The night lengthens, we draw inwards
Time expands while sleep beckons and fades,
as the dawn reveals ourselves to ourselves

Performance Schedule SUBJECT TO CHANGE

8:00pm to 10:30pm
Tandava
(short intermission) Rachel Iwaasa
Daniel Tones/Barry Truax

INTERMISSION

10:45 pm Katharine Norman installation

11:15pm to 12:15pm Shubhendra Rao and Biplab Bhattacharya

INTERMISSION12:15am to 12:45am Eric Hedekar installation

12:45am – 1:45am Gamelan Alligator Joy with Anis Wijastuti and Sutrisno Hartana

2:15 – 3:15 Ellen McIlwaine

3;15 am – 3:45am Gregorian chant conducted by David Millard

INTERMISSION4:15 to 5:30 Shubhendra Rao and Biplab Bhattacharya

Nocturnes, ragas, pathets, matins; musical forms that reflect the quietude and darkness of night will be explored. The exquisite sitarist Shubhendra Rao performs evening and early morning ragas for this dusk to dawn event. Vancouver’s best share the bill with percussion, music for shadow play, contemporary works by Morton Feldman, Brian Cherney, Barry Truax, Katharine Norman and everything from the blues and Middle Eastern song with Ellen McIlwaine to early morning prayer. Heavy listeners only. Pajamas optional!

Vancouver virtuoso Rachel Kiyo Iwassa plays Morton Feldman’s extended piano work Palais de Mari and Brian Cherney’s Quelquefois, ‡ l’ombre de la nuit…au lontain and percussionist Daniel Tones performs Barry Truax’s electroacoustic work for marimba NightWatch. Vancouver’s Alligator Joy Gamelan ensemble accompanies Javanese performers Anis Wijastuti and Sutrisno Hartana. David Millard, Earle Peach, Elliot Dainow and Peter Alexander sing Gregorian chant: matins and lauds to mark the wee hours of the morning. Ambient works and soundscapes: Insomnia by Katharine Norman and gentle listening music for the “sleepy room” downstairs in EDAM by Eric David Hedekar. Coffee, chai and snacks for sale for insomniacs and sleepers alike.

Artist Biographies and websites

Shubhendra Rao http://www.shubhendrarao.com/biography.html
Shubhendra Rao is one of the leading instrumentalists of India, praised for his sensitivity, purity of technique and depth of innovation. A disciple of sitar master Ravi Shankar since childhood, Shubhendra performs extensively and is also deeply involved in experimenting with new musical idioms, creating and teaching music.

Ellen McIlwaine http://www.ellenmcilwaine.com/
Ellen McIlwaine’s background is diverse. Born in Nashville, Tennessee and adopted by Southern Presbyterian Missionaries, she spent fifteen years in Japan as part of a small international community attending Canadian Academy in Kobe. She began playing rock & roll piano at age five, listening to New Orleans-style rhythmn & blues (Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair), Latino groups like Trio Los Panchos, Japanese classical and folk music, American jazz on Japanese radio; country music and European classical music on US Armed Forces Radio. She also sang in the church choir. Her career began in the sixties in Greenwich Village as played with legendary greats such as Jimi Hendrix and has shared the bill with Laura Nyro, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Weather Report, Lily Tomlin, Taj Mahal, George Thorogood, Tom Waits, Chicago, Bruce Springsteen, Koko Taylor, etc

Ellen’s multi-cultural influences, her unique style of slide guitar, playing bass lines against driving rhythms and singing lead guitar lines, along with her powerfully moving vocals and scatting acrobatics have earned her legendary cult status

In 1997 Ellen created a live musical score for Canadian playwright Tom Cone’s True Mummy, drawing on Egyptian and Lebanese traditional dance music and the inspiration of Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. It distilled itself into her popular new original Egyptian Blues which was soon to be released as a part of a new album for Tradition & Moderne. She has completed sound scores from two film documentaries, appears on the Celebration of Blues collector Series and makes guest appearances on various other artists’ CDs. A one hour documentary on her life and musical background has been aired on the Bravo Channel entitled A slide Through Time: Ellen McIlwaine Live!

Tandava http://www.tandava.com/bio.html
Tandava is a contemporary world music ensemble inspired by the folk and classical music of India and Bangladesh, with influences from China, the Middle-East, Africa and the West. Virtuosic tabla and world drum styles, with polyphonic marimba underpinnings, create the rhythmic and textural engine for lyrical erhu, multilingual vocals, bamboo flutes, distinctive guitar stylings, and various plucked stringed instruments to soar over. Prashant John ( vocals, bamboo flute, guitar), Jonathan Bernard (marimba) Lan Tung (erhu-Chinese violin) Stefan Cihelka (tablas)

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa http://www.iwaasa.com/contact.htm
Award-winning pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa has concertized as soloist and chamber musician in Canada, the United States and Germany. Currently completing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at UBC, her teachers have included Jane Coop, Rena Sharon, Menahem Pressler, Klaus Baessler and Robin Wood. Rachel has a shameless passion for new music, delights in working with composers, and has performed numerous premieres.

Barry Truax http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/
Barry Truax is a Professor in both the School of Communication and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University where he teaches courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. He has worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with all aspects of sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works and those which combine tape with live performers or computer graphics. Read about Barry Truax’s Nightwatch http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/night.html

Daniel Tones holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Education and Performance from the University of Victoria and a Master of Music degree in Performance from the University of Toronto. Through studies with Salvador Ferreras, John Rudolph, and members of the ensemble NEXUS, he has fostered an appreciation and understanding of both Western and non-Western music. Daniel is interested in exploring music of the world’s culture and is equally at home performing in the field of orchestral music. As a soloist he has appeared with Vancouver New Music and the New Music Concert Series in Torono. Mr. Tones is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in performance at the University of British Columbia.

Gamelan Alligator Joy Gamelan is an ensemble of bronze and wood percussion instruments, such as gongs, chimes, xylophones and drums. It also includes singers, flutes, and stringed instruments. The instruments are visually beautiful, while the music features interlocking melodies that create a shimmering and often haunting soundscape. Check out info on their recent CD New Nectar on Songlines label: Gamelan Madu Sari http://www.songlines.com/

Sutrisno Hartana is a master Javanese musician and dancer. He majored in the performing arts at I.S.I. (Indonesian Art Institute) in Yogyakarta, Java. Indonesia. His training includes traditional Javanese music, dance, singing, shadow puppetry, and new music composition. He has performed extensively throughout Indonesia and Asia, including, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. In 1990 he toured France and Spain performing the Ramayana with a theatre/dance troupe. As a teacher, Sutrisno taught performance culture at the Bagong Kusudiardjo School of Art in Yogyakarta. Since arriving in Vancouver in 1995, Sutrisno has been performing with Gamelan Madu Sari and Alligator Joy; he has held a guest teaching position at Simon Fraser University and is currently working on his masters degree at the University of British Columbia.

Katharine Norman is a composer, sound artist and writer. She received a PhD in composition from Princeton in 1993 and has, since then, pursued a career as a composer, teacher and, increasingly, writer. In 2003 she emigrated from London, England to one of the Gulf Islands, off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Prior to this change of direction she was, for five years, Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Goldsmiths, University of London and, before that, held various academic posts in the UK. She now works freelance, with some recent teaching at Simon Fraser University.

She composes instrumental music, music combining instruments or voices and tape, and purely electronic work. Her music, for both tape and instruments and for purely digital media, makes frequent use of documentary sound’ ñ conversation, city sounds, birds etc ñ in a way that perhaps invites new appreciation both of the èreal world’ and the concert hall. Her cd of electroacoustic music and soundscape composition, London, is available on the NMC label. Transparent things a CD of soundscape music and piano music was released on the Metier label. Other music is recorded on the Innova, Empreintes Digitales and Discus labels.

Eric David Hedekar http://members.shaw.ca/ericdhedekar/