The 2010 Windsor Canadian Music Festival looks at music and media, bringing composers, musician and video artists to create gesamtkunstwerk--comprehensive, all-embracing work of art.

music director, windsor symphony orchestra

Maestro John Morris Russell has consistently won international praise for his gift for making extraordinary music and for making a difference. Since his appointment as Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in 2001, Mr. Russell has ushered in a new era of unprecedented artistic growth for the WSO and has invigorated the musical life of the Windsor-Essex region. Now in his ninth season, Mr. Russell will conduct 17 weeks with the WSO including symphonic and pops subscription programmes, concerts on the Intimate Classics series, and the prestigious Windsor Canadian Music Festival.

During his tenure, Mr. Russell has attracted some of the world’s most notable soloists to perform with the WSO. He has also championed the works of some of Canada’s most illustrious composers, including Jacques Hétu, Brent Lee and Nathaniel Dett, conducting numerous Windsor premiers of important Canadian works and 32 world premiers of commissioned compositions. Mr. Russell has also performed the American premiers of many Canadian works during his active schedule as guest conductor. He created the WSO’s first multi-year composer-in-residence position, and is deeply involved in the production of the annual Windsor Canadian Music Festival (WCMF), described by CBC producer David Jaeger as, “one of the most exciting and innovative developments to appear lately in the Canadian musical scene.”

The Windsor Symphony Orchestra has made twelve national broadcasts with Maestro Russell on CBC Radio and the orchestra’s first nationally televised production on the CBC series Opening Night, was subsequently nominated for a Gemini Award and won the Gold Worldmedal for “Best Performance Program” at the New York Festivals Awards for Television and New Media. In 2005, the WSO and Mr. Russell were featured in the documentary Clearly Symphony: not all performances are on stage by filmmaker Nicholas Shields and Suede Productions. In December 2006, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra released its second commercial recording, including Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf narrated by the internationally acclaimed actor, Colm Feore, and Last Minute Lulu, composed by WSO Composer-in-Residence, Brent Lee, with text by the Newbery Medal winning author, Christopher Paul Curtis.

Maestro Russell received a master of music degree in conducting from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a bachelor of arts degree in music from Williams College in Massachusetts. He has also studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Hancock, Maine.

artistic advisor – wcmf
composer – Selvedge | All of my sleep is dreaming | Memorial

Brent Lee is a Canadian musician, scholar, and educator. He studied at McGill University and later the University of British Columbia, where he completed his doctoral degree in 1999. His compositions range from orchestral music to electroacoustic pieces, and include jazz and incidental music. He has received awards and commissions from CAPAC, SOCAN, the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Gaudeamus Foundation (The Netherlands), and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France). In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded.

His compositions and improvisations often explore the relationship between acoustic instruments and digital sound processing; this interest has extended to his work as a performing member of a number of improvising ensembles including Gems, Strictly Plutonic, Modus Vivendi, and the Electric Improv Lab. Most recently, he served as composer-in-residence with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2006. He has been an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre since 1991 and Artistic Advisor for the Windsor Canadian Music Festival since 2003.

composer – On the Road | Gelb, Rot, Blau… hommage à Wassily Kandinsky | Plans-séquences

Robert Lemay has composed many works and is a recipient of grants and awards from numerous foundations and arts councils. His recent honours include the second prize from the International Competition Prize Luxembourg 2007 and the second prize from the Kazimierz Serocki 10th International Composers’ Competition 2006. Other international prizes include the first prize from the 2004 Harelbeke Muziekstad Wind Ensemble Competition in Belgium. In addition, Lemay received three prizes from the CAPAC (presently SOCAN).

Mr. Lemay’s music, which often employs virtuoso performance techniques, is characterized by an imaginative and unconventional use of the concert hall space. His pieces have been performed in Canada, the United States, Asia (Japan, Thailand), Europe (France, Denmark, Luxembourg, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and Belgium), and in South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela). Many of his works have also been broadcast on Société Radio-Canada, the CBC, Bavarian State Radio, European Broadcasting Union (Luxembourg), and Polish National Radio.

Lemay holds a doctorate degree in composition from the Université de Montréal and a master’s degree from Université Laval. He also studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo and taken part in seminars with Brian Ferneyhough, Louis Andriessen, and Donald Erb.

In France, he worked with François Rossé and Georges Apergis.Presently, Robert Lemay teaches at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. He is the Composer-in-Residence of the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra, and also the President and the Co-artistic Director of the 5-Penny New Music Concerts in Sudbury.

composer | artist – Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound | Chicago Union Station

Virgil Moorefield is a composer, intermedia artist, author, and drummer. CDs of his composer-led ensembles include Things You Must Do to Get to Heaven (Innova, 2007), The Temperature in Hell is Over 3,000 Degrees (Tzadik, 1997), and Distractions On the Way To the King’s Party (Cuneiform, 1994). The Virgil Moorefield Ensemble has performed in Europe and the U.S., including the Inventing America Festival at London’s Barbican Hall, and the Bang on a Can Marathon at Lincoln Center. Moorefield’s intermedia work, Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound (2008), was recently premiered in Ann Arbor and at the Aimaako Festival in Santiago, Chile. A collaborative intermedia work, Chicago Union Station, was presented at the International Computer Music Conference in Miami. His work has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Moorefield has been commissioned by the Bang On A Can All-Stars, and his orchestral work Blanqui was performed by the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble in Brooklyn.

His book, The Producer As Composer (2005), is published by MIT Press. As a drummer, Moorefield has worked with numerous rock and avantgarde artists, including Glenn Branca, Swans, Bill Laswell, Elliott Sharp, and Damage.
Moorefield received an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. in composition from Princeton University. He also holds an M.A. and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and studied at the Juilliard School. He is currently an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

For more, please visit virgilmoorefield.com

composer – Aurora | Perpetuum Mobile | Undercurrents | Shattered Mirrors

Known for creating music filled with an “unearthly beauty” (Mondomagazine) that makes listeners want to “close (their) eyes and transcend into a cloud of music” (Discorder Magazine), Jordan Nobles has emerged as one of Canada’s finest composers. To date he has written over seventy-five works for various ensembles, from solo works to orchestras, and his music has been recorded on CD, and has appeared in short films, theatre, live television and radio.

His multiple awards and commissions have led to more than seventy-five new works. From solo instrumentalists to symphony orchestras, chamber choirs to percussion quartets, musicians from around the world have embraced his music. In 2008 alone, his music has been released on Germany’s SPEKTRAL label, won First Prize in the Vancouver Bach Choir’s National Competition for Large Choirs, and been premiered in Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Calgary and Lima, Peru.
Jordan’s music has been heard throughout North America and Europe at such festivals as the Bang On A Can Summer Music Festival, Vancouver New Music Festival, Toronto (new music) Marathon, and the X Avant Festival. Canada’s leading orchestras, choirs, chamber ensembles and soloists regularly perform his works, as do groups as diverse as the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Cologne’s Kammerchor CONSONO and New York’s Flexible Orchestra.

Jordan has been named the 2009 Emerging Artist in music from the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Awards. In March 2010, Jordan will collaborate with Aeriosa Dance as part of the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad and will have his new work 6 Variations premiered simultaneously by 6 of Canada’s leading new music ensembles in different cities across the country on May 15, 2010.

For more, please visit jordannobles.com

composer – Of Such Ecstatic Sound | Merge | Elegy for Strings | Clarinet Trio

Robert Rival (b. 1975) is a Canadian composer whose contemporary tonal style is characterized by drama, clarity and lyricism, described by critics as “well crafted,” “engaging” and “immediately appealing”. His music, for chamber ensemble, voice, orchestra and the stage, has been broadcast on CBC radio and performed by the Gryphon Trio and other leading Canadian musicians and ensembles. The Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival has presented his music since 2004, including a Piano Trio, Clarinet Trio, the song cycle Red Moon & Other Songs of War and a Schubert Fantasy. His orchestral works include the one-movement Symphony Maligne Range. He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the latter for his research on Shostakovich. Rival’s writing has appeared as liner notes for Analekta and as program notes for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has a DMA in composition from the University of Toronto.

For more, please visit robertrival.com

composer – Collapsible Spinning Flip

Sundar Subramanian is a sessional instructor at the University of Windsor and a doctoral candidate in music (composition) at SUNY Buffalo. He completed his undergraduate studies at Carleton University in Ottawa and his MA in composition at York University in Toronto. Mr Subramanian has taught courses on music theory, popular music, and ethnomusicology. While his dissertation project is a large-scale work for solo guitar, incorporating preparations and laptop processing, Mr Subramanian’s compositional interests are wideranging, encompassing electronic music, solo works, and chamber music. He is fascinated by rigorously theoretical, strictly notated writing as well as by highly open improvisation. Some of his works demonstrate an effort to achieve syntheses of and compromises between the two ideas. Mr Subramanian has had compositions performed at numerous venues in North America by performers including the Madawaska String Quartet, Arraymusic, Seth Josel. Christina Petrowska-Quilico, David Mott, and William Beauvais. In 2008, his string quartet Diminished but Returning received honourable mention in the competition for the Brian M. Israel Prize for young composers residing in New York State.

Sundar Subramanian has performed as an electric guitarist and improviser at a number of concerts and festivals, including the Extensible Electric Guitar festival at Clark University and the Society of American Music conference in 2005. He also performed in the premiere of Glenn Branca’s 13th symphony in 2001. As well, Mr Subramanian is active in giving conference presentations on topics related to atonal theory and the analysis of popular music.

video artist for Aurora

Justin A. Langlois, born in Kingsville, Ontario, is an artist working in integrated media and social practice. He has an MFA in Visual Arts and a BA (Hons) in Communication Studies from the University of Windsor. His major research project is currently situated in Broken City Lab, a creative research group focused on engaging and interrupting the city, its infrastructure, and its communities. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. His creative activity has been featured on national television, broadcast on radio stations around the world, and presented, performed, and exhibited throughout North America. He currently teaches in the Department of Communication, Video, and Film at the University of Windsor.

For more, please visit justinlanglois.com

video artist for Perpetuum Mobile

Christopher McNamara was born in Windsor, ON. He earned his BA and MA at the University of Windsor. Currently he divides his time between Windsor, Ontario and Ann Arbor Michigan. His work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout Canada and Western Europe. This past summer he presented “Some More Cities” at the Sherwell Art Centre in Plymouth, UK. His video, Establishing Shots premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was subsequently screened at Independent Film Festival Boston, the Ann Arbor Film Festival and at the Projection Gallery in Liverpool, UK.

In addition to his video work, McNamara is involved with three distinct audio art collectives: Noiseborder Ensemble, Thinkbox and Nospectacle. McNamara is Associate Chair of the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan where he teaches courses in Digital Media production.

video artist for Memorial

Immony Men is a University graduate from Concordia’s BFA program majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies within Studio Arts. He is currently enrolled in the MFA Visual Arts program at University of Windsor. He is a Canadian visual artist currently based in Montreal and Windsor.

Taking Care of Business, a previous body of work by Immony involving the painstaking installation of post-it notes on gallery walls has shown in the following artist-run centers over the last 3 years; Khyber Center of the Arts in Halifax N.S., Eastern Edge in St. John’s NFLD, Warren G. Flowers and the VAV Gallery in Montreal QC, 809 Gallery in Calgary AB, and Artspace in Peterborough On. His focus is on installation and working between the lines of fact and fiction. Labor intensity is a strong element in his installation art practice.

“My primary goal is to touch on everyday personal issues that viewers can relate with. My interest lie in the intimate relationships that exist in these social cycles. The separation between experiment and experience in my work is paper-thin.”
He is currently developing an artist exchange program titled Changing Plans. The main focus of the residency program is to establish a dialog between two galleries and the travel between the two destinations. Taking the form of workshops and exhibitions documenting the relationships shared between the artists and the local community.

During his stay in Windsor Immony has joined the Broken City Lab research group; an initiative that tactically disrupts and engages the city. He is also directing the Made in Sweden collective’s video production workshops and local award ceremonies. Immony is currently collecting and sharing memories at immonymen.com for a new project called Handle with Care.

video artist for Elegy for Strings

Michelle is born and raised in Windsor, Ontario. She is currently a BFA student at the University of Windsor School of Visual Arts and a Senior Research Fellow of Broken City Lab.

video artist for Selvedge

Sigi Torinus creates hybrid, new media works with an emphasis on performance and site-specific installation. Her research explores perceptions of space, time and materiality as they meet or collide in the virtuality of digital space or physicality of a geographic location, exploring ideas of origin and destination; mobility, navigation, cultural displacement, the migratory journey. Native to the Virgin Islands, she holds an MFA from the Braunschweig Art Institute, Germany, and San Francisco State University in California. Her works have been exhibited in the US, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia and Canada.

Within the trajectory of art and technology the exploration of “liveness”, interactivity and improvisatory environments are an important part of her artistic practice. She is a core member of the Noiseborder Ensemble, a multimedia performance group founded in 2008 dedicated to exploring new ways of integrating acoustic instruments, electronic sound processing and live video mixing. Her research includes bridging the worlds of audio and video by exploring interfacing possibilities between audio performance and sequencing software with her video/image based work.

For more, visit sigi.cc