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Wild Bells / frequencies / Drift
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Be safe! Have fun! Please keep your group size to under 6 people, and maintain a distance of at least 2m from others. Masks encouraged.
Experience an evening of open-air sound exploration at Hadden Park with a trio of compositions and installations by Robyn Jacob, Roxanne Nesbitt and George Rahi. The sounds of custom-made bells, ethereal voices and unique, hand-made, ceramic percussion pieces play with and within the park’s usual ambience, temporarily transforming the space and sonic environment.
Join us for an online community chat with Roxanne Nesbitt and George Rahi, moderated by Giorgio Magnanensi. Tuesday, September 22 at 6pm (PDT).
frequencies is a sound installation comprising a chorus of 15 custom-made robotic bells. The array of bells perform a new composition for each public space, using their autonomous sounds to bring a mosaic of moments into focus. In reference to the historical role that bells played as an organizing rhythm and spatial-political tool within urban environments, the installation re-imagines the roles of bells by staging new forms of interactions between their temporality, resonance and a listening public. The distributed nature of the installation creates a dialogue with each environment, folding along its contours and exploring its spatial qualities as a sculptural and malleable element. Through this strategy of ambient diffusion, listening is provoked both outwards towards the wider “acoustic commons” and inwards towards one’s moment with the geography of each site.
Drift is the first of two compositions for the installation frequencies. Adding three voices alongside the bell-like tones, the composition creates an interplay between the embodied performers and the ethereal qualities of suspended, vibrating metals. The piece was created in relation to the soundscape of Hadden Park, where it first premiered, and imagines the surrounding environment as a quasi-performer of the work.
Vocalists: Emily Millard, Hilary Ison, Emily Cheung
Composition by Robyn Jacob (2018)
Wild Bells No.4 is an exploration of timbre, rhythm, and shape. The piece centres around a series of “wild bells” designed and created by interdisciplinary artist Roxanne Nesbitt.
The bells were made at the European Keramic Work Centre (NL) at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown. The anxiety of the time surfaces in the instruments, as a gravitation toward consonance and meditative sound. Rather than scaling a single shape as bells are traditionally made, these instruments appear to bloom, resulting in gradual changes in timbre as well as pitch. They are both a self-indulgent exploration of the sound colour of shapes and an act of resistance to the commodification of music and instruments.
Drummer/composer Ben Brown and violinist/drummer Anju Singh will explore the sonic possibilities of these instruments through a series of graphic scores and structured improvisations accompanied by Roxanne Nesbitt on double bass. We are dealing with the questions: What music do these instruments want to make? How do we evaluate music that is off-the-grid of traditional tuning and scale systems? What will the aesthetics of this music be? Can new instruments aid in divorcing our community from the legacies of misogyny and white supremacy in music? If so – what musical qualities can we take with us into the future?
George Rahi is a composer and sound artist based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. He uses self-created and altered instruments as a method of exploring the intersections between acoustic and digital technologies, modes of listening, and spatial and architectural thinking. His work includes large-scale installations, compositions for pipe organ, solo & ensemble performance, and works for radio, theatre and public spaces. He has presented throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and is the recipient of the 2018 R. Murray Schafer Soundscape award.
Robyn Jacob is a pianist, singer, composer and educator who lives and works on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her composition projects explore writing for unusual ensembles, as well as collaborations with visual artists and instrument makers. She has toured internationally with her avant-pop project Only A Visitor, with which she recently co-produced Double Happiness, a multi-media production created with Nancy Tam exploring Chinese diaspora to Western Canada. Recently she was commissioned to write a piece for percussion quartet by Grammy winning Third Coast Percussion as part of their Emerging Composer Project. Robyn received her Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of British Columbia.
Trained as an architect and orchestral bassist, Roxanne Nesbitt is an interdisciplinary artist, exploring the space between sound and design. Her research includes experimental instrument design, composition, improvisation, sound installation, and performance.
Roxanne collaborates with musicians, dancers and choreographers as a performer and composer. She has premiered new compositions at the Western Front and PuSh festival in Vancouver, Array Space in Toronto, and Bauchhund in Berlin. Roxanne fronts her own band, Graftician and is a member of the improvised duo, Why Choir alongside award winning drummer Ben Brown.
I am a mover and shaker. I am the founder of Music And Movement Mondays (MAMM). As a drummer, I have received a Juno Award with my group, Pugs and Crows.
Currently, I’m exploring principles of sound felt in the body and researching a series of designed percussion instruments crafted by Roxanne Nesbitt. With these, I am trying to push the boundaries of drumming by using movement to communicate the energy of sound—helping an audience hear differently by creating and breaking expectations for a sound through gesture.
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.
