Vancouver New Music celebrates sonic exploration at Whispered Folds, October 16 to 18

Annual VNM Festival features performances by Émilie Payeur, Cecilia Lopez, Erin Gee, JJJJJerome Ellis, and more

SPONSORED POST BY Vancouver New Music

Émilie Payeur. Photo by Dylan Paquet

Vancouver New Music presents its annual VNM Festival from October 16 to 18 at the Annex. This year’s theme, Whispered Folds, is a metaphor for the overlapping layers of identity, experience, and resonance explored by the artists, who invite listeners to consider how sound reflects and disrupts physical, psychological, and cultural borders.

Festival highlights include New York–based Argentinian composer Cecilia Lopez’s handwoven electronic instrument RED, a fusion of architecture, installation, and composition; the return of Montreal’s Erin Gee with her piece In Bloom, an ambient narrative-driven meditation on the afterlife; and JJJJJerome Ellis’s new work on the intersections between music and sound, stuttering, and Blackness. Artist talks start at 7:15 pm each night, and performances start at 8 pm.

Erin Gee. Photo by Santiago Orti

Anaïs Maviel. Photo by SeanWebley

On October 16, Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist, experimental musician, and composer Émilie Payeur draws on explorations of the Balinese ritual Calonarang for her piece In Between. Vancouver-based artist Parmela Attariwala’s performance begins and closes with Bharatanatyam works that reference the Sikh nighttime prayer, which is also recited at death. And Lopez’s RED works as a cluster of sonic feedback that is influenced by its surroundings, allowing sounds and movements in the space to affect her final product.

On October 17, Vancouver-based sound artist Brady Marks performs an improvised mix of propulsive music while narrating a list of personal posts reminiscent of missed-connection columns in print newspapers. Gee’s In Bloom uses whispered narration and a video collaboration with Maxime Corbeil-Perron to conjure posthuman imaginaries through ecological entanglement. And in Animacy or A Breath Manifest, Brussels-based Mexican artist Vica Pacheco bridges animism, ritual, and technology, drawing on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican whistling vessels.

Cecilia Lopez. Photo by Wolfgang Daniel

On the final evening of the festival, October 18, JJJJJerome Ellis shares improvisations from his forthcoming record Vesper Sparrow. Then American composer, artist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Anaïs Maviel performs originals excerpted from previous works and arrangements of folkloric songs.

VNM Festival also includes Murmurs of Memory, an immersive sound installation presented in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library from October 16 to 18. Audio recordings are diffused through an 8-channel system using custom-made wood resonators placed in front of the Grand Staircase at the Central Library.

For tickets to Whispered Folds and more details, visit Vancouver New Music.

Post sponsored by Vancouver New Music.

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