EVERYSEEKER 2022
We are so thrilled to announce our hybrid digital and live festival.
The photos used in the festival graphics were made by combining a series of images synthesized through code, into one visual. This computational output is somewhat incomprehensible. There is a denial of easy categorization. We are playfully surprised again and again in its assortment of forms. Things aren’t what they seem.
For EVERYSEEKER 2022, expect to be moved by similar emotive abstractions. ES 2022 embraces the lossiness, the unrendered, the experimental, the glitches and sonic cacophony. This festival is dynamic, we relish in its various happenings. Our artists remind us to get lost in the weird, the noise and the genre-bent. We can’t wait to share this year’s artists with you. We can’t wait for you to enter ES 2022’s multitude of compositions, see you both on the keyboard and away sweating it out amongst summer flowers…
or amongst vases of flowers…
are those flowers?
THURSDAY JUNE 9th
☉(nick dourado) | Evelyn C. White & the New Horizons Baptist Church Choir | Kama La Mackerel | All Nations Christian Reformed Church | 2535 Robie St | 730PM | $20 or PWYC
Photo by Paul Atwood (@paulatwoodphoto)
☉
☉ (aka. gold/sun) represents a sonical exposition of resonance and elastic potential in space using acoustic instruments, as a response to the commonness of manipulation and simulation. nick dourado speaks through the harmonic abacus, conceptualized as a grand piano, with the comfort of a mother tongue, paying special attention to the impermanent structures traversing through the environment. dourado, raised under russian exceptionalism within romantic classicism, has carried this tradition through robust study in embodiment, physical acoustics, spontaneous composition to present a contemporary music outside of stylism, eurocentricity, or denomination situated playfully and blissfully within the american musical tradition. dourado's many-fingered approach has supported Special Costello, Lido Pimienta, Kwento, Tica Holiday and the Creative Music Workshop Faculty and can be heard on Aquakultre's "Legacy", "Fiver and the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition" and Beverly Glenn-Copeland's "Live at Le Guess Who".
au79.bandcamp.com instagram: @bb.budiji
Photo by Noire Mouliom
Kama La Mackerel
Kama La Mackerel (they/them). Legal name: Kama MAUREEMOOTOO. Spoken word artist/poetry performer/storyteller.
ZOM-FAM is a solo performance adapted from Kama La Mackerel’s award-winning eponymous poetry collection. At once personal and political, ZOM-FAM (meaning “man-woman” or “transgender” in Mauritian Kreol) is composed of coming-of-age stories of a gender-creative child growing up in the 80s and 90s on a plantation island. Multiply-voiced and imbued with complex storytelling, ZOM-FAM enunciates a multiplicity of movements within a fluid poetic and choreographic narrative that brings together ancestral voices, femme tongues, broken colonial languages and a tender queer subjectivity, all of which grapple with the legacy of plantation servitude.
Named after the god of love, Kama La Mackerel is a multilingual writer, visual artist, performer, translator and educator who believes in love, transformation and justice. Their work ventures beyond the borders of disciplinarity and creates hybrid spaces from which to enunciate decolonial and queer vocabularies. Wholeheartedly invested in ocean narratives, island sovereignty, transgender poetics and ancestral healing, their body of work challenges colonial notions of time and space as these relate to history, power, language, subject formation and the body. Of Indo-African origins, Kama is from Mauritius, has lived in India, and settled in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal about a decade ago. ZOM-FAM their poetry collection (Metonymy Press) was named a CBC Best Poetry Book and a Globe and Mail Best Debut. World Literature Today called ZOM-FAM "a milestone in Mauritian literature." In 2021, they were awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Joseph S. Stauffer Prize for emerging and mid-career artists in Visual Arts. Kama has lectured, performed and exhibited their work in museums, galleries, theaters and universities across the world including the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University, the Schwules Museum in Berlin and the Point of Order Gallery in Johannesburg.
https://lamackerel.net/ https://www.facebook.com/KamaLaMackerel https://www.instagram.com/kamalamackerel/ https://twitter.com/KamaLaMackerel
Photo by Joanne Bealy
Evelyn C. White
PRAISE SONG FOR WHITNEY: A tribute to the late singer Whitney Houston
Halifax journalist Evelyn C. White is the author of Alice Walker: A Life.
New Horizons Baptist Church Choir
Tracey Daye (she/her); Tara Taylor (she/her);Leslie Daye (she/her); Debbie Emmerson (She/her); Donna Gough(she/her); Sylvia (she/her); Roy (he/him); Ronnie Wright(he/him); Gary Bernard (he/him)
One song selection entitled "How Excellent" sung in collaboration with author Evelyn White's reading of her work.
New Horizons Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Halifax, Nova Scotia that was established by Black Refugees in 1832. When the chapel was completed, black citizens of Halifax were reported to be proud because it was evidence that former slaves could establish their own institutions in Nova Scotia.
Morgan Toney | 12PM | VIDEO RELEASE
Music’s an almost alchemical force to Canadian Mi'kmaq fiddler and singer Morgan Toney. In just a short amount of time, Toney has invigorated both the Atlantic music communities and Mi’kmaq communities by bringing together the fiery fiddling of Cape Breton Island with the old songs of the Mi’kmaq, some dating back up to 500 years. He calls this fusion Mi’kmaltic (Mi’kmaq + Celtic) and it's his way of celebrating his language and heritage. “There are two worlds of Mi’kmaq music,” Toney explains, “song and fiddle. They had never come together before. People knew of each, but never had I ever seen a collaboration between Celtic and Mi'kmaq culture before. Toney’s debut album First Flight, nominated for 3 East Coast Music Awards and a Canadian Folk Music Award, showcases this unique combination, both in the way he transforms traditional songs like the Ko’jua and the Mi’kmaq Honour Song, but also for the new songs he’s creating. “Msit No’kmaq” was written partially in Mi’kmaq and features a fiddle break from the great Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac. “Kwana Li” is a traditional Mi'kmaq song that Toney added new English lyrics to and “For the Elders” is a newly composed waltz from Toney. With the immediate accolades and attention, it’s easy to forget that Morgan Toney is so new to the music, having only played the fiddle for a few years. But there’s something deeper at work here. His great-grandfather and three other great-uncles were all Mi'kmaq fiddlers of renown in the community. In a sense, Toney’s coming back full circle. And circles are something he understands. “We are living in circles,” he says. “The earth is a circle. The drum is a circle, how we move around is a circle, how we greet each other. The talking circle is huge.” Ishkōdé Records introduces First Flight to the world on March 25, 2022.
Photo by Matthew Ingraham
FRIDAY JUNE 10th
Kama La Mackerel | Hybridity: Inhabiting Interstices in Artistic Creation | Khyber Centre for the Arts | 1880 Hollis St | 2pm |FREE
In this artist talk and workshop, multidisciplinary artist, Kama La Mackerel, will share their processes when it comes to interdisciplinary creation. How does an artist engage in an exploration that is at once embodied, literary and visual? How do we move from one aesthetic space to another in the creation of a poetic universe? Kama La Mackerel has an artistic practice that spans from multilingual literary creation, stage performances, textiles, photography, moving image and organic material installations. In this workshop, they will share their experiences, tools, tips and tricks for anyone, at any level of creation, seeking to expand their work into interdisciplinarity.
k’tiona | every-level |Khyber Centre for the Arts | 1880 Hollis St | 7PM | FREE
k’tiona - Photo courtesy of artist
k’tiona
k’tiona (Kate Macdonald) was born and raised in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. Proudly, African Nova Scotian and queer. Since she was young art has been a way for her to process her identity and the world/systems around her. She has been long intrigued by the possibilities of creating immersive other worlds. Themes that are of particular interest include themes of justice, healing, joy, magic, self, community, energy, shapes/movement, gender, the ocean, astrology, and ancestral connection - of course all seen through and interpreted through a Black lens. k’tiona has recently moved towards alchemizing sound, movement, projection, performance, visual art and magic all in one space in attempts to create and immersive experience.
sound, projection, and movement all coming together to create a new planet. what's it gunna be? a weird ride, for sure.
In partnership with Eyelevel
instagram: @kaymackd, @themagicproject_, @omni_astrology
New Chance | TUSH | 700 Bliss| Khyber Centre for the Arts | 1880 Hollis St | 9pm | $20 or PWYC
New Chance
New Chance is the musical project of Toronto artist Victoria Cheong. New Chance has performed in art venues, concert halls, dance clubs and public spaces. Her work in music also includes DJing, remixing and a long time collaborative practice in contemporary dance. Her other projects include a collaboration with reggae legend Willi Williams, and the musical duo Nice Hands with dancer-poet Aisha Sasha John. New Chance released her full-length LP Real Time and accompanying remix album Real Time Remixed in 2021 on We Are Time.
www.newchance.biz IG @ vicsanointedfavourites TWITTER @NewChanceVC https://www.facebook.com/ear.rationelle
TUSH
“One of Toronto’s most incendiary groove machines, [TUSH surfaced] from the city’s fertile warehouse scene where Kamilah Apong and Jamie Kidd ignite dance floors with their transcendent live show –– a celebration indebted to the glory days of early disco that cleverly [avoids] pastiche thanks to the troupe’s sheer talent.” (Exclaim!)
700 Bliss
700 Bliss is the collaborative experimental club project of Philadelphia artists DJ Haram and Moor Mother. Paired up creatively since 2014, DJ Haram and Moor Mother met amidst Philadelphia’s thriving art and music scene. 700 Bliss’ music reflects an all-encompassing approach to style, filtering rap, noise, club, and folk through modulated and distorted hardware samplers, with layered sounds balanced with delicate and eerie beats. They work to create previously unheard melodies that propel lyrics of struggle, subjugation, and social alienation in an unjust world. Their debut EP Spa 700 was released in 2018 on Halcyon Veil & Don Giovanni and their first full-length album Nothing To Declare was recently released on Hyperdub during May 2022.
Black Folks Don’t Swim? | 12PM | VIDEO RELEASE
Black Folks Don’t Swim? Is a soulful Black music machine from space that must be pronounced with the upswing inflection of a question. Led by a core ensemble of Black Gender-Variant folks, their music floats through a myriad of liberating sonic traditions including Jazz-Funk, Quiet Storm, Neo and Future Soul, R&B.Their highly anticipated debut album “For the Source” can be found wherever music is streamed digitally.Blackfolksdontswim.bandcamp.com , Instagram @blackfolksdontswim, twitter @whodomtsim , soundcloud.com/blackfolksdontswim
Photo by Kirby Griffin
BANDCAMP , Instagram @blackfolksdontswim, twitter @whodomtsim , soundcloud.com/blackfolksdontswim
SATURDAY JUNE 11TH
The Creative Music Workshop presents: The Creative Process - Exploring the building blocks of ImprovisationKhyber Centre for the Arts | 1880 Hollis St | 2pm | FREE
The Creative Music Workshop led by J.A Granelli
The Creative Music Workshop was founded over twenty five years ago by master musician/teacher Jerry Granelli. CMW is dedicated to teaching improvisation, mindfulness and the path of being an artist in our everyday world. For the first time in two years CMW will be offering Its summer intensive workshop from July 9th to the 17th in Halifax in conjunction with the Halifax Jazz Festival.
In this three hour workshop we will explore the fundamentals of “spontaneous composition” - improvisation not rooted in a particular style but open to anything anyone wants to bring to it. We will work on listening skills, mindfulness and the compositional aspects of improvising using singing and movement. All skill levels, instrumentalists and art forms welcome, no experience necessary! Join us for an afternoon of community building through improvisation.
J. Anthony Granelli
Based in New York City but originally from northern California, J. Anthony Granelli is a flexible bassist/composer who combines jazz with rock and funk and can -- depending on the mood he is in -- be groove-oriented one minute and cerebral or abstract the next. As a teenager, Granelli moved to Seattle and went on to play with singer Jay Clayton and trombonist Julian Priester in that city. After that, he returned to the Golden State and attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with bassist/Ornette Coleman alumni Charlie Haden. A alumni of New York's Knitting Factory scene, J. now resides in Brooklyn where he has restorative body work practice.
Susanne Chui
A central figure in Halifax’s contemporary dance community, Susanne became Co-Artistic Director of Mocean Dance in 2012. With Mocean, Susanne has developed roles in works by Heidi Strauss, Serge Bennathan, Tedd Robinson, Lesandra Dodson and Claire French, and co-created Burnwater: Alchemy with Erin Donovan (Hear Here Productions).
Susanne trained professionally at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and was based in Toronto from 1999-2007. During that time she danced for many independent choreographers and extensively with Yvonne Ng, with whom she toured to Singapore in 2005. She was a founding member of TILT: sound + motion dance company, where she had the pleasure of performing works by some of Canada’s finest choreographers.
Since returning to Halifax, Susanne has become immersed in the dance community. Susanne collaborates across disciplines, worked regularly with master musician Jerry Granelli and teaches at Creative Music Workshop, an annual improvisation-based summer program.
G.R. Gritt | Be Heard | Virtually on Zoom | 7pm | FREE
G.R. Gritt
G.R. Gritt's music serves as a beacon of connection for all who come near it. Welcoming yet truthful, they reclaim space through songs that show that intersectional identity is expansive and not to be divided into parts. By exploring the emotional and cultural core of their heritage as a non-binary, queer, Indigenous artist they create new space and encourage others to do the same. In this presentation Gritt will share music mixed with stories, songwriting tips, gear talk and answer any questions you have for them!
Juno Award winning G.R. Gritt pulls effortlessly from the past to create soulful futurisms. With their new sound that elegantly weaves the melodies using vocals, guitar and electronic elements, they create both intimate and anthemic music that would fit in a folk club, a dance club and anywhere in between. G.R. Gritt is a Two-Spirit, Transgender, Francophone, Anishinaabe and Métis artist. Their music serves as a beacon of connection for all who come near it. Welcoming yet truthful, they reclaim space through songs that show that intersectional identity is expansive and not to be divided into parts. By exploring the emotional and cultural core of their heritage as a non-binary, queer, Indigenous artist they create new space and encourage others to do the same. They are a Northern Ontario Music and Film Award (NOMFA) winning artist for Outstanding Album by an Indigenous Artist (for Quantum Tangle’s album “Shelter as we Go…”), and a nominee for Outstanding Engineer, and Outstanding Album. In 2021, they were nominated for 2 SSIMA Awards - Metis artist of the Year and Social Voice and they won the FMO Songs from the Heart - Political category Award. G.R. Gritt released their full-length album, Ancestors, on April 16, 2021 on Coax Records and their song “Ancestors ft. Kimmortal” made it onto Sirius XM Indigiverse's Top 20 countdown for 2021.
www.grgritt.com, @grgritt, Bandcamp
JJJJJerome Ellis | 12PM | VIDEO RELEASE
JJJJJerome Ellis is an animal, stutterer, and artist. He was raised by Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants in Tidewater, VA, where he prays, gardens, and resides among the egrets and asters.
Photo credit Cameron Kelly McLeod
SUNDAY JUNE 12TH
EVERYSTINKER: ZEANIE BABIES
| Khyber Sidewalk | 1880 Hollis St | 2pm | FREE
EVERYSTINKER presents ZEANIE BABIES, a new and interactive zine celebrating stuffies and sound art, available to kids online and in print. Visit www.khyber.ca/everystinker or stop by Khyber's curbside for the zine launch party. You and your plush pals are invited for bubbles, street chalk, soft sounds, and fuzzy FREAKquencies.
Arjun Lal | Vagine’s Sound Bath | Khyber Centre for the Arts | 1880 Hollis St | 3pm | FREE
It's not always easy to relax. I have been prioritizing and exploring ambience in my daily life through environmental considerations such as light, sound, temperature, and other sensations. I am searching for relaxation.
A sound bath is a practice that uses vibrations as a form of healing. Similar to how loud speakers can shake the floor of a night club, our bodies and molecules also respond to sound through vibrations.
Arjun Lal is an interdisciplinary artist from Kjipuktuk working across visual media, performance, and sound.
In partnership with Eyelevel Gallery
Photo by Tee Johnny
@arjunlal92. @vagine_official
Roxanne Nesbitt | 12 PM | VIDEO RELEASE
Roxanne Nesbitt is an multidisciplinary artist, exploring the space between sound and design. Her research explores radical instrument design, the hinge between composition and improvisation, sculptural ceramics and participatory sound installation. Roxanne celebrates process, making work that is intimate, inquisitive, and exploratory. Currently, Roxanne makes her home on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
roxannenesbitt.com @roxannenesbitt, SOUNDCLOUD
Photo by Andi McLeish
Mother Tongues | 5 PM | VIDEO RELEASE
Mother Tongues harks back to a time when music and mysticism were entwined, carrying on the canon of psychedelic music that came before them, taking things somewhere new and unexplored. Listeners of Stereolab, Bjork, Broadcast and My Bloody Valentine will rejoice! The group has been a prominent part of the Toronto music scene since 2012. In 2019 they signed with Buzz Records (home of artists such as Dilly Dally, Weaves). They released their Debut EP “Everything You Wanted” in the summer of 2020. The release received wide praise from critics in publications such as Exclaim!, Now Magazine and their work has been shared by notable critics like Anthony Fantano. Their music has been aired on the CBC, and was featured on George Stroumboulopoulos' Top Tracks of 2020. The band has toured Canada and the US, with appearances at Pop Montreal, New Colossus, CMW, NXNE, River & Sky, Megaphono, Night Owl Fest, and Exclaim! Magazine’s Class of series. They have shared the stage with notable artists such as Dilly Dally, U.S Girls, Fucked Up, The Sadies, The Mattson 2, Yves Jarvis and many more.
@mothertonguesband
photo by @fengish