February 22-24, 2013
TRANZAC Main Hall
292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto
directions
advance tickets available online @ eventbrite dot ca
Free Improvisation
Tania Gill (piano, melodica) Ben Grossman (hurdy gurdy, percussion) Joe Sorbara (drums, percussion)
show: Saturday 23 February, 2pm
Pianist and composer Tania Gill is a key figure in Toronto's jazz and creative music scenes. She has performed and recorded with many diverse world-class artists including Deep Dark United, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Andrew Downing, Charles Spearin and The Happiness Project, Brodie West and Anthony Braxton. She leads the Tania Gill Quartet with Lina Allemano on trumpet, Clinton Ryder on bass, and Jean Martin on drums. Their release, Bolger Station (Barnyard Records), was 'disc of the week' and short-listed for 'disc of the year' by The Globe and Mail. Tania teaches piano, composition, and theory privately in Toronto and at Humber College.
Ben Grossman is a busy musician: improviser, studio musician, composer, noisemaker and audio provocateur. He works in many fields, having played on over 80 CDs, soundtracks for film and television, sound design for theatre, installations, work designed for radio transmission, and live performances spanning early medieval music to experimental electronica. Ben's tools of choice are electronics, percussion, and, especially, the hurdy gurdy (vielle à roue), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument with roots in the European middle ages. Through extended techniques, live-looping and processing, Ben seeks to use it as a physical interface into improvised sound creation, spontaneous composition and the exploration of acoustics, form, and extended aesthetics.
Joe Sorbara is a highly inventive drummer and percussionist with a penchant for coaxing music out of practically anything. Joe's drumkit is regularly augmented with found and prepared material that ensures that the sounds at his ready disposal are practically orchestral in scope. He combines these skills with an extraordinary time-feel that makes him one of the most swinging drummers in Canada when the music demands it of him. Joe's primary creative outlet is his 'seven-or-more-tet' Other Foot First. Elsewhere, he plays in the Remnants Trio, Ronda Rindone's Quorum, the AIMToronto Orchestra and a trio with Wes Neal and British saxophonist Evan Parker.