Montréal saxophonist Ida Toninato and cellist Émilie Girard-Charest are guest artists for a ten-day residency with Vancouver improvising musicians. Stay tuned for various interfaces about town and their culminating performance on November 5th for Music on Main’s Modulus Festival.

Oct.:                29    16, 19h    Western Front, Workshops

30    21h          Gold Saucer, Sawdust Collector Series

Nov.:                1      20h          @ 8EAST

2      20h          with NOW Society Ensemble at the Western Front

3      21h          Merge, Improv

4      17h          Western Front, Marathon

5      20h          Modulus Festival Concert

Cellist Émilie Girard-Charest stands out for her eclecticism. She is as involved with traditional classical music as she is with contemporary repertoires and interdisciplinary projects. She has been able to work with artists of every stripe, for example, with choreographer Andrew Tay, as well as the Instant, Éponyme and Émergence theatre companies, interdisciplinary artist Vicky Tansey, and publishers Poètes de Brousse. She has also worked with composers Frans Ben Callado, Jimmie Leblanc, Charles-Antoine Fréchette and Blaise Borboën-Léonard. With flautist Yuki Isami and harpsichordist Jean-Willy Kunz, in 2004 she founded the Allogène ensemble, a group with varying forces dedicated to mainly Baroque and contemporary music, as well as improvisation. Girard-Charest is continuing her education at the Montréal Conservatory under the supervision of Denis Brott.

Montreal-based saxophonist, composer and improviser Ida Toninato has an ear for the unknown, exploring reverberant spaces with uncommon acoustics with which she develops artistic partnerships with a strong sense of bonding. After years of playing contemporary music with various collaborators, she has dived head first into pursuing a music after her own daring musical intuitions. Her debut full length record Strangeness is Gratitude, released on Kohlenstoff Records in April 2016, planted her firmly in the underground experimental scene with an enthusiastic reception from critics, artists and a growing fanbase. A remix album is currently in the works with such collaborators as Nicolas Bernier and Valerio Tricoli, and she is increasingly sought after for her compositions, having worked with choreographers Simon Renaud and film maker Thierry Loa. In addition to her solo compositions, Toninato writes and performs actively with laptop musician Ana Dall’Ara-Majek as Jane/KIN, creating performances that mix spatialisation and improvisation, and will release her second album ‘The Space Between Us’ with viola/viola d’amore player Jennifer Thiessen this December 14 on Ambiances Magnétiques. Toninato has toured extensively through Europe and North America with projects world-renown dance company La La La Human Steps and frequently shares the local Montreal stage with its great improvised music community.

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ABOUT TRADING PLACES: UN ÉCHANGE

Trading Places: Un Échange is a vibrant residency program begun in 2016 that takes place in Montréal and Vancouver two of Canada’s foremost centers of improvised music. The Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, Music on Main, the NOW Society, Suoni Per Il Popolo and the Western Front curate in collaboration, providing support for artistic practice and opportunities for growth through cultural exchange. Each year the resident artists are chosen to represent their communities in ten-day residencies. The artists premiere new works, attend musical gatherings, direct ensembles, present concerts, lead workshops and make recordings, forming new connections with local artists. Cultural exchange include expansive continuous marathon events involving as many as twenty musicians in each city, the Mardi Spaghetti Marathon in Montréal and the premiere of two new works, commissioned by the NOW Society, in the Vancouver Marathon by Justin Devries and Elizabeth Millar. The culminating event of each residency is a concert of new music, created and performed by the resident musicians and invited guests.