April 18, 2024
Doors: 7:30 pm
Show: 8 pm
$20/PWYC
Improvised & spontaneous quartet music by Sarah Belle Reid (trumpet and electronics), Ryan Gaston (daxophone and electronics), annais linares (voice), and Ben Finley (bass and electronics).
Sarah Belle Reid is a performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer, and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electronic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical music, experimental and interactive electronics, visual arts, noise music, and improvisation. In addition to her performance and compositional work, Reid runs an online music education company dedicated to teaching sound synthesis and electroacoustic composition to professional and hobbyist musicians. She has mentored thousands of musicians from around the world in her online programs, and is a frequent guest lecturer at notable institutions in the US and Canada including Stanford University, University of Victoria, California Institute of the Arts, New York University (NYU), among others.
Ryan Gaston (b. 1990) is a performer/composer, instrument designer, and writer who makes devices and music that combine sonic elements of noise, free improvisation, and experimental electroacoustic music. Gaston’s creative work explores temporal perception—memory, preconception, time travel, and the concept of the “present”—by using chaotic, unpredictable electronic structures as the conceptual basis for both electronic instruments and musical compositions. His writing focuses on the history and techniques of experimental electronic music and electronic musical instrument design, with a special focus on American west coast trends in the second half of the 20th century.
Ben Finley is a collaborative and solo performer-composer, singer, improviser, and writer grounded in creative acoustic and electric bass playing. He leads and co-leads several ensembles that cross compositional boundaries, drawing inspiration from chamber music, song forms, improvisational music making, electronics and the sound worlds of local environments. He grew up on a music festival farm (Westben) where he witnessed many ways of making music, entwined with land and creatures. Ben is the co-founder and creative director of the Westben Centre for Connection & Creativity’s Performer-Composer Residency, which since 2018 has welcomed many diverse sound explorers to collaborate, share creative music and exchange perspectives. He is also Westben’s Sustainability Coordinator, working on various environmental care initiatives on the Westben grounds. He is a current Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph, studying music festivals and creative music practices as sites of eco-cultural regeneration. Please find more about Ben’s projects at benfinleymusic.com.
Raised in sunny Palm Springs, California, vocalist, performer and social practice artist annais linares brings a warm approach to improvising with others. In California, she studied with vocalists Carmina Escobar, Jessika Kenney and Sharon Chohi Kim. During that time she learned to experiment with different vocal textures, timbres and vocables, playfully exploring her inner worlds in resonance with the external. She grounds her practice in emotional expression and lucid language, doing her best to connect with herself, other humans, more than humans, and beyond earthly realms.
