"Isaiah Ceccarelli. Born Chetwynd, British Columbia, Canada, 1978. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (drum set, percussion).

Isaiah Ceccarelli is a drummer, improviser, and composer based in Montréal. His music has been qualified as "one of the most original approaches to come through our offices in recent times" (Marc Chénard, La Scena Musicale) and he has been described as possessing "a writing style with rare personality in this musical context" (Thierry Lepin, Jazzman Magazine). He participates in numerous creative music projects with Michel F Côté, Pierre-Yves Martel, Lori Freedman, Jean Derome, Bernard Falaise, Joshua Zubot and Philippe Lauzier, amongst others. He plays with Félix Stüssi and Ray Anderson, as well as with the Acadian singer Marie-Jo Thério. Proud ambassador of a new generation of creative musicians in Québec, his collaborations have led him on tour in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. Isaiah has composed music for two of his own albums, Bréviaire d'épuisements and Lieux-dits (both on the Ambiances Magnétiques label), and for ensembles and musicians such as Quatuor Bozzini, Ensemble Allogène, the violist Jennifer Thiessen, and Ensemble Kô. He sings with the Schola Saint-Grégoire (Gregorian chant).

A seasoned musician and composer, Isaiah Ceccarelli is, in the words of Charles Collard from La Scena Musicale, "a jewel in the crown of the Montréal scene and his presence is felt on several fronts at the same time."

"Michel F Côté. Born Montréal, Québec, 1958. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (percussion).

Half a century later, now a grown-up, he still doesn't understand why he chose a career as a musician and composer instead of something else. With fluidity and idiocy, he gets involved with whomever he wants, thus avoiding any and all reductive labeling attempts. A Montréaler and a co-founder of the &records label, he stumbles around in various bands: bob, Klaxon, Pink Saliva, (juste) Claudette, and Mecha Fixes Clock. A designer associated with stage arts, he refuses to grow softer. As proof, in dance he adds his ear to the choreographies of Catherine Tardif, Sylvain Émard, Louise Bédard, Shanti Wadge, and José Navas; in theatre, he scratches his head alongside Wajdi Mouawad, Robert Lepage, Brigitte Haentjens, Éric Jean, and Martin Faucher. So what's left? He favours plants, suffers from music-loving, is rather clean overall, and tends to keep in shape."

"André Duchesne (born 1949) is a Canadian experimental music guitarist and composer. He was a co-founder of Ambiances Magnétiques, a Canadian musical collective and record label, and formed several experimental music bands, including Conventum, Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar and Locomotive. Duchesne has also released five solo albums.Biography

André Duchesne was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1949. As a teenager he learnt acoustic guitar, but was not satisfied with the popular rock music being played at the time. In the mid-1970s he formed an avant-garde folk-rock group called Conventum with René Lussier, Jean Derome, Jean-Pierre Bouchard, Jacques Laurin, Bernard Cormier and poet Alain-Arthur Painchaud. Conventum was described by AllMusic as a mixture of "Quebec's folk roots with absurd poetry and progressive arrangements". They released two albums, À l'Affût d'un Complot in 1977 and Le Bureau Central des Utopies in 1979.

In 1983 Duchesne, Lussier, Derome and Robert M. Lepage formed Ambiances Magnétiques, a musical collective and artist-run record label specialising in avant-garde music. Duchesne released his first solo album, Le Temps des Bombes on the new label in 1984. Then he began writing contrapuntal compositions for a guitar quartet, and formed Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar (The 4 Guitarists of the Apocalypso-Bar) with Lussier, Bouchard and Roger Boudreault to perform the pieces. Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar was a concept band that Duchesne said was from post-apocalypse Canada "inspired by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix". They premiered at the 4th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) at Victoriaville, Quebec in October 1986, and continued until 1989, touring Canada, the United States and Europe. They also released two albums in 1987 and 1989.

After the success of Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso-Bar, Duchesne returned to FIMAV in 1989 to premier "his most ambitious work ever", L' Ou 'L, a composition that explored different styles of chamber music. In 1991, he formed Locomotive with Claude Fradette and Rémi Leclerc, which also performed at FIMAV in 1991. Locomotive recorded an album of the same name in 1992, which AllMusic called "the pinnacle of André Duchesne's discography".

During the mid- to late-1990s, Duchesne formed several rock bands, but they never recorded. In 1999 he released Réflexions, an album of classical guitar solos, and in 2001, Polaroïde, a free improvisation session for guitar, viola and percussion. Duchesne returned to FIMAV for its 21st edition in 2004 to premier Cordes à danser, a new project of his featuring a string quartet and a "power trio" of guitar, bass and drums."

"Joane Hétu. Born Montréal, Québec, 1958. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (alto saxophone, voice), Author/

It has been more than 30 years now since self-taught composer, vocalist and saxophonist Joane Hétu has been following her own highly distinctive path through the vast territory of creative, contemporary music. From her beginnings with song-based new-rock bands such as Wondeur Brass, Justine and Les Poules, Hétu turned to composition (the evocative triptych comprising Musique d'hiver, Filature and La femme territoire ou 21 fragments d'humus) and improvisation, more often than not combining both within her general approach to music. She has co-directed the Ensemble SuperMusique since its founding in 1998, as well as the weekly series Mercredimusics since 2002. More recently she gave birth to La chorale bruitiste Joker (2012). Joane Hétu was awarded the prestigious Freddie Stone Award in 2006."

"Elizabeth Lima. Born Quebec City, Québec, 1981. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (clarinet). Known for Ample et de l'Ensemble Kô."

"Danielle Palardy Roger. Born Laval, Québec, 1949. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (drum set, electronic percussion, voice).

Percussionist, composer and improviser Danielle Palardy Roger is for the most part self-taught. Active on the Montréal "musique actuelle" scene since 1980, she co-founded the groups Justine, Wondeur Brass and Les Poules. She also founded Ensemble SuperMusique, a shape-shifting ensemble solely devoted to the performance of new music works and improvisation.

As a percussionist and improviser, her style is unique: she structures rhythm out of time, communicating a strong, complex narrative by accumulating and layering diverse gestures. She toured Canada, Europe and the United States on several occasions and appeared at several prestigious international events and festivals. In the course of her unique and resolutely independent career, she has worked and shared the stage with Alexei Borisov, DB Boyko, Christopher Butterfield, Nicolas Caloia, Paul Cram, Chantal Dumas, Christine Duncan, Lori Freedman, Fred Frith, Joëlle Léandre, Torsten Mueller, Zeena Parkins, Tenko, the VivaVoce choir, and the Quasar saxophone quartet, among others and in addition to her close collaborators from the Ambiances Magnétiques crowd - Derome, Hétu, Labrosse, Tanguay and Tétreault.

Roger's research concerns the integration of improvisation to contemporary music. In that regard, she has worked with composer Marie Pelletier and composed music for the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal and for Ensemble SuperMusique - the latter a shape shifting ensemble entirely dedicated to improvised music and "musique actuelle." She wrote a Harbour Symphony in 2001 (La grande entente), commissioned by the Musée Pointe-à-Callière in Montréal. Danielle Palardy Roger has made several albums for the Ambiances Magnétiques label, including Tricotage (2000) with French bassist Joëlle Léandre, Bruiducœur, prière des infidèles, an oratorio performed live in Montréal, in June of 2004, Phénix (2008) with the trio Les Poules, and Pas de deux (2008) with British guitarist Fred Frith.

Roger is a versatile artist whose projects have consistently brought her back to text, song and declamation. She has penned a large number of songs for Wondeur Brass and Justine, but also composed a musical tale (L'oreille enflée, 1990), a musical theatre (Candide sur une toupie, 1994) and, most importantly, the solo performance Le voyage en Aphasie Mineure (1998) and the oratorio Bruiducœur, prières des infidèles (2004), two works where an exploding language represents the intense realm of communication, the core of the artist's concerns.

In juxtaposition to her music career, Danielle Palardy Roger is also general manager and artistic director of Productions SuperMusique (PSM) and is a member of the Ambiances Magnétiques label; in addition to being involved in the field of concert music she is president of the Groupe Le Vivier, which is dedicated to the founding of a place of creation, production and presentation of new music in Montréal."

"Alexandre St-Onge. Born Montréal, Québec, 1976. Residence: Montréal, Québec. Composer, Performer (double bass).

Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (acoustic bass, bass, voice and electronics) and a sound performer. He has studied literature and philosophy and he is currently doing his PhD in art. He is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach of the ineffable and he has released seven solo CDs: Entités (Oral), Joseph Carey Merrick (Oral), Mon animal est possible (Alien8 Recordings), L'amitié ou les rumeurs insoutenables du désir (Squint Fucker Press), kasi naigo (Squint Fucker Press), Une mâchoire et deux trous (Namskéio Records), Image/négation (Alien8 Recordings). He also plays in quite a few bands, including Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, Mineminemine, Shalabi Effect and Undo. As a composer he has worked for interactive/mixed-media company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe."

"Born Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France, 1981. Composer, performer (baritone saxophone).

Ida Toninato is a saxophonist whose solid technique allows him to rub shoulders with the great masters of the contemporary repertoire (Berio, Stockhausen, Grisey) while creating a new repertory with composers, both young and seasoned. To date, she has created a dozen works dedicated to him for baritone saxophone, his instrument of predilection. If mixed music (acoustic instrument with electronic processing in real time or delayed) is his main discipline, his lyricism and his passion also lend themselves to more classical influences ('poignant saxophone', Victor Swoboda , The Gazette, 7 January 2011, about New Work - La La Human Steps ), interdisciplinary collaborations and the exploratory bursts of improvised music. From 2010 to 2012 she joined the La La La Human Steps dance company for New Work's world tour, performing Gavin Bryars' original music on stage at prestigious theaters such as London's Sadler's Wells, the Kremlin Moscow and the Palais des Festivals in Cannes and the BBC studios in London. Back in Montreal, she signed the design and creation of Totem Contemporain 's first young audience show , which promotes composer Jean-François Laporte 's new musical instruments and sound generators. She then joined the Theater troupe L'instant for three weeks of performances at the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier in the play La Fête à Jean written by Pier-Luc Lasalle . She is currently collaborating with composers Giorgio Magnanensi , Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière and Serge Provost for the composition of new works for saxophone, electronic processing and video. She is a founding member of the ensemble La Machine , with contemporary consonances tinged with rock. She is preparing to complete her doctorate in performance at the University of Montreal and is a student researcher at CIRMMT in the field of extensive performative practices."