September 2018 Music

Friday 14 September

1:30pm, Friday, Silence, free Double-bill: Bernard Falaise solo & Konk Pack

Bernard Falaise

Guitarist and composer Bernard Falaise is a vital presence in Montréal’s field of musique actuelle, improvisation, and avant-rock. His playing is beyond category, demonstrating a knack for sculpting forms out of the rich textures he coaxes from pedals and amplifier. Falaise’s latest solo record, lézardes et zébrures (Ambiances Magnétiques), is a delicate work where layers of material organized in various rhythmic cells, unfold in richly satisfying ways. His solo in Guelph, however, could reflect any of his radical approaches, and will be a wonderfully intimate introduction to one of Canada’s finest creative musicians.

Konk Pack

For over twenty years, this international trio has played its energetic electroacoustic improvised music, documented on five recordings. Roger Turner’s quicksilver drumming generates enormous momentum while evading predictable patterns. Tim Hodgkinson, best known for his membership in Henry Cow, contributes a radical set of musical resources with the unconventional instrumentation of lapsteel guitar, clarinet, and electronics. German analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn has amazing command of an instrument capable of a bewildering range of sounds and timbres. Together, Konk Pack music is intensely focused, energetic, and totally singular.

5:30pm, Friday, Silence, free Amirtha Kidambi & Darius Jones

Amirtha Kidambi & Darius Jones

These musical friends and close colleagues are both in Guelph to lead their respective bands, which provides a golden opportunity for an intimate voice-saxophone duo concert. Singer Amirtha Kidambi contributed in extraordinary fashion to The Oversoul Manual (AUM Fidelity), saxophonist and composer Darius Jones’s all-vocal (but wordless) suite. Kidambi has clearly been inspired by working with Jones, and has incorporated and synthesized his approach to composing for voice in the context of her group, Elder Ones. This concert provides a superb chance to experience the close rapport of these special musicians.

Saturday, 15 September

THE SILENCE COLLECTIVE – Tabula Rasa Saturday, September 15 8:00PM Silence – 46 Essex St. Donation to Silence or PWYC

Sunday 16 September

8pm, Sunday, Silence, $15/$10 Allison Cameron & Ben Grossman

Allison Cameron & Ben Grossman

While Toronto’s Allison Cameron is best known for her prolific composing, improvising has also been at the core of her practice for almost twenty years, where she applies an uncommon instrumentation filtered through a radical imagination: Electronic keyboards, banjo, piano, amplifiers, radios, crackle boxes, cassette tapes, objects, and toys. Allison is paired with Guelph’s own Ben Grossman, one of the finest players of the hurdy-gurdy. These masters of understatement, nuance timbres, and deep rapport through improvised form-making will be an apt finale for this year’s festival.