X Avant XIV: Forward

X AVANT XIV: FORWARD

October 17 to October 20, 2019
8pm to 11pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St., Toronto, ON; North of Bloor St. on Bathurst St.
416.204.1080 @musicgalleryTO
Tickets range from $25 to $10
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Always dedicated to experimental and innovative music, The Music Gallery moves “Forward” for its fourteenth X Avant festival.

This festival centres on artists taking, or attempting to take, the next step in their work, career or practice. For some, “the next step” is a graduation to bigger ideas, longer tours and more money. In creative music, moving forward with art is associated with instrumental mastery and developing a personal musical vocabulary. Regardless of genre, all forward paths in music require an artist to dedicate mind, body and soul. There is no single way forward: twists, turns and dead ends await. We explore this theme with four headliners who present new work, plus two panel discussions.

Accessibility:
918 Bathurst is not currently wheelchair accessible due stairs (two half flights to enter the performance space, and one flight to access the washrooms). We are working as quickly as possible with 918 Bathurst to make the building accessible for all.

X AVANT XIV: Germaine Liu: Still Life WORLD PREMIERE + Rebecca Hennessey/Heather Saumer/Bea Labikova/Karen Ng
October 17, 2019
8pm to 11pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
$18 Regular/$13 Advance/$10 Students, Members, EARLYBIRD
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Composer/percussionist Germaine Liu is one of Toronto’s most fascinating musicians. Whether coaxing rhythms from a drum kit, a bag of marbles or coffee mugs, her percussive sound world is wide open. Still Life is her most ambitious project to date: a 45-minute composition/sounding installation composed of a collection of objects found in Toronto activated by five players (Susanna Hood, Julie Lassonde, Heather MacPhail, Sahara Morimoto and Germaine Liu). The goal of the performance is to create an opportunity to honour these found objects with an attempt to focus on the exchanges and negotiations of partnership between object and human. Rebecca Hennessy, Bea Labikova, Karen Ng and Heather Saumer need no introduction to Toronto’s improvising community, and this brass/horn ensemble makes its debut at X Avant by special request from Liu.

X AVANT XIV: Lido Pimienta: Road To Miss Colombia + OKAN
October 18, 2019
8pm to 11pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
$25 Regular/$20 Advance/$15 Students, Members, EARLYBIRD
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Lido Pimienta presents songs from the follow-up album to 2017’s Polaris Prize-winning La Papessa. Performing with horns, winds and a choir, this performance is a sneak peak into the world of Miss Colombia showcasing new works in their rawest form, the way they were intended to be performed when they were originally composed. Miss Colombia explores the simultaneous closeness and distance of Pimienta’s relationship to her homeland. Songs will be arranged by Halifax-based musician and composer Robert Drisdelle.

Opening is OKAN, who are featured on the Miss Colombia album. OKAN is led by Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne, who fuse their Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, folk and global rhythms in songs about immigration, courage and love.

X AVANT XIV: Willi Williams and New Chance WORLD PREMIERE + Holy Hum
October 19, 2019
8pm to 11pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
$25 Regular/$20 Advance/$15 Students, Members, EARLYBIRD
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The exciting debut of an intergenerational collaboration between one of Toronto’s most iconic reggae elders and a grassroots electronic adventurer. New Chance, aka Victoria Cheong and Willi Williams (writer of “Armagideon Time” as covered by the Clash) create a new sound for your system with a project that grows from the roots forward into the future. Jamaica’s cultural has had a profound impact on Toronto over the past fifty years; this is, as the saying goes, “a new chapter of dub”. Holy Hum is the dark, atmospheric yet eclectic music of multidisciplinary artist Andrew Lee whose debut All My Bodies, was released last year.

X AVANT XIV: Sarah Hennies + Sound Of The Mountain & guests CD release, supported by the Japan Foundation
October 20, 2019
8pm to 11pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
$20 Regular/$15 Advance/$10 Students, Members, EARLYBIRD
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Sarah Hennies, a composer/percussionist based in Ithaca, NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, love, intimacy and psychoacoustics. Following the worldwide acclaim of her documentary of trans peoples’ voices Contralto (2017) Hennies brings The Reinvention of Romance (2018) an epic 90-minute work for cello (Nick Storring) and percussion to Canada for the first time. Sound of the Mountain aka Craig Pederson and Elizabeth Millar have been quiet road warriors since 2015, having played over 160 concerts across the world, developing a sound language merging acoustic and electronic textures through amplification. This concert is part of their Canadian CD release tour for amplified clarinet and trumpet, guitars, nimb, joined by guests no-input mixing board wizard Toshimaru Nakamura and guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama.

X AVANT XIV: PANEL – The Future of Creative Music in Toronto
October 19, 2019
6pm to 730pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
FREE
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Moderated by David Dacks, with Michael Rancic (NOW Magazine), Jessica Cho aka Korea Town Acid, Amanda Smith (FAWN Chamber Creative) and Rich Brown (Rinsethealgorithm, Jazzcast.ca). “Creative Music” is a term from the 1960s that has loomed large in the Music Gallery’s history to describe individuals striving to create original forms of music. What does creative music mean now and going forward in Toronto? What conditions need to be in place to allow artists to thrive?

X AVANT XIV: PANEL – Forward Together
October 20, 2019
6pm to 730pm
The Music Gallery, 918 Bathurst St.
FREE
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Moderated by Del Cowie, with Cheryl Duvall (Thin Edge New Music Collective), Ange Loft (Yamantaka//Sonic Titan), Chelsea McBride (Socialist Night School) and Keysha Fresh (The Sorority). A discussion that explores the joy and pain of keeping collectives and larger ensembles together in the long term.