ORGANic Evolution III

The Performers

David Smits

Website: www.mypiano.ca

David Smits was born in 1971 in Latvia into a musical family, the eighth of sixteen children. He was exposed to music from a young age as his father, a minister and a human rights activist, organized family performances that included a family choir, orchestra and other ensembles.

David began his piano studies at the age of eight with James Olsen in Vancouver, BC, and continued with Peter Zarins at the age of 14 after moving to Toronto. He has also studied with A rthur Ozolins and James Anagnason. David won numerous awards and prizes during his years of study. He has also studied organ under William Wright.

At the age of 14, David became the organist of Latvian Baptist Church and five years later, Temple Baptist Church, where he directed a black gospel choir. Since 1994, he has been the organist at St. Andrews Ev (Latvian) Lutheran Church. David has performed extensively throughout the Northeastern United States and Canada. David enjoys improvising and has progressively explored jazz and music of other cultures.

David also holds a technical position in the Data Management field. This allows him to stay on top of current and evolving technologies and apply them to the Arts.

Brenda MacIntyre

Website: http://www.myspace.com/brendamacintyre

Brenda MacIntyre, whose spirit name is Medicine Song Woman, is a Native Canadian Roots & Blues fusion artist, frame drummer, speaker, healer and painter. Dubbed the “hand drum healer” by the Native Canadian newspaper, Brenda does hand drumming and healing circles, World/Roots concerts as well as a cappella and drumming performances that reach into your soul and give you goose bumps.

Stephane Vera

Website: http://www.svera.ca/

Stéphane Vera (known to many as Teknostep) is a widely skilled and prolific session player, producer, DJ and remixer. Though born in Geneva, Switzerland, and raised in France, Vera has called Toronto his home since 1997; having also previously lived in New York, Ottawa, and Montréal. Having been a Royal Conservatory of Music piano and drum teacher for five years, his innate talent and polished skills are undisputed. Throughout his childhood, Vera was a student of a wide range of instruments, and his original musical productions continue to enhance the just perception that he is a steady riser in the world of song. In his wealth of musical experience and contribution, Vera has been a radio host (on CKCU FM + CHUO FM), keyboardist for Roy Davis Jr (since 1996), keyboardist and founding member of Toronto's original live house band, Galactica Blast (established in 1996), composer for film & television, producer for the recent hit single "Hollywood" from Ivana Santilli's Juno nominated "TO.NY", and has over seventy singles and compilation appearances on an extensive list of labels from all around the world. This year, Stéphane will be releasing two full-length albums: Stéphane Vera on Nice+Smooth and Stéphane Vera on Mixed Signals. Stéphane, Aris, Mr Fuss, ill.Gates + Pr.incest also host a new Saturday night radio show on Toronto's CKLN FM. He is also the first in the world to be composing for a vibro-tactile medium: the emoti-chair for the deaf. Currently, he serves as chief of music operations at a computational music company (waveDNA) and is also composer / researcher for two labs at Ryerson University. You'll be hearing a lot from Stéphane Vera, so stayed tuned - Left of the Dial.

Britton Vincent

With a band of Lunatics behind him, Britton Vincent felt it was time to stretch his fingers into a different world, a world where a whole symphony could be played by a single machine. After trekking through vast mountains ranges in his bathroom he stumbled upon a Monk who was bundled in the secrets of his ancient wisdom. This Monk, who came to be known as Stephane, told the young hooligan of a magical piece of equipment built hundreds of years before our time, the Pipe Organ.

Britton became enthralled with the idea of being able to have a whole symphony at his finger tips and his lust for musical power became insatiable. Once he discovered he could program a machine to overlord this Pipe Organ he set to his task of creating the most astounding, profounding, hysterically confounding piece of music ever written. Well, little did he know, that even machines, even cold hard pieces of synthesized elements could possess such spirit. He was soon to find out exactly how spirited any oppressed being, animate or insensate, can flick the nose of even the most tyrannically ambitious Hierophant.

Paul Swoger-Ruston

I’m a composer, music theorist and guitarist. I work primarily with musical material derived from the harmonic series and basic psychoacoustical phenomenon (combination tones, resonance, interference) and I’m always looking for new systems of musical organization inspired by natural phenomena and concepts borrowed from other disciplines. I currently teach music at Ryerson University and Humber College.

Ryan Janzen

Ryan Janzen's compositions have been performed internationally in Canada, the USA and Denmark. As co-organizer of 11 live concerts and producer of 3 albums, he has collaborated extensively with musicians, orchestras, and interdisciplinary researchers. Janzen's work embodies a fusion between art and science that comes naturally: Janzen's scientific research has led to advances in acoustics, aerospace engineering, and electric vehicle propulsion, and was awarded a federal grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. His music research is published in 8 international music publications. After founding a technology consulting company in elementary school, Janzen worked on the award-winning film Commedia Fantasia (winner of the 2002 Houston International Film Festival Gold Medal Award in performing arts), and has since produced an array of art music, film music, orchestral and choral compositions, performance art, and high-tech performances that push the limits of art and science.

Janzen's interplay between music, sound and acoustics is driven by a passion for ethereal experience and dramatic narrative. Janzen's compositions are often dark and introspective. Janzen in 2006 was the world's first composer to create music for hydraulophone, an exotic instrument which is played through finger immersion in jets of water. Janzen developed a new expressive performance style and (along with inventor Steve Mann) a new musical notation which gives the performer access to a never-before-seen ability: polyphonic embouchure, brought into existence by Mann's hydraulophones.

Janzen's compositions have been commissioned recently for a grand-opening of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Alberta, and for the Marshall Fels Elliott short film "After Hours". His film scores also include "Ritual", an eerie film/concert performance in which audience and performers are left in pitch dark. His compositions have been performed at the Music Gallery in Toronto, NIME in New York City, and the Vandkulturhuset in Denmark.

Steve Mann

Website: http://glogger.mobi/mann

Steve Mann has written more than 200 research publications, books, and patent publications, and has been the keynote speaker at more than 25 scholarly and industry symposia and conferences and has also been an invited speaker at more than 50 university Distinguished Lecture Series and colloquia.

He is also a hydraulist, as well as the inventor (and patent holder) of the hydraulophone, the world's first water-based musical instrument. He is also a sculptor who builds hydraulophones as public art installations.

His work has been shown in numerous musems around the world, including the Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History, The Science Museum (Wellcome Wing, opening with Her Majesty The Queen June 2000), Museum of Modern Art (MoMA in New York), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Triennale di Milano, Austin Museum of Art, and San Francisco Art Institute.

His award winning documentary cyborglog ShootingBack, and the ideas from his book "CYBORG: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer" (Randomhouse Doubleday, 2001) inspired a 35mm feature length motion picture film about his life (http://wearcam.org/cyberman.htm).

The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Life have all described him as "the world's first cyborg", from his early work with wireless wearable webcams.

Joi Ito, the world's leading entrepreneur in moblogging, credits Mann with having initiated the moblogging movement by creating the world's first system for transmission of realtime pictures, video, and text. In particular, from 1994 to 1996, Mann continuously transmitted his life's experiences, in real time, to his website for others to experience, interact with, and respond to. His CyborGLOGS ('glogs), such as the spontaneous reporting of news as everyday experience, were an early predecessor of 'blogs and the concept of blogging, and earlier than that, his pre-internet-era live streaming of personal documentary and cyborg communities defined cyborglogging as a new form of social networking.

He received his PhD degree from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1997, and is currently a tenured professor at University of Toronto .

Leif Bloomquist

Website: www.leifbloomquist.net

Leif Bloomquist has always been fascinated by the potential of electronic and computer-generated sounds and music. Classically trained in clarinet and percussion, he now composes using sequencing software while incorporating eclectic and home-built hardware. His material can be heard in such diverse environments as on CBC Radio 3, ambient music festivals, even gothic nightclubs (and now, churches).

Leif is a founding member of the Independent Electronic Musicians Collective, and has released five albums to date through his Schema Factor and Interweaver projects.

ill.gates

Website: mutimusic.com

ll.gates is a well-known producer from Toronto Canada. His previous productions as ‘The Phat Conductor’ and co-productions with Robb G have made waves in the Electro House and Breakbeat genres, as has his work with Bassnectar in the growing crunky midtempo breaks genres.

Past production work includes remixing the likes of DJ Dan, Myagi and Si Begg and has led to top selling tracks on Beatport and also a mention in URB as one of their ‘next 100′ top artists. His versatility is evident in his broad array of collaborations with reknowned producers like Robb G, Bassnectar, Meesha, Little John, Friction, Malaya, Stephane Vera and Canadian Hip Hop vocalist Masia One. ‘Autopirate’, covers a broad range of genres and confirms ‘ill.gates’ production values.

Fearful Symmetry

Fearful Symmetry is a combined effort of noise rock and baroque blended instrumentalist Nic Newman with poetic protopunk revivalist Rob Ryan Zaino. It is a symmetry - a sinister blend of fuzz intertwined behind the fangs of hissing myths and new sincerity sewn to the sleeve of the avant-garde. As you adapt to your surroundings, let the fears of symmetry remind you to return to listening and looking at life through your peripheral.

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