Join Vancouver New Music as we celebrate 50+ years of bringing innovative music and sound art to our community.
Featured performers:
Matthew Ariaratnam
Andromeda Monk
Anju Singh
Sapphire Haze
Snacks and refreshments will be served.
Matthew Ariaratnam is an interdisciplinary sound artist, composer, guitarist, and listener based on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations – also known as Vancouver, BC. He creates sensory walks, writes dumbpop and chamber music, and frequently collaborates with choreographers, visual artists, and theatre-makers.
Recent projects and commissions include: kiitos, äiti (Thin Edge New Music Collective), The View From Here (Jillian Peever/Sasha Ivanochko) Plastic Me (Naishi Wang), Body Tuning (Vines Art Festival), Creative Music Series 10 (NOW Society), Take Good Care (as dumbpop), Isolation Commission (Little Chamber Music Society), Altar :=: Source (Music on Main), and How long will these sounds sound? (Artist-in-Residence, North Vancouver Recreation and Culture). He has an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a BMus in Music Composition from Wilfrid Laurier University.
Andromeda Monk is a composer and improviser who plays woodwinds and electronic instruments. In recent years she has played at several festivals including Suoni per il Popolo, Vancouver Jazz Festival, and Active/Passive, often appearing solo and composing unique music for each show. This year she produced the pop LP It's About Time! by Future Star. Currently she is diving deeper into composing with abstract sounds while maintaining her sense of melody and form. She lives on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
Anju Singh is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, noise/sound artist and video/media artist exposing and interrogating texture using methods of deconstruction and reanimation to repurpose and contextualize materials in new compositional environments and to bring contrasting themes and dynamics into shared spaces.
Anju has presented and performed work across Canada, in Europe, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States.
Anju has curated and directed the Vancouver Noise Festival for 9 editions, curated Fake Jazz Wednesdays, and she has participated in a co-curating committee for the MAC Media Arts Committee Sound Art program since 2011.
Sapphire Haze is a composer-performer duo residing on unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm land (Vancouver, Canada). With Cindy Kao on violin and Aysha Dulong on electronics, the duo utilizes sound-to-colour synaesthesia as a compositional tool. They work in a hybridized model, and aim to blur the distinction between acoustic and electronic sound. Sapphire Haze explores how sound can embody lived experiences and can be utilized to express oneself.
As a duo, their work has been presented at SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts, Vines Art Festival, Modulus Festival, Gateway Theatre and The Fox Cabaret. Recently, they were the featured artist for Music on Main's 2021/2022 Emerge on Main program, and made their international debut at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival in June 2022. Currently, they are sound designing with rice & beans theatre and devising an original interdisciplinary work with choreographer and dancer Natalia Martineau about where colonial imposition lives in our bodies.