MUSIC MARATHON + MARKETPLACE

The story of Toronto-based Tiger Balme is Yang Chen, Estyr, Danielle Sum, and Anda Zeng coming together to sing songs they could only sing once they had found each other. With members taking turns writing and singing, Tiger Balme’s heart beats with disco, indie, math rock, and ’90s acoustic pop influences through the grounding forces of drums, guitar, and bass, while vibraphone, harp, and harmonies shimmer above. Their debut album produced by Paul Chin, the self-titled Tiger Balme, is an embrace of the wounds that shape us and the connection that heals us, an ode to the courage that arises from being true to one’s own heart. Tiger Balme has received national and local radio play (including CBC’s Afterdark, CBC’s Big City Small World, and CRJU’s The Night Shift); their music was also placed in the CBC Gem series “Lunchbox Dilemma.” The band has shared the stage with international and local acts (including Madison McFerrin, Hannah Georgas, Emily Soon, and cutsleeve) at venerable Toronto venues and festivals such as Venus Fest, POP Montreal, and Pique Fest.

SlowPitchSound (Cheldon Paterson) is an award-winning Toronto-based composer, mentor, and explorer of sound & visuals. He has collaborated with creators from a wide range of disciplines including opera, jazz, classical, electronic music, theatre and dance. His unique style of music production, self-proclaimed as "sci-fi-turntablism", has graced stages around the world including Canada, Australia, USA, United Kingdom, and Sweden. With a passion for depth and detail in his work, Cheldon is heavily inspired by nature, outer space, and dystopian sci-fi. Cheldon’s unique approach to making music includes turntablism, sample manipulation, and field recordings. Making a shift into the world of live theatre, Cheldon has been nominated for a DORA award (Outstanding Sound Design / Composition), and has a collective win for Best New Theatre Production with "Italian Mime Suicide".

Christopher Tignor is a composer, violinist, lecturer, and software engineer. His emotionally charged scores and unique focus on live, performance-based electroacoustic practice have won acclaim within both the classical and experimental communities across 10 LPs on the Western Vinyl and New Albion record labels. He creates the live performance software he uses, shared freely. As a composer he has written and recorded work for ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet, performing alongside them at premiere venues including Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As a string arranger he has worked with Helios, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, This Will Destroy You, Meshell Ndegeocello, and several other artists at the boundaries of popular music. As a result of his unique performance technique using tuning forks, Christopher is a sponsored artist of the German tuning fork maker Wittner. Likewise, renowned software leader Antares sponsors Christopher for his inventive application of Auto-Tune as a "choral" violin harmonizer.

Canadian Guitarist and Composer, Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo (b. 1996), is an artist-driven by collaboration and innovation who aims to redefine the constraints of 21st-century guitar. Through an examination of the social implications of the music we present, Lacopo transforms narratives into sonic experiences. His music challenges conventions and offers an expanded world of soundscapes and textures through an exploration of new approaches to electroacoustic performance practice, and an intermingling of mediums and collaborations. By showcasing varying settings of electronics, classical guitar, and electric guitar within the context of classical music, Lacopo unifies the different stylistic and cultural worlds of the guitar within classical music to create a more realistic picture of the genre in the 21st century.

Andrew Furlong is an upright and electric bass player and an active member of the Toronto music scene. He is a member of Glen Hall’s Ossingtones with Bruce Cassidy, Archives of Eternity with Mark Hundevad and Mike Gennaro, and various Kurt Newman projects including Nashville Minimalism Unit and Country Phasers. Andrew can be found improvising in small groups with some of Canada’s most creative musicians in Toronto and across North America, with people like Sam Weinberg, Sandy Ewen, Ben Bennett, Kevin Shea, Colin Fisher, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, Karen Ng and Nick Fraser. His duo with trumpeter Emily Denison, Doit, released their first record Labour of Luck on Withdrawn Records in January 2019. From 2018-2020 Andrew presented the Jazz and Otherwise Improvised Music series at Wenona Lodge in Toronto. Since 2018 he has been booking the monthly series Music by Harry and Furlong at The Tranzac Club in Toronto, presenting and collaborating with Canadian and International improvisers in the comfiest venue in the city. Mark Zurawinski is a Toronto-based percussionist, improviser, audio engineer, and sound designer with an eclectic palette, and fondness for left-field music, which takes him to interesting and diverse sonic places – from contemplative chamber music to free-jazz freak outs, minimalist groove to digital noise. Mark is inspired by the tangibility of sound and has a keen interest in exploring the fluidity of texture and time, and the space where composition and improvisation meet. Kurt Newman is a guitarist, pedal steel player and dobroist, improviser, composer, and writer who lives in Toronto, Canada. A co-founder of Toronto's Ulterior Music Series in the late 1990s, as a young person Newman played extensively within the North American improvising community. At the same time, Newman established a long-running musical friendship with the composer Martin Arnold, holding down the steel guitar chair in Arnold's chamber ensemble Marmots. A move to Texas in the early 2000s found Newman playing with Sarah Hennies, Sandy Ewen, and Aaron Russell in the Weird Weeds and working with Chris Cogburn to get the No Idea Festival up and running. Since returning to Toronto a few years ago, Newman has revived old partnerships and explored brand new ones, playing often with Brodie West, Nick Fraser, Rob Clutton, Karen Ng, Mira Martin-Grey, Andrew Furlong, Blake Howard, and many other brilliant denizens of the wider Toronto music community. He leads the groups Country Phasers and the Nashville Minimalism Unit and is a member of Eucalyptus, the Dun Dun Band, and Ayal Senior's band. He hosts the monthly series Cosmic Country for Communists at the Tranzac Club and runs a weekly bluegrass jam there, too.

kat estacio is a Tkaronto-based creative and recovering overachiever. kat often focuses on collaborative and exploratory projects, blending analog and acoustic elements with digital and electronic as a palette for self-expression. Informed by their lived experience as a diasporic queer racialized woman, kat centres intentional and embodied remembering in creating for the senses. They are also a member of the avante-pop kulintang band, Pantayo.

Naomi McCarroll-Butler is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and instrument maker based in Montréal and Toronto. She is interested in the elegance of the overtone series, breathwork in the unique somatic journey of trans and gender-non-conforming people, and the creation of trance environments through drone, repetition, and fluid tuning systems.

Exit Points is a concert series and record label specializing in ensemble-based free-improvisation. The concerts are on the last Friday of every month at Arraymusic in Toronto. The ensemble featured in the YDS Marathon comprises musicians who have each performed in the series. Akim Angulo is a master of the shakuhachi flute, producer, and luthier based in Toronto. His career centers around meditation, chamber, and jazz music. He has worked profusely with organizations such as the International Anthroposophic Christian Community and Amnesty International in Spain, Scandinavia, Germany, South Africa, etc. Joyce To is an Australian percussionist, improviser, and new media/sound artist. She enjoys creating through experimental art-making practices, improvisation, and found objects. Her work often reflects on contemporary environmental and social discourse through artistic investigation and interdisciplinary collaborations. Behnoosh Behnamnia is a musician who was trained extensively in her native Iran, taking her BA and Master’s in Music Performance in Fine Arts Faculty of Tehran University, studying under world-renowned masters of both kamancheh and Violin. These related stringed instruments express a deep cross-cultural understanding of music that is firmly rooted in Persian traditions as well as its modern and contemporary sounds. Yang Chen is a percussionist with many side hustles who prioritizes collaboration, personal growth, and joy. Yang is a grateful nexus of playful curiosity, cross-disciplinary yearning, classical training, and loving relationships. All of which influence process & product within their work. Michael Palumbo (BFA, MA) is a musician, teacher, programmer, and Ph.D. candidate in digital media. He improvises as a soloist and in ensembles, runs the Exit Points concert series and record label, and through that work is creating intersections between community building, mutual aid, and improvised music.