, Daphne Marlatt and Richard Turner.

COMING UP...