experimental music

Name: LITHOPHONICA | CD Release, Concert/Discussion
Start: 2025-06-12T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-06-12T21:00:00-04:00
Location: ImprovLab

January 2025
Wet Sounds Series Presents: Pantayo

January 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

On Saturday January 25th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis presents a performance and conversation with PANTAYO. The second guest in the series hosted by Musagetes in Guelph, Pantayo are queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks based in Tkaronto, Canada. The ensemble combines traditional Kulintang music from the Philippines with contemporary influences and experimental sounds derived from their experiences as queer diasporic Filipinxs on Turtle Island.

$15
February 2025
[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: “How a Sound Follows Another” (Talk @ ImprovLab)

February 13, 2025 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Cancelled due to inclement weather |
In this discussion, we'll shed light on the art-theoretical approaches of the hakosalo_tuhino duo. Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.

Free
[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: “How a Sound Follows Another” (Performance @ Silence)

February 13, 2025 @ 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Silence 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.

Free
March 2025
Immersive Soundscape Music

March 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Andra McCartney’s radio piece Learning to Walk is an experimental radio story made in 2004 about traumatic memory, love, and walking. Her piece Waiting games and widespread smoke (feat. Narcy) from 2018 is based on a train trip from Toronto to Vancouver reflecting on the widespread smoke and freight delays that structured it during the 2018 fires prevalent in Western Canada at the time.

Darren Copeland’s works on the program combine acousmatic and soundscape approaches to sound creation. His piece …while working and walking is based on exploring his new rural home on foot back in 2015 and while cleaning up and removing old building structures. His piece On Schedule from 2003 transforms a soundscape recording from the World Soundscape Project collection at Simon Fraser University. Synthetic sounds are also generated by plotting the times of station stops on the multi-day route from London Waterloo to Moskva Byelorusski.

Free
Turntable Trio: Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, Evicshen—Wet Sounds #3

March 30, 2025 @ 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

On Sunday March 30th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis, presents a performance and conversation with female pioneers of new turntablism, Turntable Trio—Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Evicshen (Victoria Shen).

By Donation
June 2025
LITHOPHONICA | CD Release, Concert/Discussion

June 12, 2025 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Please join us on Thursday, June 12 at 7:00 PM (ET) to celebrate the release of the marvellous, eccentric Lithophonica I & II (Bedrock Resonances) by Gayle Young and James Harley on the Farpoint Recordings label in Dublin.

This CD Release, Concert, and Discussion event will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. Admission is FREE and open to everybody!

More About LITHOPHONICA

Stones, the instruments featured on this album, are joined by sounds of bells, sticks and Young’s stringed instruments as Harley expands their resonance, shaping sounds through granulation, layering, transposition, delays, and spatialization.

Young’s collection of resonant stones from the shores of Newfoundland, resonant sticks from abandoned beaver lodges in Ontario, played with bells and assorted hardware, are combined with stringed instruments she designed and built.

As hex-bolts are rolled over stones resting on strings, their vibrations cause the strings to sound. Bells resonate with stones, stones rock on strings, and resonant sticks bounce on strings.

Signal processing simultaneously expands the depth and frequency range, adding complexity through layering and subtle shifts over time.

Additional details to follow

Free

January 2025

February 2025

March 2025

June 2025

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