"Possessing a rare combination of skill and artistry, singer, improviser and composer Viviane Houle is one of Canada's most gifted and respected vocalists and improvisers. She is widely recognized for her beautifully fluid and dynamic voice, a remarkable palette of extended vocal techniques, a sensitive lyricism and a fearless spirit.

Houle has been a featured performer in internationally celebrated festivals such as FIMAV, San Francisco's Soundwave Festival and The Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and has performed with Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. She has also been recognized on the national and provincial levels by being awarded numerous grants, including major project and development funding from Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.

Houle has performed and collaborated with many of the brightest figures in contemporary and improvised music, including Anthony Braxton (US), Louis Andriessen (NL), Didier Petit and Sylvain Kassap (FR), Sissel Vera Petersen (DK), Paul Plimley, Peggy Lee and Torsten Müller.

She has also released two critically acclaimed recordings. Treize, a collection of improvised duets produced by Jesse Zubot and released on the Drip Audio label, and La Belle et la Bette, with violist/composer Stefan Smulovitz.

Viviane Houle lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada."

"Cellist, improviser, composer Peggy Lee was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She studied classical cello, completing a bachelors degree in performance at the University of Toronto as a student of Vladimir Orloff and Denis Brott. She furthered her studies on the cello with lessons with Martha Gerschefski in Atlanta Georgia. In the fall of 1988 Peggy began a year residency with a string quartet at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. It was here that she first became interested in collaborating with artists from different mediums and in veering away from the classical path. This led to a decision to move away from the known and thus to her relocating to Vancouver, B.C. where she now makes her home.

Peggy's first forays into improvisation in Vancouver happened with dancers at the EDAM (experimental dance and music) studio at the Western Front and eventually led to her meeting and joining guitarists Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson in their respective bands; as well as becoming a member of the New Orchestra Workshop, which went on to have interesting and fruitful collaborations with Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, René Lussier, Barry Guy and George Lewis.

Peggy continues to collaborate frequently with Ron and Tony and with her husband, drummer Dylan van der Schyff, as well as with many other longtime musical associates including Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille and Lisa Miller. She also leads or co-leads a number of musical projects: The Peggy Lee Band, Film in Music, Waxwing (with Tony Wilson and Jon Bentley) and Beautiful Tool (with Mary Margaret O'Hara).

She has also collaborated extensively in theatre and dance with companies and artists such as Ruby Slippers, Rumble Theatre, Presentation House, David Hudgins, Peter Bingham and Delia Brett.

In 2005, Peggy received the Freddie Stone Award for integrity and innovation in music and in 2010 she was awarded a Jesse Richardson Theatre Award for outstanding composition."

Canadian drummer Kenton Loewen is a member of The Crackling, Gordon Grdina Trio, Gordon Grdina's Box Cutter, The Coat Cooke Trio, Dan Mangan and Blacksmith, and the Egyptian fusion orchestra Haram.

"Vancouver-based guitarist/composer Ron Samworth is a high profile presence on the Canadian scene, equally at home playing in the jazz tradition or the extended sound worlds of new and improvised music. Nominated for the 2002 National Jazz Writers Award "Best Jazz Guitarist", he leads the acclaimed quartet Talking Pictures and co-leads the 15-piece NOW Orchestra. He has appeared at all of the major jazz festivals across Canada, the Jazzfest Berlin, Chicago Jazzfest, New York's Knitting Factory, Vienna's Let's Cool One Chamber Jazz Festival, and at prestigious venues in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He has performed and recorded with many leading international artists including John Zorn, John Medeski, Han Bennink, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, Butch Morris, Bobby Previte, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, and Canadian jazz legend Claude Ranger. His inter-disciplinary work includes composition, performance and sound design for theatre, spoken word, film, and dance."

"Since graduating with a Film Scoring degree from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in 1995, Vancouver native Chris Gestrin has become an integral part of the Canadian music scene. As a versatile pianist and multi-keyboardist, composer, engineer and producer he has worked on over 250 albums covering a wide range of musical styles. From avant garde electronic improvisations to greasy soul organ music, introspective piano jazz to top of the charts rock and hip-hop, Gestrin is in high demand for his eclectic talents and ability to bring a high level of musical inspiration to any situation. 9 Juno awards, 3 West Coast Music awards, 2 East Coast Music awards, Aboriginal music awards and a Canadian Folk Music award are just some of the accolades from the numerous projects he has been involved with.

As a jazz artist, Gestrin has performed on and off the stage not only with his great Canadian colleagues, but with a who's who of the Jazz world. Gary Peacock, David 'Fat Head' Newman, Kenny Wheeler, Mino Cinelu, Jerry Granelli (Vince Gauraldi Trio), Petra Haden, Duke Robillard, Dave Douglas, Ben Monder, Michael Blake, Peter Bernstein, Jimmy Green, Ralph Bowen, PJ Perry, Red Holloway, and producer Lee Townsend to name a few. In the more mainstream music world, Chris has had the pleasure of working with a large number of prominent artists including Randy Bachman, D.O.A., Colin James, K-OS, Swollen Members, Jim Byrnes, Steve Dawson, Nickelback, Kelly Joe Phelps, Loudon Wainwright III, Long John Baldry, Coco Love Alcorn and Jeff Healey.

Chris's original music has been featured in numerous television shows including The Dead Zone, Dark Angel, The L-Word, The Outer Limits, Crash Test Mommy, and Rob Feenie's New Classics. His score for the film 'Songs She Wrote About People She Knows' was nominated for 'best original score' in the 2016 Canadian Screen AwardIn. In 2007 Chris collaborated with Ocular tip media and film makers Jeff Carter and Diarmuid Conway to create a beautiful pairing of images and music in the 24 minute film 'Inside Passage', which was featured in film festivals throughout Canada and the United Sates. His recording, 'Stillpoint', on the Songlines label was listed as one of the best albums of 2003 in Downbeat magazine.

Currently Chris performs regularly with fellow Canadians such as The Hard Rubber Orchestra, N.O.W. Orchestra, Kate Hammett-Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Brad Turner, Denzal Sinclaire, Cory Weeds, The Night Crawlers, Jim Byrnes, and Steve Dawson and is hard at work in the studio producing recordings for various artists across different genres including the 2013 Juno awards Instrumental Album of the Year 'Fantastic Pictures' by Pugs and Crows. He has also started his own independent record label 'phonometrograph'."

"Jesse Zubot is one of those unique musicians/producers whose praxis spans multiple genres and transcends contextualization into an idiom. Between moments of impassioned, visceral outburst and quite emotive sensitivies, Zubot exposes the full range of affects through a pristine sonic architecture. Zubot a 3-time Juno Award winning musician/producer with avant-rock band Fond of Tigers (2011), chamber folk-jazz ensemble The Great Uncles of the Revolution (2004) and roots instrumentalists Zubot & Dawson (2003). Zubot produced the Polaris Music Prize winning album 'ANIMISM' by Tanya Tagaq which was released in 2014. This album also garnered Zubot a nomination for 'Producer of the Year' at the 2015's Juno Awards. In the fall of 2010 Jesse won the 'Multimedia' award for his work on the score for Tungijuq (w/ Tanya Tagaq) at the 2010 Western Canadian Music Awards. Tungijuq was produced by Isuma (Atanarjuat) and was selected for Sundance, The Toronto Film Festival and the ImagineNATIVE film festival where it won for Best Short. Zubot has also composed extensively for modern dance. A recent highlight was the presentation of Body Scan (Choreographed by Benoit Lachambre & Su-Feh Lee : Score by Jesse Zubot) at the prestigious Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. In the past decade Jesse has delved heavily into the world of improvised and creative music having worked with the likes of Francois Houle, Tanya Tagaq, Peggy Lee, Evan Parker, Eugene Chadbourne, Mats Gustafsson, Matthew Bourne, Dylan van der Schyff, Joe Fonda, Fred Frith, Eyvind Kang and Nels Cline and many others. In 2005 Zubot started Drip Audio ("...one of the most original musical operations in the country." - CBC Arts Online), a record label dedicated to creative music. Drip Audio now has 35 albums under it's umbrella by musicians from Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, New York and the UK. Zubot is also sought after in the contemporary/commercial music world and has been a guest musician working with artists such as Dan Mangan, Destroyer, Mira Calix, Hawksley Workman, Kelly Joe Phelps, Veda Hille, Amy Millan, Alpha Yaya Diallo, Mother Mother and Stars. J Zubot was named 'Violinist of the Year' at Canada's National Jazz Awards in '03, '08 and '09 and has also been commissioned by the CBC to write symphonies & arrangements for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia.

In 2014 Jesse premiered his first full string quartet at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in conjuction with Vancouver's Western Front for the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award. 2014 also saw the release of 'Hector and the Search for Happiness', a feature film starring Simon Pegg, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard and Rosamund Pike in which Jesse did the score for with Vancouver's Dan Mangan. Jesse composed and arranged music for the film that was performed by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg (Potsdam, Germany). This score was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in January 2015.

Some of Jesse's performance highlights in the past few years include ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (Aarhus, Denmark), Time-Based Arts Festival (Portand, OR), Luminato Festival (Toronto, ON), Festival International du Film Insulaire de Groix (Iles de Groix, France), End of the Road Festival (Wiltshire, UK), Expo (Shanghai, China), WOMAD (Australia / New Zealand), Druga Godba (Ljubljana, Slovenia), WOMAD (Wiltshire, UK), Festival of World Cultures (Dublin, Ireland), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Kronos in Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), London International Festival of Exporatory Music (London, UK), The Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey, CA), The Winnipeg New Music Festival, Festival International de Musique Actuelle (Victoriavillle, Quebec), The Mulhouse Music Festival (Mulhouse, France), Era Jazzu (Poland), The Montreal International Jazz Festival, the New York Guitar Festival, The Guelph Jazz Festival, Traz & Folk Fest (Rudolstadt, Germany), The Vancouver International Jazz Festival, The Calgary Folk Festival, Spilimbergo Folkfest (Italy) and The Atlantic Jazz Festival (Halifax, NS)."

"Jeremy Berkman has held the position of Principal Trombonist for the Vancouver Opera Orchestra since 1993. He is also currently the Artistic Co-Director of the Turning Point Ensemble of Vancouver. He is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Oberlin College, where he received degrees in both music and economics. In addition, Mr Berkman earned a Masters Degree at the Juilliard School, and moved permanently to Canada after a post-graduate residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts. He was the Principal trombonist for the Juilliard Orchestra's inaugural tour of mainland China and has recorded with many famous ensembles, including the Turning Point Ensemble, and with numerous film and television session orchestras. A strong advocate for today's composers, Mr Berkman has commissioned chamber music featuring the trombone from noted British Columbia composers such as Owen Underhill, has presented contemporary chamber works with outstanding ensembles such as Continuum (New York) and the St Lawrence String Quartet. Through these and other ensembles, Mr Berkman has collaborated with internationally acclaimed late twentieth and twenty-first century composers John Cage, John Adams, Sofia Gubaidulina, Jacob Druckman, and Vinko Globokar."

"Paul (Horace) Plimley (born 16 March 1953 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a free jazz pianist and vibraphonist. He is one of the doyens of the Canadian jazz avant-garde, a co-founder of the New Orchestra Workshop Society and frequent collaborator with the bassist Lisle Ellis. He is well versed in classical music and in all styles of jazz; he was one of the first and most convincing interpreters of Ornette Coleman's music on the piano (an instrument usually seen as antithetical to Coleman's music).

Plimley studied classical piano under Kum-Sing Lee at the University of British Columbia (1971-3). In 1978-9 he studied with Karl Berger and Cecil Taylor at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY. In 1977 he founded the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW), and he has been active in many of the ensembles associated with NOW, including the NOW Orchestra.

His work with Lisle Ellis is extensive, and includes the duo CD Both Sides of the Same Mirror (Nine Winds, 1989); When Silence Pulls, with Andrew Cyrille (Music & Arts, 1990); Noir, with Bruce Freedman and Gregg Bendian (Victo, 1992); Density of the Lovestruck Demons with Donald Robinson (Music & Arts, 1994); and Safecrackers with Scott Amendola (Victo, 1999). Most notable, perhaps, are two recordings for Hat Art: the collection of Ornette Coleman interpretations, Kaleidoscopes (1992), and (under Joe McPhee's leadership), a revisiting of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite called Sweet Freedom, Now What? (1994). In May 2000 he recorded a live act at the 17th International Festival of New Music in Victoriaville, Quebec with John Oswald, Marilyn Crispell and Cecil Taylor. The album was released at Victo Records.

The still Vancouver based musician is a regular at the annual Vancouver International Jazz Festival."