YAYA BEY

Bey considers herself mostly an “East Coast girl” because of the formative years she spent as an adult creating and protesting in the DMV area. It was D.C. producer Chucky Thompson (known for his work with Notorious B.I.G. and Diddy) who encouraged Bey to record her own songs after years of writing for others and performing spoken word poetry. Like her dad, the pioneering rapper Grand Daddy I.U., Bey made the most out of what she had as a self-taught musician with a penchant for storytelling and an ear for sampling.

Yaya Bey’s 2016 debut, The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown, was an ambitious project that included a dreamy, largely acoustic mixtape, book, and digital collage inspired by her front-line activism as a street medic in Ferguson. “You spend two years of your life protesting and getting assaulted and arrested—you got a lot of shit to say after that,” Bey said.

Since then, she’s sharpened her sound and honed her focus, using the same D.I.Y. ethos on Madison Tapes (2020) that drove Trill’eta Brown to move from the global struggle of Black liberation towards her own inner healing. Inspired by the warm, smooth soul of Donny Hathaway and the strength of musicians like Alice Smith, Mary J. Blige, and writer Toni Morrison, Bey aims to soundtrack the lives of Black women just like her. With her 404 and pen, she brings an electrifying insight to the seemingly mundane like corporate malaise, heartache, and social media anxieties.

Bey has also developed her skills as a multidisciplinary artist, labeled “a force to be reckoned with in the art world” by Essence Magazine and acclaim from Solange’s Saint Heron agency. To date, she’s shown her collage work in galleries and has had two residencies at Brooklyn’s MoCADA Museum. She also creates her own merch and album artwork, including the visuals for her forthcoming EP (April 9th, 2021).

I’THANDI MUNRO

I’thandi Munro is a mixed Afro-Euro L’nu woman living in K’jipuktuk, Miꞌkmaꞌki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. Munro is Professional performance and visual artist. In 2020 she completed her BFA earning a double major in Photography + Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing from NSCAD University. As a racialized person living in a postcolonial environment, Munro uses the representation of line and of lineage as the underlying concepts through her fine art, craft, and dance. Often merging mediums into finished pieces there is always a sense of multiness within her work. Melding notions of the digital within her craft Munro continuously seeks to learn new ways of making. She leaves space for her pieces to naturally evolve through reaction and discussion. This creates an ever changing flux body of work that can be continued, explored, and realized in many different ways. Munro is a SSHRC funded research assistant for Craft and The Digital Turn, sits on the board of The Woods professional hip hop dance company, is a programming committee member at Eyelevel Gallery, and works as a programming and communications assistant + project coordinator at Nocturne Halifax. I’thandi continues to teach dance at East Coast Dance Academy and is now a mom of two who loves doing the most for her family, and community.

SILLA + RISE

Silla have been performing together since 2005.  Its core members, Charlotte Qamaniq (Iglulik, NU) and Cynthia Pitsiulak (Kimmirut, NU) were joined in 2020 by the amazing Charlotte Carleton (Panniqtuuq, NU).

Silla respects, honours and preserves Inuit culture and pays homage to the Inuit land and its strong connection to our spirituality.  With our music, we invite you to experience the sounds of traditional and contemporary katajjaq - Inuit throat song.

Rise Ashen (Ottawa, ON) is a global-grooves producer, percussionist, DJ, and dancer.  He produces Silla and Rise and performs electronic percussion with the band for their live performances.  Rise has spent his life pursuing the intersection of traditional and futuristic music.

Silla and Rise was founded in 2016, coming together to blend traditional aspects of Inuit throat singing and futuristic dance floor beats.  Since then they’ve been nominated for a Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year in 2017 for their self-titled Debut: Silla + Rise, and their second album Galactic Gala for World Music Album of the Year in 2019. They were nominated for the Indigenous Music Awards for Best Inuit for Indigenous Language, or Francophone Album in 2017 won the Stingray Award at Mundial Festival in Montreal in 2018.

DARCIE BERNHARDT

Darcie “Ouiyaghasiak” Bernhardt is an Inuvialuk/Gwichin artist from Tuktuyaaqtuuq,NT Alumna of NSCADU in 2019 (BFA). Raised in Tuktoyaktuk where the ocean’s harsh winds carve into the Western Arctic landscape. Bernhardt has a special bond created from this ecosystem to her family and sense of place. Her practice has primarily focused on the narrative of domestic life in the North stemming from memories of home.

Bernhardt was the featured artist for the Inuit Art Foundation titled Nanuk and Jijuu at Art Toronto in (October, 2019). Bernhardt’s work was installed at Nuit Blanche (Montreal, 2019) as a part of GLAM Collective’s Memory Keepers I residency, and she was the curatorial assistant for Memory Keepers II at Art in the Open (Charlottetown, 2019). Her collaboration film with Tom Mcleod and was on the short films at ImagineNATIVE (Toronto, 2020).

This past October Bernhardt’s collaboration film with Carmel Farahbakhsh titled Nanuk & Bibi was shown at Nocturne (Halifax, 2020) and was part of RBC’s Emerging Artist Projects From Within. She was recently awarded Indigenous Artist Recognition from Arts Nova Scotia (2020).

VIJAY IYER

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” composer-pianist VIJAY IYER has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. He received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade. 

He has released two dozen albums, including The Transitory Poems (ECM Records, 2019) in duo with pianist Craig Taborn; Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the Vijay Iyer Sextet; A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) in duo with composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Break Stuff (ECM, 2015) with the Vijay Iyer Trio; the live score to the film Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi (ECM, 2014) by filmmaker Prashant Bhargava; and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project (Pi Recordings, 2013) with poet-performer Mike Ladd. 

On April 9, 2021, ECM will release UNEASY, Iyer’s new trio album, recorded in December 2019 with his friends and collaborators Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums.

Iyer’s concert works have been commissioned and premiered by Brentano Quartet, Lutoslawski Quartet, Ethel, Brooklyn Rider, Imani Winds, American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, LAPhil Group for New Music, American Composers Orchestra, and soloists Matt Haimowitz, Claire Chase, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Shai Wosner, and Jennifer Koh. Iyer is the Artistic Director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. He teaches at Harvard University.

MEG SIVANI

A staple of Tiohtià:ke’s (Montreal’s) experimental, indie and punk scenes, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound engineer and community advocate Meghan Sivani has since relocated back to her hometown of Kjipuktuk (Halifax), returning to performance after a 3 year hiatus spent rehabilitating from an injury. 

After 15+ years as a touring musician, she is currently enjoying the freedom of home studio experimentation with the co-cultivation of QTBIPOC community care, collaboration and disability justice at the forefront of her music practice. 

Citing Brian Eno, R.D. Burman and Laurie Anderson as some of her biggest inspirations, Sivani creates an infectious and joyous celebration of desi culture by fusing sub-continental sounds, contemporary electronics, analog instrumentation and stacked harmonies with incisive songwriting.

JERUSALEM IN MY HEART

Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH) is a live audio-visual performance project,with Lebanese producer and musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Montréal based filmmaker Erin Weisgerber at it’s core.

JIMH is an immersive sonic and visual live experience, with an evolving effort to forge a modern experimental Arabic music wed to hand-made visuals using analog 16mm film at site-specific screen installations.

Weisgerber manipulates the photographic, chemical, and material properties of 16mm film to transform the world framed through her camera; rendering rhythmic images that exist between figuration and abstraction, external vision and internal landscape. She performs 16mm film and audio loops live on multiple projectors.

KEL MANSARAY

Kel Mansaray is a displaced Black multi-instrumentalist (violin, trombone, piano) from Kjipuktuk (Halifax), and based between this place and Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Their music practice draws from a variety of Black musical and storytelling traditions. Feeling the limits of expected roles in classical music as they grew up playing in community groups across the city, Kel’s introduction to improvisation through the teaching of drummer Jerry Granelli and many other local artists have allowed them to reimagine a unique place for themselves, and their beloved instrument. Playing has grown into a way to connect to a sense of embodiment often walled up by social conformity -- specifically the ongoing relegation of Black, queer people to roles outside of mainstream culture and ideals of success.