X AVANT New Music Festival
Thursday Oct. 22

PHANTOM ORCHARD
Ikue Mori, electronics
Zeena Parkins, harp

With opening act:
Ken Aldcroft's Convergence Ensemble (CD release)

Location: The Music Gallery
Doors: 7PM, Concert 8PM
Advance Tickets $15 at Ticketweb.Ca, Rotate This & Soundscapes
BUY TICKETS ONLINE NOW!
At the Door: $20 regular, $15 member & senior, $10 student

ALSO:
Interactive Workshop with Ikue Mori & Zeena Parkins, Friday Oct. 23 at Noon, Music Gallery Fellowship Room, 197 John St. — FREE!

The Music Gallery is pleased to present the Toronto debut of Phantom Orchard. Friends and colleagues since 1988, Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins are two of the strongest musical voices out of the Downtown New York scene. Lynchpins of bands as diverse as DNA, Skeleton Crew, Electric Masada, Hemophiliac and Björk, their duo project Phantom Orchard is the perfect outlet for their unique and personal musical languages and their rapport is evident in each and every piece. Mystery, lyricism and electronic soundscapes from this most dynamic of all dynamic duos.

And as long-time supporters of Toronto’s local music scene, and specifically our town’s rich improvised music community, we are pleased to present the CD release concert for Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Enemble as part of the X Avant Festival.

Phantom Orchard: Biography
Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977. She started playing drums and soon formed the seminal No Wave band DNA, with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, while creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds, forever altering the face of rock music.

In the mid '80s, Ikue started to employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. She subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. In 1998, she was invited to perform with Ensemble Modern as a soloist along with Zeena Parkins, and composer Fred Frith.

In 2000, Ikue started using the laptop to expand on her signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression. The Tate Modern commissioned her to create the live soundtrack for Maya Deren's silent films, which premiered in 2007. In 2008, she celebrated her 30th year in music, presenting five ongoing projects at Japan Society in NYC.

Zeena Parkins, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, and pioneer of the electric harp, has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. Parkins makes use of anything within reach as a possible tool with which she can enhance the sonic capabilities of her harps. She accurately describes her harp as a "sound machine of limitless capacity" and has used household objects and hardware store finds, including: alligator clips, nails, rubber erasers, rubber tubing, felt, bows, metal candy lids, oversized metal bolts, hair clips, glass jars, discarded strings, as well as more conventional devices such as Leslie cabinets, guitar pedals, and numerous other digital processing hardware and assorted and varied software.

Parkins has appeared on over 70 CDs and in hundreds of concerts in both large and small spaces all over the world. A lightning bolt of a performer, Parkins is a sought-after collaborator, performing with Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Björk, Kaffe Matthews, Pauline Oliveros and many others.

“Tension abounds, and a strange beauty too... This is experimental music, yet focused on the emotional expressiveness of music... some of the pieces are of wonderful beauty, sweet and dark and the same time.” — Stef Gijssels, Free Jazz

Ken Aldcroft's Convergence Ensemble: Biography
With a committed and versatile approach to both composition and improvisation, guitarist Ken Aldcroft is a key player in Toronto's dynamic creative music scene. After establishing himself as a compelling new voice in the jazz scene of his hometown of Vancouver, Ken moved to Toronto in 2001 and quickly made connections with like-minded collaborators. Since then, his own multi-faceted development as an improvising guitarist, bandleader, composer, producer, and organizer has corresponded with the re-emergence of Toronto as an important centre for creative improvised music-making.

As a guitarist, Ken extends the jazz tradition that lies at the core of his music education. Through his commitment to a wide-open field of musical influence and to forging new collaborative ties, Ken has systematically sought new and challenging contexts in which to improvise. As a result, his playing reflects the breadth of his interests, from the extended bebop of a jazz repertory project like Hat and Beard to the languages of European improvisation and noise music that he explores in collective improvisation settings with players such as John Oswald, Michael Snow and Brandon Valdivia.

As a bandleader, Ken's projects have provided increasingly nuanced contexts in which his compositional and ensemble-related ideas find voice. The evolution of the Ken Aldcroft Convergence Ensemble reflects his development in these regards as well as the expanding scope of music played by groups under his leadership. While his Group, Quartet and Trio + 1, his trio of projects during the early 2000s, synthesized models from jazz and derivative musical traditions, the Convergence Ensemble expands the frame of stylistic reference and conceptual depth considerably. Three recordings by the Convergence Ensemble, The Great Divide (2006), Trolleys (2008), and the newly released Our Hospitality (2009), are clear testimony to this fact.

Concurrent with this trajectory as a performing musician is Ken's commitment to supporting the scene of creative music in Toronto as an organizer and producer. He was a founding Board member and the first President of the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto. AIMToronto's formation in 2005 was instigated in part by concert and series programming that Ken had been doing with Joe Sorbara, with whom he founded the Leftover Daylight Series, a weekly series of creative music that began in 2003. Since then, AIMToronto has helped to bolster the reputation of Toronto's creative music scene locally, nationally, and internationally.