"Nicolas Caloia. Born Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 1968. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Performer (double bass).

Since 1990 Nicolas Caloia has worked at creating a contemporary music generated by using accurately composed textures to channel collective improvisation. The goal is a music that erases the lines between improvised and composed, pop and avant-garde, good and bad. He hopes this music will satisfy the body, the mind and, above all, the heart. He has worked as a performer, composer, and organizer in Montréal and has toured in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has performed and recorded in a vast array of contexts with the most important members of Montréal's creative music community as well as with internationally renowned musicians like the ICP orchestra, Marshall Allen, John Butcher, Joe McPhee, Steve Lacy, William Parker, Hassan Hakmoun, Tristan Honsinger and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. His concerts and numerous recordings have been critically acclaimed both at home and abroad. Currently, the majority of his work as a composer and improviser finds a voice in: The Ratchet Orchestra - a 30-piece big band; Tilting - the Nicolas Caloia Quartet, Ring - a sextet, Spell - a 10-piece marching band, Trephining - a quintet, Mercury - a duet Lori Freedman as well in solo performances."

"Canadian saxophonist Yves Charuest began his professional musical activities in the 1980s, playing with several Canadian musicians such as Michel Ratté, Jean Beaudet, Lisle Ellis, Jean Derome and Pierre Cartier in various bands including I Like Jazz, Evidence, Duo Charuest -Rate, Trio Michel Ratté, Wreck's Progress.

Charuest was a member of the Peter Kowald Trio (with German bassist Peter Kowald and South African drummer Louis Moholo) with whom he performed in Canada, the United States and Europe. He has performed with internationally active musicians including William Parker, John Betsch and Mathias Schubert, and has also collaborated with Canadian electroacoustic composers Jean-François Denis, jef chippewa and Jean Piché.

Charuest works with various ensembles, including Charuest-Caloia, Still (with Nicolas Caloia and Peter Valsamis), Stir (with Caloia, Valsamis and Agustí Fernández), a quartet with Caloia, Lori Freedman and Josh Zubot, Murray Street Band and The Ratchet Orchestra. He regularly collaborates with Ellwood Epps, John Heward, Philippe Lauzier, Scott Thomson, choreographer Susanna Hood and dancer Alanna Kraaijeveld.

Charuest won the François-Marcaurelle Award at the 2015 Montreal Offspring of Jazz."

"Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based performer, maker and educator in both dance and music, Susanna Hood has devoted her career to synthesizing voice and movement within her dynamic practice, creating intimate, sensual and raw performances both in dance-theatre contexts as well as in the context of improvised music. Founder and former artistic director of interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart (2000-2013) her work has been marked by significant collaborations with musical artists Nilan Perera (improvisational duo dialogues; and choreographic musical works still, She's gone away, Shudder), John Oswald (Spinvolver), and Scott Thomson (as band member of The Rent (repertoire by Steve Lacy) and The Disguises; and as co-creator/performer of The Muted Note - songs and dances setting the poetry of P.K. Page).

Throughout her career as a creator, and particularly in the last decade, she has sought a total integration of the dance and music aspects of her practice, influenced by her internal, holistic experience of moving, sounding, and listening. Something she refers to as embodied music: the experience of movement as music and of sound/music as movement, where the two forms, in dialogue, remain simultaneously distinct and interchangeable, to create a listener/viewer experience that blurs the lines between what is heard and what is seen. In support of this interest, she pursued post-graduate research in the Research Studios at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, Belgium (2015/2016) with the program's emphasis on synergistic relations between dance and music. Her most recent creations (Music Is, 2016, and Impossibly Happy, 2019) have been driven by her own musical compositions arranging voices, instruments and movement.

Recent projects include: the duo musical collaboration Tortues Vapeur, with Montreal turntablist, Martin Tétreault, mixing turntables, electronics, synthesizers, vocals and objects. (releasing their first disk on on DAME's Mikroclimat label in 2019); a duo with Belgian bassist, Peter Jacquemyn; and performances with the French trio Rrève Sélavy (Frédéric BBriet, double bass; Nicolas Pointard, drums; and Christophe Rocher, clarinettes). Unpacked, the first project with her trio with Toronto/Tkaronto musicians Tania Gill (piano) and Kayla Milmine (soprano saxophone), is a new arrangement and interpretation of the Packet suite by late American poet, Judith Malina and late American jazz composer, Steve Lacy. unPacked will be released as a recording in early 2024 on Quebec's DAME label..

Since 2004, Susanna has been teaching improvisation, composition, and voice and movement synthesis in various institutions and through independent workshops across Canada, internationally and online, including: The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre (ON, CAN), T.O. Love-In (ON, CAN), l'École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal (QC, CAN), Studio 303 (QC, CAN), TransFormation (QC, CAN), L'École de Danse de Québec (QC, CAN), l'Artère (QC, CAN), Crimson Coast Dance Society (BC, CAN), Mascall Dance (BC, CAN) and E.D.E.N. Studios (Berlin, Germany).

Since 2013 Susanna has become a teacher trainer of Open Source Forms, a practice fluidly expanded from and combining the principles of the Skinner Releasing Technique with the varied and developing practices of its teachers. In July 2023 she will complete the inaugural two-year teacher training program in Emotionally Integrated Voice with her teacher of 20 years, Fides Krucker.

Awards include the 1998 K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Award in Dance, 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the 2008 Canada Council Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Dance.

Susanna is the co-director with Sarah Bild of La Poêle Studio in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, an art space dedicated to research, creation, education and informal presentation of dance, music and other related arts practices. An important and much-loved hub in the Montreal arts-scene, the studio celebrates it's 10th anniversary in 2023!"

"Quebec City, Québec, 1956: Composer, Performer (drum set, percussion, voice)

A percussionist, composer and inveterate inventor, Pierre Tanguay is one of the most sought-after Montréal musicians on the Quebec scene. Since the beginning of the 80s, he has participated in an impressive number of ensembles, including Jean Derome and the dangereux zhoms, Évidence, Castor et compagnie, the Jean-François Groulx Trio, the ODD (a danse orchestra), Villemure Ô Carré, the Pierre Cartier Ensemble and Projet Riel. Among his collaborators are Jean Derome, Normand Guilbeault, Pierre Langevin, René Lussier, Karen Young, Fred Frith, Michel Donato, Daniel Mille, André Duchesne and Antoine Berthiaume. He is very active in the fileds of medieval and traditional music, jazz and musique actuelle. He is the co-founder of Strada, Midi Tapant, Derome/Tanguay.

He has composed works for dance (Lucie Grégoire, Andrew Harwood, Irène Stamou and Francine Gagné), as well as works for the theatre and film (Allan Booth, Imago and Roberto Ariganello). He regularly tours throughout Canada and Europe."

"Scott Thomson is an improvising trombonist and composer. He works extensively with singer and dance artist, Susanna Hood, and writes songs for her based on published authors' texts to be played in many contexts, from duo to octet and sometimes including Susanna' s choreography. Monicker (with Arthur Bull and Roger Turner), for example, exemplifies Scott's commitment to open improvisation. He co-founded the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto (AIMToronto) in 2004 and served as a director until 2009, and co- directed the AIMToronto Orchestra, formed for a project with Anthony Braxton in 2007. In 2016, he convened the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra to play Roscoe Mitchell's music. He founded Somewhere There, a Toronto creative music venue that hosted 850 concerts during his tenure, 2007-10. Scott has composed a series of site- specific works, "cartographic compositions" for mobile musicians and audiences in unconventional performance contexts including, notably, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Scott programs the Guelph Jazz Festival."