Guest Composer, Andrew Balfour

Of Cree descent, Andrew Balfour is an innovative composer/conductor/singer/sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works.

Andrew’s works have been performed and/or broadcast locally, nationally and internationally. He has been commissioned by the Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Caprice, Groundswell, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, the Winnipeg Singers, the Kingston Chamber Choir, Roomful of Teeth, Tafelmusik and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, among others. Andrew is also the founder and Artistic Director of the innovative vocal group Dead of Winter (formerly Camerata Nova), now in its 25th year of offering a concert series in Winnipeg. With Dead of Winter, Andrew specializes in creating “concept concerts,” many with Indigenous subject matter (​Wa Wa Tey Wak ​[Northern Lights], ​Medieval Inuit​, Fallen​)​. These innovative offerings explore a theme through an eclectic array of music, including new works, arrangements and inter-genre and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Andrew has become increasingly passionate about music education and outreach, particularly on northern reserves and inner-city Winnipeg schools where he has worked on behalf of the National Arts Centre, Dead of Winter, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and various Winnipeg school divisions.Andrew was Curator and Composer-in-Residence of the WSO’s inaugural Indigenous Festival,,n 2017, he was awarded a Gold Medal by the Senate of Canada for his contribution to Canada’s Indigenous and music communities.

Guest Poet, Di Brandt

Di Brandt is an internationally renowned and multiple award-winning poet, scholar, editor, translator and teacher.  Her poetry titles include her bestselling debut collection questions i asked my mother (Turnstone Press, 1987; re-issued in a 30th anniversary tribute edition with Afterword by Tanis Macdonald, 2016); Agnes in the sky (1990); Now You Care (Coach House Press, 2003); Walking to Mojacar, with French and Spanish translations by Charles Leblanc and Ari Belathar (2010); Glitter & fall:  Laozi's Dao De Jing, Transinhalations (2019); and most recently,  The Sweetest Dance on Earth: New and Selected Poems (2022).  Her critical works include a collection of creative-critical essays, So this is the world & here I am in it (NeWest Writers as Critics X, ed. Smaro Kamboureli, 2007), and the anthology, Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry, edited with Barbara Godard (WLUP, 2009).   Di Brandt has held teaching and research appointments at five different Canadian universities, and has given poetry readings and guest lectured in Canadian Literature and Creative Writing around the world. She has collaborated extensively with musicians and visual artists in the creation of new and innovative multimedia works, most notably, the interspecies installation Working in the Dark, with Aganetha Dyck and honeybees (De Leon White Gallery, 1997, and elsewhere; a creative essay about this collaboration appears in Brandon University's online journal Ecclectica); and Coyotes do not carry her away, with Kenneth Nichols (Brandon Chamber Players, 2013, and elsewhere; an audio video recording of this 20 minute suite for soprano, clarinet and harp was published on YouTube by Turnstone Press, featuring Tracy Dahl, Micah Heilbrunn and Richard Turner.  Di Brandt currently teaches Canadian Literature at the University of Winnipeg. She was appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Winnipeg for 2018-2019) and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Grant MacEwan University in 2019. In 2023 she received the Manitoba Arts Council Award of Distinction.

Guest Composer, Andrew Staniland

Described as a “new music visionary” (National Arts Centre), composer Andrew Staniland has established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. His music is performed and broadcast internationally and has been described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker Magazine as “alternately beautiful and terrifying”. Important accolades include 3 Juno nominations, an ECMA award, the 2016 Terra Nova Young Innovators Award , the National Grand Prize winner of EVOLUTION (presented in 2009 by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre), and was the recipient of the Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music in 2004. As a leading composer of his generation, Andrew has been recognized by election to the Inaugural Cohort of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists Royal Society of Canada.

Andrew was an Affiliate Composer to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (2006-09) and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (2002–04), and has also been in residence at the Centre du Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (Paris, 2005). Recent commissioners include the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Brooklyn Art Song Society, cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Andrew also performs as a guitarist and with new media (computers and electronics).

Andrew is currently on faculty at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland, where he founded MEARL (Memorial ElectroAcoustic Research Lab). At MEARL, Andrew leads a cross-disciplinary research team that has produced the innovative Mune digital instrument: www.munemusic.com

Guest Poet, Junie Désil

Junie Désil is a poet. Born of immigrant (Haitian) parents on the Traditional Territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka in the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie’s debut poetry collection Eat Salt|Gaze at the Ocean (TalonBooks, 2020) was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

juniewrites.com

Guest Poet, Aislinn Hunter

We’re thrilled to announce that award winning poet and author, Aislinn Hunter will be the guest poet for Art Song Lab 2020.

For your chance to work with Aislinn, apply today.

Aislinn Hunter is an award-winning poet, novelist and writing teacher. She’s the author of seven highly acclaimed books: ‘Into the Early Hours,’ ‘The Possible Past,’ and ‘Linger, Still’ (poetry), ‘Stay’ and ‘The World Before Us’ (novels), ‘What’s Left Us’ (a story collection) and a book of non-essays on material culture and writing called ‘A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts’. 

Her work has been adapted into music, dance, art and film forms including ‘Stay’ – a feature film based on the novel of the same name (directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld and starring Taylor Schilling and Aidan Quinn) – which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, a song called ‘Romance of the Field’ written and sung by Veda Hille (and inspired by ‘The World Before Us’), and a dance performance choreographed by Anusha Fernando which premiered at the Chan Centre in 2016.

Aislinn identifies as a writer but she also works in academic contexts. She has undergraduate degrees in the history of art and creative writing (UVic BFA), graduate degrees in creative writing (UBC MFA) and writing and cultural politics (UEdinburgh MSc), and a PhD in English Literature (UEdinburgh) where she focused on material culture theory and the writer’s house/museum.

In 2018 Aislinn served as a Canadian War Artist working with Canadian and NATO forces undertaking live chemical, biological and radioactive weapons training. Her war artist video installation ‘A Word and A Body Are Not The Same’ will premiere at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa in February 2020.

Aislinn teaches part-time in the creative writing program at KPU and in the Writer’s Studio program at SFU. She has also served as a writer-in-residence at universities in Canada, England, and Australia. 

‘The Certainties’ – a novel about bearing witness and imaginative acts –  is due out in May 2020 with Knopf, Random House. 

Guest Composer, Leslie Uyeda

As a long-time friend of Art Song Lab, we’re thrilled to have legendary composer and collaborative pianist, Leslie Uyeda as our guest composer for Art Song Lab 2020.

For your chance to work with Leslie, apply today.

Born in Montréal, Québec, Leslie Uyeda is a composer, pianist and conductor.

She studied piano with the late Dorothy Morton at McGill University and with William Aide at the University of Manitoba. She has played chamber music since her student days and continues to perform her own music with her colleagues.

During 20 years in opera, Leslie worked as a coach, pianist and conductor with the Canadian Opera Company, L’Opera de Montreal, Manitoba Opera, Opera Hamilton, the Banff Centre and the Chautauqua Institute of Music in New York. In concert she has collaborated with some of Canada’s best singers, performing recitals with Tracy Dahl, Richard Margison, Brett Polegato, Wendy Nielsen, Heather Pawsey, Liping Zhang, Jean Stilwell and Viviane Houle. After moving to Vancouver, B.C., Leslie became Chorus Music Director at Vancouver Opera, where she also conducted several mainstage productions.

Leslie started composing at a very young age. A few years ago she left her positions at Vancouver Opera and the University of British Columbia to compose full time. Leslie is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and is a member of SOCAN, the Canadian League of Composers (www.composition.org), and the Association of Canadian Women Composers (www.acwc.ca).

Leslie Uyeda's principal publisher is The Avondale Press (AvP) c/o The Canadian Music Centre.

Leslie lives very happily with her family in Vancouver. She loves reading, photography, walking her dog Puff, Iyengar yoga, watching great British TV, and cheering for Le Club de Hockey Canadien – the Montréal Canadiens!

(bio from www.leslieuyeda.com/)

Guest Poet, Renee Sarojini Saklikar

An alumni of Art Song Lab herself, Renee Sarojini Saklikar has done some pretty amazing things in her career since ASL 2012/2013.

For your chance to work with Renee, apply today!

photo credit: Sandra Vander Schaaf

Trained as a lawyer at the University of British Columbia, with a degree in English Literature, Renée Sarojini Saklikar teaches creative writing at Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Community College.

Renée’s first book, Children of Air India, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) won the 2014 Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry and her second book, with Wayde Compton, The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them (Anvil Press/SFU Public Square, 2015) was a finalist for a 2016 City of Vancouver Book Award.

Fascinated by artistic collaboration, Renée’s work has been made into opera and song cycles (air india [redacted], Turning Point Ensemble, 2015) and visual art (Chris Turnbull).

Renée is working on an epic sci-fi journey poem, THOT-J-BAP, parts of which appear in literary journals (The Capilano Review, Dusie, The Rusty Toque, Tripwire) and chapbooks (above/ground, Nous-zot and Nomados presses) and her chapbook, After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees, was a finalist for the 2017 bpNichol chapbook award.

She recently published a long poem about her personal connection to the Air India Flight 182 bombing, in an anthology of scholarly and artistic work (Remembering Air India, the art of public mourning, University of Alberta Press, 2017). This spring, Renée published poems about bees in the book Listening to the Bees (Nightwood Editions, 2018) in collaboration with scientist and Governor General award winner, Dr. Mark Winston.

As Surrey’s Poet Laureate, Renée has demonstrated her passion for connecting people through poetry through offering free writing consultations, teaching poetry in schools and at community events, and hosting workshops with youth and seniors to tell Surrey stories. Her legacy project involved bringing teens and seniors together to share their stories (Surrey Stories Connect: teens and seniors write Surrey, Surrey Libraries, 2016).

She is currently collaborating with teen writers on a series of chapbook writing workshops. Since starting the position, she has participated in over 40 events each year and mentored over 150 writers through consultations and workshops.

(bio from https://www.surrey.ca/community/16795.aspx)

Guest Poet, Elee Kraljii Gardiner

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of the book of poems serpentine loop (Anvil Press), one of 2016’s “most anticipated spring releases,” named to three “Best of” lists of the year in Canada as well as shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. She is the co-editor with John Asfour of V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2012 City of Vancouver Book Award. A handmade chapbook, Trauma Head (Otter Press, 2017) is a precursor to her second book of poetry with the same name (Trauma Head, Anvil Press, spring 2018) that has already been shortlisted for the Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is currently editing Against Death (forthcoming Anvil Press), an anthology of essays by those who have come close to dying. Elee founded Thursdays Writing Collective, a low-barrier, non-profit organization of more than 150 writers in Vancouver and she is the editor and publisher of eight of their anthologies. She is originally from Boston and is a dual US/Canadian citizen.

Elee’s efforts to foster writers earned the 2015 Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentor Award. She is also the recipient of CV2’s Lina Chartrand Award in 2011 and in 2014 was a finalist for Malahat’s Far Horizons Prize.

Her writing is published in places including TCR, Event, Prism International, Lemonhound.com. Hers was the first poem published in Harvard Medicine Journal in more than 40 years. She is a contributor to several anthologies such as ForceField (Mother Tongue), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press), Enpipe Line (Creekstone), Alive at the Centre (Ooligan Press), Sustenance(Anvil Press) and forthcoming in Gush (Frontenac)  and Ghost Fishing (Split This Rock).

Elee is on the advisory board of the Andover Breadloaf Project and the editorial board of Poetry is Dead. She was a member of the Advisory Council of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and has served twice on the City of Vancouver Book Award jury. She is a founding member of CWILA(Canadian Women in Literary Arts) and a two-time member of their Critic in Residence jury. She is a Poetry Ambassador for Vancouver Poet Laureate Rachel Rose and a mentor with Vancouver Manuscript Intensive.

Guest Composer, Rodney Sharman

We're so fortunate to have a wonderful community of composers and poets who value and support the work Art Song Lab is doing. Throughout ASL's history, Rodney has been an active and engaging member of the art-song community. A renowned Canadian composer with an international career, he's attended many of our concerts and open rehearsals, and taken part in our community discussions on the state of art song in our contemporary culture.

We're thrilled to announce that Rodney Sharman will be the Guest Composer for Art Song Lab 2018. He will present a public workshop on collaboration and his own experiences writing art song, and participants will have several opportunities to connect personally with Rodney throughout ASL.

Find out more about Rodney at www.rodneysharman.com, and listen to his interview on our "How To 'Art Song'" page.

Rodney Sharman is Composer-in-Residence of Early Music Vancouver’s “New Music for Old Instruments”. He has been Composer-in-Residence of the Victoria Symphony, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, as well as Composer-Host of the Calgary Philharmonic’s New Music Festival, "Hear and Now". In addition to concert music, Rodney Sharman writes music for cabaret, opera and dance. He works regularly with choreographer James Kudelka, for whom he has written scores for Oregon Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet and Coleman Lemieux Compagnie (Toronto). Sharman was awarded First Prize in the 1984 CBC Competition for Young Composers and the 1990 Kranichsteiner Prize in Music, Darmstadt, Germany. His score for the dance-opera From The House Of Mirth won the 2013 Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding sound design/composition (choreography by James Kudelka, text by Alex Poch Goldin after Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth).