Arts & Entertainment GuideJazz

VTO Festival

Every Victoria Day weekend in Quebec, the city of Victoriaville hosts the Festival international de musique actuelle, an event that assaults the boundaries and limitations of existing musical genres. Over the past decade, a Toronto mini-fest presented by Roughidea and the Music Gallery has become a regular forum for musicians en route to the main event. The Swiss duo of Franziska Baumann and Matthias Ziegler combine technology, dance and improvisation into a compelling unit. Baumann complements her singing with the cyberglove, an electronic device that translates hand and arm movement, and spatial interaction into sound; Ziegler plays a striking array of flutes, the bass and contra-bass functioning close to the lowest threshold of human hearing. May 13. Contemporary improvised music not only bridges the ideas of electronic and acoustic space, but it also spans cultures. Xu Fengxia is a Chinese classical master who plays the guzheng, a kind of plucked zither, while violinist-violist Gunda Gottschalk’s background is in European classical music. The two have found a mutual idiom within Germany’s improvised music scene.—Brent Ledger
When:
May. 14/08
How Much:
TBA
Location

Large map

More locations (2)

Related Listings

With a crisply articulate approach to mainstream modern jazz that ...

This biannual fest of Yiddish culture draws on the many ...

New York–based Austrian-born singer and songwriter Elisabeth Lohninger possesses a ...

This third annual afternoon event, organized by trombonist Scott Thomson, ...

Toronto has a long history of tucked-away venues devoted to ...

Related Features

Critical Math Critical Math

The multitalented, multitasking John Mighton—writer, philosopher, brainiac By Alec Scott

June 2007 June 2007

Danny Grossman Danny Grossman

How the modern dance guru, whose company performs at Harbourfront this month, would spend a single perfect day. Toronto on ... By Amy Verner