(Poem) What's that sound?

This poem was written for the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy performance at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS) building at the University of Alberta on March 12, 2015. The poem was inspired by radio-telescopic recordings of the sounds made by the planets in our solar system.

All the celestial bodies referenced here are in the video linked above. Enjoy!


What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
The ringing echoes
of the orb that wears the crown
This is Radio Free Jupiter!
Pugnacious punk ambient radiophonic red-spot rock ‘n’ roll
ringing through the solar system
like it was hers to begin with
Big sexy gas giant, switched-on solar circuitry with storms to burn

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That rumbling in the shadows
that frosty splash of sulphur ash aside the colossus
Hadal contrabass counterpoint
Volcanic blasts splattering at the swirling gaseous canvas
spread across its sky
Ionic artspace, Jackson Pollock studio, Jovian circuitry, silver and gold pockmarks
with guttural undulating undertones

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That swirling urgency
that plaintive pulse
from the dark side of the ringed one
singing and sobbing
Miranda is bleeding, scratched and forlorn
Saturnine by nature and temperament
forever howling at the canopy of night

What’s that sound?
Not that one, that one
For whom does that bell toll?
Ringing like arctic blasts
through a hundred haunted bell towers
Is this the solemn chill that calmed the waters to somnolent Sri Lanka?
The dissonant chimes that calls the Milky Way to prayer?
Váruna, Ouranos, sawing sideways through cosmic currents
buzzsaw of the beyond, slicing space with morbid grace

What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
That splash of blue ocean
amid the black beyond
delicately orchestrated typhoons
of silver strings
rhapsody in cobalt and ultramarine
Holst never stopped to listen to the blue voice
The Mystic, it turns out, was also the romantic

What’s that sound?
The slow hiss
Hubble’s dilemma
That pulsing spectral omnipresence
the gears of the cosmic wheelhouse
locking and grinding
forever stretching the perimeter
of the Eridanus Supervoid
Hello darkness, my old friend

In space everybody can year you scream
hear you scratch and rage against the void
skip along the stone paths of the Kuiper Belt
and sing along with mournful Sedna’s
Skeleton Woman blues
pausing at Señor Gomez’s burger bar
before a night swim in the gently lapping magenta lagoon nebula
Sounds like a nothingth of an eternity in the universe
where superlatives reign supreme and dark matter matters

What’s that sound?
Which one?

After the Artery - 6 ways Edmonton's arts community can continue to survive and thrive

Source: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

If you're a member of Edmonton's arts community, you're probably ready to slouch down on the nearest park bench for a good long cry right now. That's assuming you haven't already done this. We're not even two months into 2015, and the year has thus far, for a lack of a better term, sucked balls. It all started with the heartbreaking demise of the venerable Roxy Theatre in an early morning fire on January 13. And now artistically inclined Edmontonians are reeling from the loss of yet another iconic art space, The Artery, which yesterday announced it would be closing its doors for the last time at the end of March.

Both of these occurrences would be heartbreaking enough in isolation,  but the sad fact of the matter is that it's nothing new in this town. The list of performance and visual arts spaces that Edmonton has lost, or is on the verge of losing, has begun to resemble a list of names chiselled on a war memorial. Last year saw the demise of the Avenue Theatre. In 2013 the Haven Social Club, a jazz-focussed basement dive much loved by MacEwan University music students, bid the city farewell. Further back in time, the legendary Sidetrack Cafe, which once upon a time played host to the likes of Canadian icons k.d. lang, Colin James, and Blue Rodeo, bid the world adieu in 2007.

The list of dead venues in Alberta's capital city has become so extensive that the Edmonton Heritage Council has recently embarked on a Dead Venues Project as part of its Edmonton City As Museum initiative, an admirable attempt to keep the city's indie/alt-rock heritage alive. While tributes are always welcome, such archival projects are cold comfort to Edmonton's artists who continue to see venues yanked from under their feet. No area of town has been harder hit than Old Strathcona, the once-spirited heart of bohemian Edmonton, which, thanks to skyrocketing commercial real estate prices, has seen much of its arts scene migrate to more economical pastures, with the Catalyst Theatre (soon to be relocating to the Maclab Theatre at the Citadel) being its latest economic refugee.

All this, of course, is happening at a time of great economic uncertainty in the province as a result of plummeting oil prices and a bewildering budgetary Chicken Little sky-is-falling performance on the part of our newly minted Progressive Conservative Pharaoh. (For the hammiest theatre show in town, just pop into the Alberta Legislature when the house is in session.) For people immersed in the arts community, as well as in post-secondary education (and I'm eyeball-deep in both - lucky me), this means cutbacks. Yes, that Alberta speciality. All this in spite of the fact that the government somehow, inexplicably, seems to have come up with a budgetary surplus (because, you know, we're broke) and that cutting funding to the arts to balance the budget makes about as much sense as shaving your head to lose weight.

The irony, of course, is that Edmonton's arts scene has never been more vibrant than it is at present. On any given night in this city there's a bewildering array of performance and visual art on offer in the city, albeit in a slow but steadily contracting constellation of venues. Edmonton is well known for its big-name festivals - FolkFest, NextFest, the Fringe, the Street Performers Festival, the Poetry Festival, and so on, but that scarcely scratches the surface as to what's going on. As a relatively new Edmontonian (a resident here since the fall of 2008), it's taken me quite a few years to fully appreciate the quality and quantity of artistry in my adopted hometown - even in the middle of winter when it's an uphill task to persuade winter-weary residents to trudge through minus-twenty temperatures to check out a poetry slam or a modern dance spectacle.

Yes, Edmonton's arty folk are a stubborn, tenacious bunch who can probably survive anything. But why must their existence always be such a perilous one? The problem is an economic one (as well, let's admit, of economic priorities on the part of the city's mandarins). Regrettably, artists get screwed in both good and bad economic times. In bad times, funding for the arts invariably gets cuts. In good times, real estate prices inflate to the point where theatre companies, club owners, and other artistic stakeholders can no longer stay above water.

So what can be done to support the arts in this city so as to curb the tide of venues going under? I'm no expert, but here are a few ideas.

1) Go see more shows.

This might sound flippant, but seriously, go see something cool. On a random Tuesday evening, even. Edmonton may not have the prestige of Paris or New Orleans, but the flip side to that is that artists in this city are far more accessible than they are in larger centres. There are improbable art galleries run by medical doctors who really love the arts. There's a devoted (and I mean VERY devoted) heavy metal scene. There's typically three nights a week of wild electronic music at Bohemia. And there's no shortage of theatre, dance, and whatnot. Go to yeglive,ca and find something cool - and go to it! C'mon, you're too young to spend every evening crocheting scarves and taking Instagram photos of your cats!

2) Get to know your local community league.

Edmonton's outsized artistic scene owes a large debt to the city's longstanding network of local community leagues. While not an exclusively Edmontonian phenomenon, Edmonton's community league system is, as far as I know, unique in its extensiveness and civic clout, thanks in no small part to steady funding from the municipal government. If you're an Edmonton-based artist, volunteering for your local community not only gives you the opportunity to lobby on behalf of your fellow artists at the neighbourhood level (i.e. where it really counts), but also gives you affordable access to community league facilities, whose purpose it is to serve as a local venue for stuff the community wants. Not an opportunity any artist would want to pass up.

3) Think outside the box in terms of venues.

Capital A "Art Venues" may be in full-tilt contraction mode in Edmonton, but with anywhere between 18 and 22 cranes punctuating the city's skyline like boreal giraffes, buildings are most definitely not. Moreover, with more per-capita green space than any other Canadian city and a larger land area than Toronto (with about a third of the population), the city is not lacking in places to perform. They just might not be traditional performance spaces. Edmonton's perennially overachieving modern dance scene has, out of both necessity and ingenuity, turned the city's great outdoors into its venue, with the undisputed masters of this being Mile Zero Dance and its artistic director Gerry Morita, whose venues have ranged from Churchill Square to the river valley park system to the delightfully trashy Aurora Motel in the city's unloved industrial west end.

Others are doing the same thing. I myself have had the honour of being invited to contribute a spoken word component to the latest instalment of Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy Takes Over The Science Building. Dancer/choreographer/science nerd Jen Mesch is another Edmonton artist with a penchant for improbable locations, ranging from Edmonton's river valley to actual caves. And the University of Alberta, with its picturesque cliffside setting atop the river valley and its motley assortment of fascinating structures, is a cornucopia of potential performance spaces - including some actual performance spaces like the amusingly toilet-shaped Timms Centre.

4) Forge stronger ties with arts communities elsewhere in Alberta.

Edmonton is essentially an island city. At least that's how it feels much of the time. But while it's a relatively isolated city, it's not really that far from other pockets of civilization. Calgary is a three-hour drive to the south, and is no slouch when it comes to the arts. And it's a treasure trove of great venues. Edmonton's once vibrant underground punk scene may be history now, but Calgary's still has quite a bit of life to it thanks in no small part to places like Vern's Tavern, a venue that helped launch the careers of bands like Sheepdogs and Marianas Trench, and continues to provide an open stage to the weirdest, most obnoxious acts around - bands like "witch punk" Riot Grrrl revivalists Hag Face, my current YYC faves.

Even closer to Edmonton is the increasingly energetic live music scene in Red Deer, which, thanks to Alberta's explosive population growth in recent years, now has a population close to that of Reykjavik, Iceland. It's not a scene I know well at all, but reliable sources tell me that it's getting steadily better - at least on the musical front. Even further south in Alberta is the oddball town of Lethbridge, where heavily bearded and headscarf-clad Hutterites and Mennonites rub shoulders with heavily bearded and keffiyeh-clad hipsters from the University of Lethbridge who frequent events like the Lethbridge Electronic Music Festival and more regular arty happenings at Owl Acoustic Lounge.

Anybody who thinks of Alberta as simply Edmonton, Calgary, and a hillbilly hinterland needs a Lonely Planet update. The problem, of course, is that the province of Alberta has a larger land mass than France and a far worse transportation infrastructure, which means that unless you plan on sleeping in your car (which is only a viable option half the year in this province, and even then not a very attractive one), you need lodging in whatever municipality you find yourself in - particularly given that your typical artsy event ends after the last Red Arrow of the night leaves the station for Edmonton. A network of dedicated artist crash pads on either end,in said cities, perhaps modelled on New Orleans' Musicians' Village, would solve this problem.

5) Forge stronger ties with communities within the city.

Edmonton is distinctly unlike places like Vancouver and Toronto in its relative lack of distinct ethnic enclaves. With the exception of the South Asian community in Mill Woods (an area also replete with new Canadians from elsewhere around the globe) and the East African community on and around 107 Avenue (forever the starting point in the city for whichever immigrant community is the most recent), Edmonton's multicultural population is a true salad bowl. There is nearly as much Ethiopian food in Edmonton's Little Italy than there is Italian, and the city's Chinatown is decidedly more Vietnamese than Chinese. And given China and Italy's past predilections for invading Vietnam and Ethiopia respectively, it's poetic justice in a way.

That said, Edmonton's artistic mainstream (i.e. white people) could all do a better job engaging with the city's many and varied ethno-cultural communities. The spoken word/slam poetry scene is excelling on that front thanks in no small part to Titilope Sonuga and her heir apparent Ahmed Knowmadic of the Breath in Poetry collective - slam poetry at its least obnoxious and most inclusive. Edmonton is also home to what may now be the country's largest urban Aboriginal population, and with it one of Canada's most energetic Aboriginal arts scenes - ranging from Métis country music to raw rez hip hop and stand-up comedy. It's out there. You just need to seek it out.

6) Fight the power.

Yep, put on your best gold Flava Flav teeth, hang a clock around your neck, and fight the power that be. But in all seriousness, the city of Edmonton would have far fewer historic buildings standing were it not for its citizens' willingness to get organized and fight the forces of organized redevelopment. Much of Old Strathcona would have been razed back in the 1970s were it not for the grim determination of its residence to save its innumerable architectural gems. Today the city's venerable McDougall United Church is the latest historic building on the chopping block, and while its future remains very much in doubt, a campaign to save the building has recently shifted into high gear.

Sometimes you just have to be like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker books and lie in front of the bulldozer. And call it a work of art. Because sometimes it is.

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Photo by Natalie Kelsey (deviantart.com)

The sea wall shoots straight down

Beyond the threshold of the eyes

Beneath the inky evanescence above

And the silky nothingness below

That centrifuge where the mind stops minding

And the extremities embrace the moonless chill

And in the unblinking undertow

Yamashita’s gold glistens, then vanishes

Yet another bioluminescent blur

Beyond the precipice of the abyssal plain

Where spider crabs bide their time

And searchlights dissolve like sugar photophores

The curve of your back

Your pearldiver skin

Freezeframes in front of me as I fumble

Dusktreading and night terrorfoaming

Over angry tectonic ridges, rusted warships

And the barnacled skeletons of young men pressed into death

By imperial dreams and decrees

And yet still you urge me forward through the cross current

Beckoning with a supple serenity to surrender

To the will of the waves and the boundaries of reason

When one climactic zone transitions to another

Do we change our name or simply inch forward as we are

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

Why don’t you turn around to face me

As I flail about amidst the black surge

Edo-wan at dusk is lonely beneath the skin

At odds with the detritus below and the neon crescent wrench

That grasps it tight at night

When the denizens of the depths recoil from reach

Why don’t you relight, ignite, send a pulse, a flair

At least make clear

That your crystal tips and grey-eyed equanimity

Were no deep-sea deceit, midwater mindfuck mirage

Minding your own business on the seabed is no trouble at all

When you were there all along and doing it anyway

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Past the shored-up satiety of Odaiba

Past the rusted-through remnants of the showy and the Showa

Past the echo-bait of subterranean human mazecraft

Past where the plateau pauses, then drops into the deep beyond

That place where the sawn edges of the Pacific parted ways

Leaving only memories of electric Taisho and the swordsharpeners of the Shitamachi

Blades brandished to keep the merchants at bay

Skindiving through the black machinery of now

Moorings loosened and discarded

Caution fed to the crabs, eyeless in the cold abyss

Reaching out to your lips with ease and understated grace

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

Shreds of red sky refract through the surface zone

Twilight ignites with new dreams and tender memories

Sexy exits, sleek décolage
Runway lights through the depths signalling a bridge beckoning to the abyssal plain below

Beyond the Minamibōsō boundary and into the open ocean

Where no one will dare follow

Where drunken tengu sharks swim sentinel

Round the rusted hulls of prison ships and drowned memories

That place where chemosynthesis keeps me warm

Where all our junctions jut out to face the spectral surface

The weight of four million square feet of sensory overload

Rolls my eyes back as my back imitates the nautilus, twirling and fading into you

And through the midwater zone

Curviline contours shade in and out of sight

Beyond the convection of currents into the discrete vocabulary of night

Ribbons, cloaks and shields tumble to the depths

As my senses lose all defences

And sea and sky turn black and fiery phosphorescent

I’ve seen you here in the sightless jagged caverns of the hadal zone

Shimmering self, alive as angry weight attacks my eardrums

Sparks flying upwards, depth charges blowing holes through my sense of space and self-imagination

No choice at all but to follow the pinpricks of light and crawling cloudbursts of belief

Maps of the universe splashed across the void

In violent disarray

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

The depths breathe and churn

Viperfish stir from their sleep

Shipmarks dissipate in distant darkness

We venture on inch by endless inch

Your tenderness and spark my only beacons

Your sonar my only sight

Nothing left but to face the light

And dive deep through rifts and currents

Ocean sinew unconstrained by mind or pressure

And then the tsubo markers of the ocean floor open outwards

With soft landings in sheets of silt ensured

Alone together enveloped in empty space

Freezeframe, endgame, freeze still, stay the same

There’s no pain in paralysis

Grasping hold of the moment and never letting go

Even as the silt and sediment scratch the membrane, erode the nerve endings

Hollow reeds bending and snapping

Broken on our piece of seabed

All my fibres, all your curves, connected and alive

Safely sheltered from the angry currents above

Beyond the ridges and rift valleys that tear at our senses

Leaving only echoes of their teeth-grinding tension

Growing softer and more distant

As we settle in for the long night

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

あれ

あれ

あれ


This poem was written for the Mile Zero Dance's show Without Borders - and specifically for a dance-spoken word collaboration with the amazing dancer/choreographer/human being Jen Mesch. It was performed with Jen at dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton on February 20 and 21, 2015.

"Sho-Tel" - A Wild Night at the Aurora Motel with Mile Zero Dance

Allison, Jen, Gerry and Jodie descend on the Aurora Motel (source: Edmonton Journal)

I live in the west end of Edmonton. And for the most part I quite like it, and wish it would get more love. While Edmonton's city centre is green and increasingly inspired architecturally (as it should be), the west end is a mishmash of industrial and commercial sprawl - economically vital, teeming with life and hypnotic in the way a vintage Skinny Puppy album is, but on the whole unloved.

While Edmonton's new-found love for its downtown core is a welcome development, that love doesn't seem to extend west of 124th Street. The rest is pre-Mandel Edmonton - functional and essential to live but underpinned by a nagging sense of "It's better in the Bahamas."

But thanks to Mile Zero Dance's invasion of the classy confines of the Aurora Motel for one of their most memorable performances to date, I have a new appreciation for this repudiated part of town. In a show that felt like part Fernando Arrabal play, part Coen Brothers film (of the Barton Fink and Fargo vintage) and part episode of Portlandia, MZD again did what they do best - take an under-appreciated piece of Edmonton real estate and turn it into something wild and phantasmagoric.

Going to the show I had no idea what to expect, but it turns out a motel is a perfect space for an interdisciplinary dance-music-visual art installation: a bunch of rooms one after the other, occupied by a mix of MZD performers and actual paying tenants. At least I assume they were actual paying tenants, as in this show you were never quite sure who was a spectator and who was a conspiring member of the company whispering things you're supposed to hear into your ear.

Photos courtesy of Allison Nichols

The show began with simultaneous performances on opposite ends of the motel by Alison Towne of the Good Women Dance Collective and Jen Mesch of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy, the latter featuring bass saxophone of New Music Edmonton Production Manager and U of A reed instructor Allison Balcetis.

Alison-with-one-L's performance was a sort of shopping-trip-from-hell dreamscape in which she dances through a never-ending series of gigantic President's Choice shopping bags, while mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic (the star of this month's Body of Colour show) serenaded the crowd from her bubble bath in the other room in what was clearly the cushiest gig in this show. A gig that anyone who saw Body of Colour can agree she earned.

Over on the other side of the motel complex, Jen Mesch managed to defy both her impressive dance resume and her US Midwest origins by inhabiting the role of a nameless Alberta rig pig with a fixation on cologne and lofty aspiration (if questionable aptitude) as a dancer, in what was one of the most compelling pure acting performances ever thrown up by Mile Zero. Her performance was punctuated by the constant trolling of the character's gnawing subconscious self, as portrayed by Allison-with-two-Ls' bass sax, a rare instrument that she employed in a similar role in Gene Kosowan's Ghosts that Guard the Gateway back in New Music Edmonton's Now Hear This performance back in March.

And then it went on - with one of Mile Zero's most endearing performances to date courtesy of Jodie Vanderkerkhove and Artistic Director Gerry Morita in what was the only show to date I've ever been to (with the exception of a couple of Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings) where I've been offered toast - with butter and honey no less. Which admittedly was nothing compared to the pair of live lobsters in Jen's room, which she repeatedly offered up for dinner - although no actual lobstercide was committed.

With this closing show in Mile Zero Dance's 2013-2014 season, a troupe best known for their outlandish reinventions of the urban landscape truly outdid themselves. With the additional participation of Le Tivoli performance art madman Patrick Arès-Pilon (owner of the Sho-Tel megaphone car), installation artists Carly Greene and Devon Beggs and sound design by Dan Brophy, Jeff Carpenter and Dave Wall, Sho-Tel was a tour-de-force by some of Edmonton's most outside-the-box arteests in a piece of creativity run wild that will forever change the way I look at cheap motels - in Edmonton and elsewhere.

We've all, I'm sure, been fascinated by what goes on behind closed doors in places like the Aurora Motel. And MZD, in their endless quest for new perspectives on, well, everything, just gave us a glimpse of some of the wild dreams and raw, chafed dialogue that invariably goes on in half-asleep, half-awake states in places like these. And coupled with the olfactory component of the show - the cigarette smoke, the cologne and the weed (the weed may have been an audience contribution), it was as raw and all-encompassing a performance as I've ever seen - with absolutely no fourth wall whatsoever.

The name 'Mile Zero' has always made me think of a repudiated, end-of-the-road cul-de-sac somewhere - kind of like that motel that you always drive by but never give a moment of thought, that still has VHS and doesn't turn up anywhere on Yelp or Trip Advisor. and this time, more than ever, they owned that name. Happy summer, MZD! Thanks for a wonderful season - and an epic closer!

See you next year!

Compose Something Edmonton (Why New Music Edmonton is the best show in town)

Back in March of 2012 I wrote a post about possible new names for Edmonton International Airport. Based on the premise that many of the world's most famous airports are named after famous individuals (John F. Kennedy, Lester B. Pearson, Charles De Gaulle, Indira Gandhi etc.). I came up with a list of 10 famous Edmontonians that might be considered airport name material, of which my personal favourite at the time was Leslie Nielsen International Airport, in homage to his career-transforming comedic breakthrough in Airplane.

I missed one. I definitely should have included Violet Archer on the list. After all, composers figure prominently among major airports. Rio de Janeiro has Antônio Carlos Jobim International. Budapest has Ferenc Lizst International. Warsaw has Chopin International. And of course New Orleans, where I recently visited, has the wonderfully named Louis Armstrong International Airport. Who do we have? We have the Montreal-born pupil of Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith who joined the U of A music faculty in 1962 and remained a fixture in Edmonton's music scene until her death in 2000. Edmonton-Archer International Airport - I love it!

Who says we can't be great up here? Edmonton's
own Violet Archer. (source: musiccentre.ca)

Of course I'm scarcely holding my breath for our local airport to be renamed after an avant-garde composer who the majority of Edmontonians haven't even heard of. Nevertheless, it is heartening to know that the spirit of the city's greatest exponent of new music is alive and well in the form of the organization she inspired, New Music Edmonton, the city's leading standard bearer for wild and woolly musical experimentation.

Last month I launched a series of blog posts about this great organization with a review of the NME-produced world premiere of some spooky Ligeti-inspired electroacoustic music by ex-pat Toronto composer Chiyoko Szlavnics by the Montreal-based Ensemble Transmission. And this past weekend I had the pleasure of attending NME's Now Hear This festival, focused on the work of Canadian modern music icon R. Murray Schafer.

While Schafer was the festival's main attraction, Now Hear This felt like as much of a tribute to Violet Archer owing to the prominent role of the newly formed Violet Collective, a new Edmonton ensemble formed under the aegis of NME and named in honour of the late musical experimenter. While I was only able to attend the Saturday program of the three-day festival, what I heard reminded me of why I have crazy love for my adopted hometown. Our winters may be awful and our alleged professional hockey team even worse, but when it comes to artistic experimentation, we've got it made. With local ensembles like the Violet Collective, the Windrose Trio (joined by dancer Gerry Morita from Mile Zero Dance), Pro Coro Canada and the Strathcona String Quartet as well as hometown sonic explorers Shawn Pinchbeck and Gene Kosowan doing their thing, it was the best local festival you probably didn't hear about.

Highlights? There wasn't much that wasn't one. Violet Collective reedwoman and U of A instructor Allison Balcetis demonstrated exactly what the saxophone in all its permutations is capable of, deploying the full saxophonic range from soprano to the rarely seen bass sax on Colin Labadie's minimalist Strata and Brazilian composer André Mestre's Passion of Christ-themed Sorrowful Mysteries. Chilean-born, Edmonton-based composer Raimundo Gonzalez used the space of Old Strathcona's Trinity Anglican Church like few others by piping (literally) the sound of violinist Tatiana Warczynski through electronically doctored copper pipes, creating otherworldly sounds that you truly had to be there to experience. And Vancouver composer Bob Pritchard conspired with Edmonton flutist Chenoa Anderson to deliver one of the day's most electrifying performances, the audiovisual Rebirth, featuring electronic armband-triggered surround sound effects and mesmerizing visuals.

The evening continued with some classic R. Murray Schafer vocal works courtesy of Edmonton choral group Pro Coro, most memorably the wonderful Magic Songs - a composition inspired by Schafer's famous hippie retreats in the Ontario backwoods (to which he would invite select friends and colleagues), replete with firefly chirps and Whitmanesque barbaric yawps. And then the evening got even wilder, delving into deep improvisational territory with bassist Thom Golub and dancer Kate Stashko, some very dark electroacoustic landscapes with Gene Kosowan's The Ghosts that Guard the Gateway featuring Allison Balcetis' otherworldly bass saxophone, and then some mad live improv by local lunatics Pigeon Breeders - featuring visuals by Montreal-based Edmonton filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre.

Edmonton's Pigeon Breeders (source: inb4track.wordpress.com)

Admittedly, I missed much of the R. Murray Schafer content on which this particular festival was focused. That said, the man's influence was all over the music on the menu. Now Hear This was, above all, about 'soundscapes', a concept that Schafer pioneered during his studies at Simon Fraser University in the 1960s, through which he sought to foster a deeper appreciation of sound as a whole by way of cutting and pasting sound from its original source to a 'musical' context (which he famously referred to as schizophonia). As with much of Schafer's output, the works on display at Now Hear This challenge the very notion of 'composition', and the late-night 'Astral Ghosts' session featuring Kosowan, Pigeon Breeders and others pushed well outside what many would consider to be 'music'.

But as experimental as the proceedings got, it never ceased to be fun. Fun and totally unpretentious, a fact that anyone who's been forced to sit through a "highly serious" program of serialist music by the likes of Schoenberg, Webern and so on. Somehow the program managed to exude a certain Edmonton-ness, which I can only characterize as self-deprecating cleverness. In this town you can be as smart as is humanly possible provided you never lord it over your audience. That's the hallmark of the Edmonton Fringe and many of our other festivals - we'll happily do 'challenging' but only if you don't throw unnecessary forbiddingness into the mix. And on this front New Music Edmonton and its incredible cast of artists hit it out of the park once again.

I'm sure Violet would have approved.

NME Concert Review - Ensemble Transmission

Ensemble Transmission (Source: ensembletransmission.com)

This is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of performance reviews for New Music Edmonton. For those of you familiar with NME, this 25-year-old arts organization is Edmonton's leading promoter of new and experimental music, with a particular focus on new works by Canadian composers. By reaching out to new audiences through new performance spaces, NME continues to do what Edmonton's artists and arts promoters have always done: bring daring new creative works directly to the people without a shred of pretense or elitism.

That said, NME was, until recently, completely off my radar - until I was approached by NME President Ian Crutchley about reviewing its current concert series. That's the trouble with Edmonton: too many shows but not enough PR, with our artists generally too humble to blow their own proverbial trumpets. But as I argued in my review of Mile Zero Dance's most recent Salon Series performance earlier this month, most Edmontonians have no idea what an artistic treasure trove our city is. Consider this review series my own humble attempt to do it justice.

Last night's NME concert at Muttart Hall featured Ensemble Transmission, a dynamite sextet from Montreal and the current ensemble in residence at the historic Chapelle du Bon-Pasteur in the heart of the city's arts district. (Montreal's arts and culture organizations have been the saviour of the city's innumerable old churches in an era where barely anybody attends mass anymore.) Founded in 2008, Ensemble Transmission consists of flutist Guy Pelletier, clarinettist Lori Freedman, violinist Alain Giguère, cellist Julie Trudeau, percussionist Julien Grégoire and pianist Brigitte Poulin - and for this performance was joined by Toronto-born, Berlin-based electro-acoustic composer Chiyoko Szlavnics on live electronics for two of her new works.

The show, while perhaps not for everybody's tastes, was nonetheless very eclectic. The opening piece Reimsix by clarinettist Freedman seemed to consist of a series of prickly, cut-up statements (none more than 30 seconds in length) with shrieking sforzandos and tonal extremes more reminiscent of Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler than of the avant-garde classical cannon. This was followed by Omaggio a Burri by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (probably the best known of the bunch), a delightful trio for alto flute, bass clarinet and violin featuring various extended techniques, including percussive effects by the two wind players.

The third piece Feuilles à travers les cloches (Leaves across the bells) by French composer Tristan Murail was among the concert's highlights, a haunting, spectral work clearly inspired by Debussy for flute, violin, cello and piano that seemed to eerily capture the cold darkness of Edmonton in February with its dark piano intervals, chilling flute vibrato and incessant violin pizzicati. This was followed by more new music from Italy, Il volto della notte (The Features of the Night) by Paolo Perezzani, a playful and sarcastic trio for flute, bass clarinet and piano that swings from pure cacophony to sublime lyricism.

Chiyoko Szlavnics (Source: anechoicpictures.com)

After a short break the concert continued by two new works by ex-pat Canadian soundscape artist Chiyoko Szlavnics, Openings I and Constellations IV, both world premieres commissioned by New Music Edmonton. In stark contrast to the dense atonalism that characterized most of the first half, Szlavnics' twin works were characterized by sparse intersecting planes inspired by artwork - very much reminiscent of Ligeti's works from the 1960s and 1970s. Constellations IV was particularly striking, a crystalline creation that seemed to conjure up the winter night skies of northern Alberta.

The performance concluded with another Italian work, Encore / Da Capo by Luca Francesconi (a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio), which completely shifted the tone again to almost a party atmosphere with a toe-tapping pulse and dramatic crescendos in which the sextet managed to sound like a full orchestra.

For the record, I enjoyed the performance much more than Edmonton Journal reviewer Mark Morris did. While I agree with him that the works performed were less groundbreaking than they were a throwback to the avant-garde chamber music of the 1960s, I found the performance to be thoroughly warm and engaging. I would like to have heard it in a cozier, less staid performance space (perhaps the UniThéâtre), but there are only so many concert spaces in this city for all the ensembles and troupes lining up to use them. My feeling is that any lack of warmth or humour on display last night, such as Morris alleges, was much more to do with the venue than the performance itself.

Like Mile Zero, New Music Edmonton should be applauded for bringing challenging art to the masses via social media, inventive choices in venues and sheer grim determination - not to mention the unwavering support of backers like the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Edmonton Arts Council, CJSR Radio and, in this case, the Wee Book Inn - and beloved Edmonton literary institution with three locations in town. While the music of Ensemble Transmission is certainly not for all tastes (and indeed not all the music they do is up my alley), there are far more people out there interested in this sort of out-there music and art than there were in the audience, and it actually wasn't too bad a turnout for a crappy Friday night in February in Edmonton.

Edmonton may be cold and sprawled out and have inadequate public transportation, but don't let anyone tell you we're uncultured here. And if you live in Edmonton and are a fan of out-there musical experimentation - and aren't already acquainted with New Music Edmonton (as I wasn't until recently), please check out their website as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages. Groups like this need all the support they can get.

Mile Zero Dance Will Save Us All (When The Next Great Depression Comes)

When it comes to the arts, most Edmontonians have no idea how good they've got it in their own backyard. Sure we've got our summer festivals and our world-renowned symphony orchestra and a Ukrainian dance troupe or two, but that barely touches it. Edmonton's arts scene is as lush and untamed as the vegetation of its river valley (the longest interconnected urban park system in North America), and on any given Saturday night you can walk into any given theatre or live house and be pretty sure of hearing something either inspired or highly skilled or, more often than not, both.

Consider Edmonton's own Mile Zero Dance. One of the city's best kept secrets for over a quarter century, MZD is its own festival - and one that doesn't shut down during the summer. For those who haven't had the pleasure of seeing them, MZD is a dance troupe best known for their irreverent avant-garde performances (often in public places) that have ranged in style from the NYC José Limón school in the 1980s to the macabre world of Japanese ankoku butoh and Noguchi Taiso under the stewardship of current artistic director Gerry Morita. They've also - with very little fanfare - emerged as one of the greatest promotional platforms for the city's most outlandish artists, both within and outside the medium of dance, through their cabaret-esque 'Salon' performance series. For a newcomer looking to sample Edmonton's wildest creative output, Mile Zero's Salons are a great place to start.

MZD's latest Salon-series performance, The Great Depression, was held last night on a suitably bleak late-January Edmonton evening at L'UniThéâtre, the cultural and artistic hub of francophone Edmonton. The theme: depression, both the 'great' one and the psychological condition by the same name, and how great they are. Yes, both of them. At a time when Edmonton's well-heeled denizens are plotting their latest escape to Manzanillo or Maui and the rest are commiserating about the frigid darkness on Facebook, MZD urges us, in Morita's words, to "find new ways to break the spell of winter and embrace our creative collective with the talented artists among us." In other words, creativity will keep us warm. And if The Great Depression is any indication, it certainly can. At least in this town.

Dance conspirator Jen Mesch (dance-conspiracy.org)

The show opened with "Psychology of a Strip Tease" by MZD fellow traveller Jeannie Vanderkhove, which featured a remarkably compelling 'reverse' stripper routine (yes, involving getting dressed and complete with backwards burlesque music). This was followed by a very matter-of-fact appearance by Edmonton poet laureate Mary Pinkoski, who delivered two of her trademark poetic torrents on the show's subject matter.

This was followed by a brutally intense dance performance by Edmonton's own Jen Mesch (of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy) entitled "Anna and the Other Anna" featuring the noise soundscape accompaniment of Edmonton-based sound artist Scott Smallwood - a performance that more than any captured the grinding blackness that I've always associated with the dread word 'depression'. The first half finished with a lecture-turned-barn dance party led by University of Alberta folklorist and accomplished Ukrainian folkdancer Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, which ended up with over half the audience on stage recreating a 1930s-style prairie diaspora hoedown.

The second half of The Great Depression kicked off with a Chaplinesque trapeze performance by the very talented Edmonton circus performer Annie Dugan followed by an experimental film montage entitled AurA centred on derelict farm equipment by filmmaker aAron munson - with a soundtrack evocative of Boards of Canada's woolier moments.Following this was a montage of archival photos from Dirty Thirties Edmonton courtesy of the Alberta Provincial Archives (which MC Kristine Nutting described as "like a prison, except more fun"), an interlude that allowed local noise punk deviants Rubber Nurse to set up their elaborate stage setup consisting of 'prepared' guitars, electronic gear and a 1980s-vintage school overhead projector, featuring a procession of night terror-inspired transparencies. Rubber Nurse's nerve-jangling performance "Sister Missing" was followed by the prodigious and absurdly charming Edmonton rapper/multi-instrumentalist Mitchmatic, who delivered his own heartfelt take on the titular subject to close the show.

Gentleman rapper Mitchmatic (dealerofpeopleemotions.com)

The Great Depression was more than simply a good show. It was akin to an audio-visual mix tape that Edmonton could hand to any other city with a reputation for artiness and knock its proverbial socks off. The show made me think of another Nordic city that Edmontonians have been crushing on of late, namely the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, which starting in early March will be a non-stop flight away from Edmonton International Airport. Thanks in no small part to the international success of alt-pop pixie Björk and the molasses-paced post-rock of Sigur Rós, the pint-sized Icelandic capital has become magnet for hipsters and genuine freaks alike. Are we as cool as Reykjavik here? Well, we don't speak a living fossil language little changed from Old Norse, nor do we have glaciers or thermal pools within an easy day trip of the city. And unlike Iceland, our winters are genuinely bone-chilling. But in artistic terms, surely we're in the same league.

We are that cool here. We just don't know it. While the Make Something Edmonton campaign has done an admirable job raising local awareness of our truly creative and outside-the-box nature, we're still too hung up on being an Oil City, a northern Houston or Abu Dhabi, and have yet to truly embrace our inner Reykjavik or Berlin. But the time will come when we're going to need to. Iceland experienced its own miniature version of the Great Depression in 2008 when its entire banking sector imploded and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy - while its arts scene surged, aided by an influx of currency devaluation-driven overseas tourism. Ditto with Berlin, the capital of the beleaguered hyperinflation-plagued Weimar Republic, capital of cabaret and all things racy in the 1920s. Economic history clearly indicated that our runaway oil and gas economy will eventually sputter. And when it does we'll need other things to fall back on.

If we're smart, we'll realize that our arts and culture sector, which unfailingly injects vast swaths of capital into our economy on less than a shoestring, is one of our greatest economic assets. It's also a sector that always seems to thrive when everything else is in the crapper, while simultaneously making bad times a little more bearable. Eventually our runaway oil and gas leviathan will grind to a halt, either slowly or precipitously, driven by plummeting world prices that will once again render bitumen processing unprofitable, and possibly exacerbated by another global recession. It'll suck, but so long as we continue to nurture our arts community we'll always have the likes of Mile Zero Dance waiting for us with open arms, ready to teach us how to enjoy the coming depression.

Leaflets from heaven, courtesy of the Provincial Archives (photo by author)