Exquisite Departures
November 20th 2020
A special project by the Music Gallery gathering 15 Toronto players to improvise together at a distance. My synthesizer and harmonica performance was recorded in the beautiful sounding hall of the Music Gallery at 918 Bathurst Centre by the incomparable Paul Hodge. It was thrilling to hear the Octave Cat synthesizer ring out in the empty space. Actually, my synth amp died immediately after the recording, this session killed it. At one point I “extended” my harmonica technique using the face-mask to interfere with the blows and draws. No, they didn’t force me to wear the mask for the entire recording process. It was an honour to collaborate with the wonderful group of musicians and artists. Special thanks to Tad, Paul and David for graciously organizing and collecting the sounds.
- Mani Mazinani
The Music Gallery presents
Exquisite Departures
part of the Departures Series
curated by Tad Michalak
Webcast/premiere: November 20, 2020, 7PM
www.musicgallery.org/live
Bandcamp Release: December 4, 2020
www.musicgallery.bandcamp.com
At a time when live concerts have come to a halt The Departures Series, which typically presents off site concerts featuring touring acts, has re-imagined it’s approach to musical collaboration. In an aim to spur the kind of creative interactions improvisers & video artists often manifest in the live realm in a safe and engaging way, The Departures Series has embarked on a new adaptation of an age old game, Exquisite Corpse.
Pioneered and popularized by French surrealists in the 20’s & 30’s, the game typically involves either illustration or text. One artist starts an image and passes it along to a second, who only seeing a small portion of the previous collaborator’s contribution continues the illustration, then passes it on to a third artist, so on and so forth.
For Exquisite Departures we’ve invited 15 Toronto based improvisers and 6 video artists to play an audio / visual version of this game over 15 recorded tracks. Each musician was only able to listen to 10-15 seconds of the previous recording before adding their contribution to this collective improvisation. Similarly visual artists were only able to view a small snippet of video before jumping into the process. With a small taste in which to catch the essence, vibe and feel of any particular track musicians and artists relied on their improvisational intuition, a muscle often flexed in the live arena, to contribute to these evolving compositions. These free flowing surrealist music videos capture a playfully collaborative snapshot of Toronto’s creative music & video scene in a time of physical distance.
This project will be webcast on November 20 at 7PM at www.musicgallery.org/live
The audio will be released on our Live At The Music Gallery platform on the final Bandcamp Friday of 2020, December 4, 2020 www.musicgallery.bandcamp.com
Exquisite Departures features contributions by:
Germaine Liu – percussion
Allison Cameron – electronics / toys / ukulele
Colin Fisher – electric guitar
Araz Salek – tar
Adam Hanrahan – electric bass / oscillator
Mira Martin-Gray – no input mixer
Amahl Arulanandam – cello
Yunjin Claire Lee – piano / synthesizer / electronics
Cheldon Paterson aka Slowpitchsound – turntables / electronics
Andrew Zukerman – electronics
Heather Saumer – trombone / voice / objects / piano
Alia O’Brien – flute
Mike Smith – six string electric bass
Karen Ng – saxophone / clarinet
Mani Mazinani – synthesizer / harmonica
Jesi Jordan – video
Kadrah Mensah – video
Peter Rahul – video
Julie Reich – video
Vanese Smith – video
Jamie Whitecrow – video
David Dacks - Executive Director
Paul Hodge – Recording Engineer, Mixing & Mastering
Tad Michalak - Departures Series Curator & Instigator
Recorded at The Music Gallery.
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https://musicgallery.bandcamp.com/album/exquisite-departures
https://musicgallery.org/events/exquisite-departures/
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An in depth article on the process behind Exquisite Departures written by Andrew Timar for Wholenote Magazine.
