About

Dr. Eldad Tsabary's main areas of expertise are in the domain of sound studies—specifically (1) live electroacoustic performance and (2) sound-focused aural perception. He has been teaching electroacoustic performance, composition, and ear training at Concordia University (Montreal) since 2005, where in collaboration with his students, he created the Concordia Laptop Orchestra (CLOrk, 2010)—one of the largest and most prolific electroacoustic ensembles worldwide. With dozens of performances in prestigious festivals and venues worldwide, CLOrk has served as a fruitful research-creation platform for investigating the nature of collective improvisation, mediation, and creative process; and developing approaches for equitable, diverse, and inclusive co-creation.

With students and professors as co-researchers Tsabary has been exploring strategies, pedagogies, and technologies for sound-focused ear training that encourage critical self-reflection, provide informative timely feedback, and foster self-motivated growth. Most recently, Tsabary has been leading the creation of Inner Ear—a SSHRC-funded browser-based collection of sonic-aural-training tools designed around principles of transformational education and findings from motivation studies.

Dr. Tsabary has a rich experience in administration and leadership. In recent years he has been chair of the International Conference on Arts and Humanities (in Bali, Colombo, and Kuala Lumpur), and he co-chaired the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (TIES 2016) and the Montreal hub of the International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC-ESCOM 2018), among others. At Concordia University he is the coordinator of Electroacoustic Studies at the Department of Music, and previously was coordinator (interim) of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts. He was president (2013-2019) of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community—Canada's national electroacoustic association. Eldad received his doctorate in music education from Boston University.

Dr. Ricardo Dal Farra (Buenos Aires, 1957) is a composer and new media artist, educator, historian, and curator working in the intersection of the arts, sciences, and technology. He is a Professor at the Music Department of Concordia University, Canada (http://goo.gl/SeuhUx) and founder-director of the Electronic Arts Experimentation and Research Centre - CEIARTE of the National University of Tres de Febrero, Argentina.

He has been researcher and consultant on electroacoustic music and media arts history for UNESCO, France; director of the Hexagram Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies, Canada; associated researcher of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre at De Montfort University, in the UK; senior consultant of the Amauta - Andean Media Arts Centre in Cusco, Peru; coordinator of the international research alliance DOCAM - Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage; and director of the Multimedia Communication national program at the Federal Ministry of Education, Argentina.

Dal Farra has presented his sound-art, electroacoustic and visual-music works in more than 40 countries, and recordings of his pieces are published in 23 international editions (including CDs by Computer Music Journal and Leonardo Music Journal, by MIT Press). Among others, he received awards and commissions from the Sao Paulo International Arts Biennale, Brazil; the National Endowment for the Arts, Argentina, the Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, France; the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale of the University of Padua, Italy; and the International Computer Music Association.

For UNESCO, he conducted extensive research on Latin American electroacoustic music (https://cutt.ly/Ud7TfhZ in English, and https://cutt.ly/Ud7Ttmi in Spanish). Funded by The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology of Montreal, he created the largest collection publicly available of Latin American Electroacoustic Music, including a database with over 2,000 recordings of works digitally preserved, composed 1957-2007 by almost 400 composers, and +200,000 words (http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=556). Also, he made a substantial contribution to the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site - EARS project (http://ears.huma-num.fr).

Dal Farra is founder-director of the international conference series Understanding Visual Music - UVM (held in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil), and founder-director of the international conference series Balance-Unbalance (held in Argentina, Canada, Australia, United States, Colombia, the UK, and The Netherlands) on how the media arts could contribute to solving the environmental crisis (http://balance-unbalance2018.org). He also has been leading art-science projects, like the three editions of the sound-art international contest organized with the Red Cross Climate Centre, and designed multiple art-science-technology educational programs.

Dr. Dal Farra was the artistic director of the Mexican electronic arts biennale Transitio in 2015, and a guest keynote at Congreso Internacional de Humanidades Digitales (2016) and SIGRaDi - Ibero-American Digital Graphic (2016), held in Argentina, and HDRio - I Congresso Internacional em Humanidades Digitais (2018), held in Brazil. He is an active member of several editorial boards: Leonardo/ISAST (MIT Press, USA), Organised Sound (Cambridge Press, UK), and Resonancias - Musical Research Journal (Catholic University of Chile). He has served in the editorial board of Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), the Journal of Research on Music Education (ADOMU, Argentina), and the Journal of New Music Research (The Netherlands). Dal Farra is a full member of Colegio Latinoamericano de Compositores de Música de Arte, a member of the advisory board of the Fulldome Festival (Jena, Germany), and member of the board of ISEA International, formerly the International Society for the Electronic Arts.

Louis Patrick Leroux is Associate Dean of Research at Concordia University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. He is a Full Professor who holds a joint appointment in both English and Études françaises. His academic research and graduate supervision covers modern and contemporary theatre, playwriting, self-representation in drama, cultural discourse, research-creation, dramaturgy, Québec literature, literatures on the margins, and contemporary circus.

Recent and ongoing research projects include: the study of the poetics of writing the body in contemporary circus; performative research dissemination through research-creation; the physical, social, and creative impacts of circus practice on school children; and a socio-historical study of Québec theatre.

Recent books include: Contemporary Circus, co-written with Katie Lavers and Jon Burtt (Routledge, 2019), Cirque Global: Québec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, co-edited with Charles Batson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), and Le jeu des positions. Discours du théâtre québécois, co-edited with Hervé Guay (Nota Bene, 2014).
Recent creative books include: False Starts (Talonbooks, 2016), Ludwig & Mae (in French, Prise de parole, 2016; in English, Talonbooks, 2009), Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus (Prise de parole, 2012), and Se taire (Prise de parole, 2010).

Deanna Yerichuk has dedicated her academic career to the intersection of music, community engagement, and social change. Through her Ph.D. in Music Education (University of Toronto), she investigated the emergence of Canada’s community music schools in the early twentieth century, and is currently working on a monograph. Dr. Yerichuk has more recently begun investigating contemporary issues of inclusion and justice in cross-cultural collaborations through music, leading a pilot project on music and racial justice in high schools and another project exploring community music in Canada, both funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has earned several awards, including the SOCAN Foundation Award for Writings on Canadian Music, and the Dr. Franklin Churchley Graduate Essay Competition Prize. As an Assistant Professor, Dr. Yerichuk coordinates the Community Music program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and teaches courses in community music, arts-based research, and singing foundations.

Sabine Bergler works on computational linguistics and natural language text processing. She co-founded the CLaC Lab, where her past research included text summarization, sentiment analysis, hedge detection, and the proper treatment of negation. Research in 2020 includes hate and offensive language detection, individual experience detection in tweets, and counterfactual span detection.

Dr. Bergler is professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University, she obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brandeis University.

Donna Hewitt is a vocalist, electronic music composer, instrument designer and academic. Donna’s research has been primarily exploring mediatized performance environments and new ways of interfacing the human body and voice with electronic media. She is the inventor of the eMic, a sensor enhanced microphone stand for electronic music performance and more recently has been creating wearable electronics for controlling both sound and lighting in performance. Her work has attracted funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, most recently with all female collective Lady Electronica. Donna has held academic positions at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Queensland, University of Technology and is currently the Head of Department of Creative Arts and Communication at the University of New England, Australia. In 2018 Donna performed her work as part of the VIVID Festival, The Bondi Feast Festival and the MINT (Music in New Technologies) Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 2019 she performed her #MeToo works in Tokyo and at the Convergence Festival of Music, Technology and Ideas, UK.

Dr. Oonagh Fitzgerald is a lawyer, artist, performer, thought leader, collaborative researcher who is skilled in international law, arts, and governance research.
She is President of the International Law Association of Canada, Senior Fellow with the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, and INDI PhD in Fine Arts candidate at Concordia University. She earned a B.F.A. (Honours) from York University, an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School, an LL.M. from the University of Ottawa, an S.J.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science) from the University of Toronto, and an M.B.A. from Queen’s University. She is an INDI PhD in Fine Arts candidate at Concordia University. Her work explores, through collaborative research creation, how to innovate a planetary Charter for our times.
In a Canadian public service career spanning three decades Dr. Fitzgerald served as a senior executive, providing strategic leadership in legal policy, advisory and litigation services in international law, national security, public law, human rights and governance at the following departments: Justice Canada, Human Resources Development Canada, National Defence and the Canadian Forces, and the Privy Council Office. For six years she led the International Law Research Program at the think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation, delivering policy relevant research and capacity building on issues of international economic, environmental, and intellectual property law and innovation, and their human rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and gender equality dimensions. For three years she served as inaugural co-chair of the Canadian Environmental Domestic Advisory Group under the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement.

Dr. Fitzgerald lectured and taught courses at the University of Ottawa (Faculty of Law and Telfer School of Management), Carleton University Department of Law, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, l’Institut international du droit de l’homme in Strasbourg, and the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo. She has mentored many graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and emerging legal scholars. Recognized as a thought leader, she has been interviewed for local, national and international news, television and radio. She has written, edited and co-edited books, essay series, articles, policy briefs and commentaries. She has presented as a keynote speaker or panelist at, and organized or co-organized, national and international conferences and workshops on diverse topics.

Dr. Fitzgerald builds on her practical knowledge of international law and governance and her abiding passion for the arts, to create a unique interdisciplinary research creation project that seeks to reimagine through art and performance a new planetary Charter for our times. This has involved making visual art works and assemblages, executing socially engaged performative art projects, Spring Zine-ing in the Neighbourhood (2021), Jeanne B’Arc, Heroine for the Anthropocene (2021); hosting a virtual international Symposium and developing a Manifesto for the Arts, New Materialism, Posthumanism & Human Rights (2022); leading and co-curating a multi-media group Art Exposition, Arts and Human Rights Conversing Multiplicities (2023), contributing visual arts, props, costumes, libretti, movement for Eldad Tsabary’s Reflective Iterative Scenario Enactments (RISE) collaborative improvisational micro-operas, Into the Woods, Cyborg, Lost Connections, Lucid Dreams, Handle with Care: Values in our Hearts (conception and leadership), Conversing Multiplicities performance night (2021-2023).

Danielle is an MFA dance graduate with emphases in aerial dance and somatics from the University of Colorado (May 2019). During 2017-2018, Danielle was a Fulbright France Scholar and a Resident Artist at La Grainerie in Toulouse, where she worked on her multi-disciplinary project MAPS (Multicultural Aerial Performance Stories), resulting in four performance installations that explored the topics of grief, response and empathy within the intersection of embodied performance and media. Her project included a hybrid of dance, aerial arts, kinesthetic sound design, media arts (photography, film, projection), biometric and web design researchers. In 2018, Tethered, a dance film on suicide Danielle made with Franck Gonnaud and David Allen, was screened at the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema. Recently, Danielle was a resident artist at Nils Obstrat (Paris), where she collaborated on a VR/360/3D/drone film; collaborated on a sound and sculptural performance installation in residency with artist Rebecca Deutsch in Athens; and participated in a residency for the Circus Dialogues Project, facilitated by Belgian Professor Bauke Lievens in Avallon. Furthermore, Danielle has worked as a multi-faceted artist for Aerial Dance Chicago, Cirque du Soleil, the Joffrey Ballet, the Colorado Ballet, Frequent Flyers® and the Paloma Project, and has performed and/or taught at the Berlin Circus Festival/Berlin; Frequent Flyers® Aerial Dance Festival/Boulder, Colorado; Santa Barbara Floor to Air Festival/California; Aerial Greece/Athens, Greece; the San Francisco Aerial Dance/California; and Les Rencontres de Danse Aérienne/Nantes, France. Spring 2020, Danielle had a residency at SBCAST in Santa Barbara where she collaborated with neuroscientists on creating parasympathetic responses via aerial fabric community improvisations as part of the TACTUS retreat.

Juanita Marchand Knight is currently completing a two-and-a-half-year research assistantship at McGill University with Professor Stephen McAdams on The ACTOR Project, which applies timbral perception research to orchestration. They hold an ACS in Audio Recording Technology, a master’s degree in Opera Performance, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Vocal Pedagogy. In 2021, Juanita will begin a PhD at Concordia in the Individualized Program in Pure Science (INDI) under the supervision of Professor Mickael Deroche. Research interests include gender semiotics, perception, and vocal timbre; the applications of singing lessons as part of larger voice (re)habilitation programs; and equity and accessibility in music performance. Juanita was a 2019 recipient of McGill’s Award for Equity and Community Building for their work with McGill’s Subcommittee on Queer People and with the Schulich School of Music’s accessibility initiatives.

Philon (Phil) Nguyen (born 1978) is a composer of concert music and opera music. He was born in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He studied film music and video game music composition at UQAM (Quebec, Canada) where he completed a DESS. Phil also holds a PhD in Information Systems Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) where he researched engineering design and creativity. Phil has started a PhD in Fine Arts at Concordia University since 2022. Phil is also the author of around 10 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on the topics of music creation, design engineering and computer science.
Phil's music explores computational techniques applied to music composition (from Computer Assisted Composition to Artificial Intelligence). His compositions include an opera based on the play by Sarah Kane, Phaedra's Love (2020), the choral work Fragments for an Unfinished Requiem (2019), an opera based on a libretto he wrote for Sophocles' Antigone, entitled Sophocles: Antigone (2021) and Morphogenesis: Hommage to Gilles Deleuze (2022), a piece for small ensemble . Phil describes his music as musical deconstructivism, following the use of the term in architecture.
Phil is presently working on a research-creation project for an opera based A. Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, set in April 1975 Vietnam rather than end of century Russia. The opera is being composed using Artificial Intelligence techniques (GANs, VAEs, RNNs, Convents, etc.). Phil was recently awarded a Gina Cody/Milieux Multidisciplinary Grant to realize a project combining Artificial Intelligence and music with a team of engineers and composers.

Sheena Bernett is a singer, dancer, actor, songwriter, trans-sensory composer, choreographer, performance artist, and performing/creative arts educator and researcher. She holds an MA in Musical Theatre from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a B.F.A. in Music Composition and Classical Voice from Concordia University where she graduated with distinction. She is also a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York in Musical Theatre and studied classical voice at Vanier College.

Sheena is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia University. Her doctoral project is titled: Composing with the Event—Performance Practices that Move Toward Neurodiverse Perception/Sensation. The project investigates a radical approach to creation and performance practices that transcends disciplinary paradigms—with the aim of utilizing the performing/creative arts as a practice and languaging that facilitates neurodiverse thinking-doing. Sheena is committed to neurodiversity as a concept and movement that attends to the diversity of perception and full range or ways of being/becoming.

Valentina Plata (she/her) is a singer, sound artist, and improviser. She is currently studying Electroacoustics at Concordia University with a specialization in Creative Practices. Valentina's practice is founded on discovering new ways of expanding her alter persona Vaiu, through worldbuilding as a compositional technique. From Mexico and Colombia, Valentina now resides in Montreal and works as an Events & Operations Assistant at the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation. Valentina has previously worked as a research assistant for The Acts of Listening Lab. She lives to stay curious and true to herself.

"Let's entangle our worlds!" – Valentina Plata

Malte Leander is a Swedish-French multidisciplinary creator and artist currently residing in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. His primary art form is in audio and music, often leaning into musique concrete and soundscape composition through various field recording practices. As a vocalist, he is also implementing voice, where he blends synthesized environments with sound poetry. Alongside his compositional practice, Malte experiments with analogue video production and DIY-electronics in installations and performances. His work is often reflecting upon ecological topics such as urban noise pollution, sustainable sonic practices and acoustic ecology.

Composer / guitarist Tim Brady defies categorization - an electric guitar virtuoso who writes operas, plays concertos and feels as comfortable with a laptop electronic improvisation as with a string quartet. The guitar as orchestra - his music is a highly personal synthesis of contemporary classical, jazz, rock and electronics.

For the past 35 years he has toured the world, both as a soloist and with his group Bradyworks. In 2004 he won the Prix Opus “Composer of the Year” prize, given by the Conseil québécois de la musique. In 2007 he was awarded the Jan. V. Matecjek award by SOCAN. He has performed at many major festivals and venues, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Festival Présence in Paris, The South Bank Centre in London, the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, and in 2010 he was featured composer at the Winnipeg Symphony’s International New Music Festival. From 2008 to 2013 he was composer-in-residence with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval, and has worked with the Montreal, Toronto, Québec City and Vancouver symphonies. His CD, “Atacama: Symphony #3”, was named “Création de l’année” for 2012 at the Prix Opus in Québec and it was nominated for a JUNO in 2014.

In 2015 “Atacama: Symphony #3 had its New York premiere at the prestigious National Sawdust Concert Hall, in a performance featuring the Grammy-nominated Trinity Wall Street Choir.

His chamber and orchestral music is often influenced by strong jazz and rock rhythms, combined with a subtle sense of harmony and texture, and a flair for dramatic forms and structures. Delicate melodies inhabit the same world as dense, jagged, syncopated chords, giving the music a sense of openness, surprise and intrigue. 24 CDs, 4 operas, 10 symphonies, and dozens of international tours later, his music continues to engage listeners around the world.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Concordia University and a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

John’s 7th book, Born, was published in 2020 by Groundwood Books. He also wrote Digitopia Blues – Race, Technology and the American Voice (Banff Centre Press) and has written extensively for TV, radio, print and the stage. He is currently the Executive Writer at uOttawa.

He is also a saxophonist and performance poet who has traveled widely to apprentice, record and perform with renowned artists and elders from diverse traditions, and at festivals across Canada, the USA and Europe. He began his musical career in Montreal in the late 1970s, playing regularly in downtown clubs from the age 15.

John has also worked extensively in digital media, having at various times been Co-Curator of digifest (Canada’s largest digital festival), Manager of Brand and Digital Strategy at the Canada Council for the Arts, founder of several arts-based web startups, and a digital strategist for a wide range of arts organizations and businesses.

John graduated from Concordia’s Liberal Arts College a very long time ago. He is married with two children, one of whom is currently a Concordia student, also at the Liberal Arts College!

A multimedia artist engaged in questions about identity, I have exhibited in Canada, Jamaica, the USA, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Austria, France, Switzerland, and the UK. I completed a Photography MA (London Coll. of Communication, 2010). I’m pursuing the Individualized PhD at Concordia University, with Professors MJ Thompson, Lynn Hughes and Alice Ming Wai Jim.

My research-creation project is provisionally entitled: "Virtual ISLANDs, postcolonial hybrid identities in Virtual Reality." Building on my own experience as a white Euro-Jamaican, and past research in the portrayal of my hybrid identity within contemporary Jamaican culture, I’m exploring how this can be represented in VR. Building on research in the central role of water in Caribbean cultures, my project is informed by the violent histories of transatlantic slavery and Atlantic modernity through the framework of Paul Gilroy’s notion of the “Black Atlantic.” This project invites a reading of VR practices towards aesthetic/artistic aims through the exploration of submersion as an alternative notion to describe VR’s immersive experience.

Ayam Yaldo is an Iraqi-born, Montréal/Tiohtiá:ke artist working in various interventions that include performance, installation, and video. Her art practice employs narratives that shift between the personal and the political, the past and present, reality and myths, the archive in relation to objecthood and memory, and how these take shape in relation to grand historical narratives, and her personal experience of war and displacement from the Middle East as a child. Focusing on the body, the self, and image, Yaldo explores concepts of reconstruction, transformation and ephemerality, in relation to forms of displacement. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts and is a current MFA candidate at Concordia University in the department of Intermedia.

Elena Stoodley is a singer, author, songwriter and sound designer half of the time, the remaining being spent in community organizing. Born in Tio'tia:ke, Montreal, she often blends her passion for social justice and black liberation with her art practices. She studied Creative Writing and Electroacoustic music and performed her music across as well as internationally, including in Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville. She sometimes gives workshops or consults on topics of antioppressive work practices and intersectional inclusion. Her most recent sound design work was shown in the plays, The Mountaintop, the Rootless tree, Manman LaMer, Black Out (nominated for oustanding sounddesign for the META’s - Montreal English Theatre Awards) and currently working on Habibi’s Angel’s with the feminist Talisman Theatre company.

Alana DeVito is a musician, composer, sound designer and interdisciplinary artist studying electroacoustics and computation arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Their career as a touring and studio musician spans well over 10 years, multiple countries and numerous instruments, and has now expanded into new forms and new collaborations in digital arts, experimental composition and improvised performance. In creative A/V installations, compositions and performances, the weaving of ‘virtual kinetic’ soundscapes through vibrant, textural worlds take center stage while unique, sonic architecture project sweeping narratives. Creative computing intertwines immersive environments while blurring the line between the aural and visual sonic space. Earlier this year, Alana’s audiovisual composition, Vacillations was presented at the New York City Electroacoustic and Computer Music festival and their score for the short-animated film Something Else has premiered at numerous film festivals around the world.
Alana is the co-coordinator, resident musician and sound designer at the Acts of Listening Lab at Concordia University, and is currently working on the score for the Restorative Justice Project, while researching the intersections of musicology and generative soundscapes in installation work. Alana is an experienced audio mixer for live and recorded work, with a specialization in multichannel diffusion.

Rosalee is a graduate of the Professional Theatre Design & Technical program at John Abbott College. Previous work include scenic paint for Selwyn House production of The Hobbit, costume design for WISTA's Shrek The Musical and production design of Like Jane for the Revolutions They Wrote theatre festival. She is currently working on her BFA at Concordia University, majoring in Fibres and Material practices.

Cynthia Kinnunen is a passionate music educator and community musician. Following studies in piano, flute, bassoon, oboe and voice, and after completing her conservatory piano levels, a degree in music, and diploma in arts management, she spent 15+ years working in marketing, fundraising and event planning in the performing arts, not-for-profit, healthcare and education sectors. Cynthia currently runs a private music studio (ukulele and piano), teaches ukulele group classes and workshops locally and internationally, leads the Royal City Ukulele Ensemble adult learning program, and is Director of the Royal City Uke Fest in Guelph, Ontario. She is also part of James Hill's Uketropolis Team, is a sessional lecturer at University of Guelph, and is completing her Masters in Community Music at Wilfrid Laurier University part-time, with research interests in vulnerability and courage, serious leisure, wellness, and belonging.

Naïka Champaïgne(She/her/elle) is a Black, Haitian and queer soul/acoustic singer from Montreal. She is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, bassist and rapper in the duo Strange Froots. She debuted her first solo album ''Painted Imageries'', with songs composed and written by her, on January 1, 2020. The album is available on all platforms. The album that puts forward her roots of neo-soul, RnB, rock, jazz and folk. Naika is also very involved in community organizing. She is the co-founder of the Montreal collective ''Fruition Mtl'', a collective for queer, trans, Black, Aboriginal and racialized people. She is a member of the Black Healing Fund collective--the purpose of this collective is to provide low-income Black people in Tio'tia:ke/Montreal with discretionary funds to support their mental health and wellness needs. She also works as a youth worker and project coordinator at Jeunes Queer Youth; a program by and for queer and trans youth on the importance of sex education. Naika is a person whose creativity and personality flows into all the work she does.

Persian born concert pianist, improvisor, interdisciplinary composer, artist-researcher and educator, Anoush Moazzeni enjoys a performing career that has, frequently, taken her around the world. Highlights of recent seasons have included visits to Americas, Europe, Southern Asia & Middle East.

After finishing her undergraduate studies in both piano performance and musicology, Ms. Moazzeni specialized her master’s degree in contemporary piano performance and she is currently undertaking her individualized doctoral studies in Fine Arts at the Concordia University in Montreal. Alongside her performance studies, Ms. Moazzeni studied composition, electroacoustic music, new media arts and different coding languages in Europe.

The development of her art incorporates interaction between artistic interpretation and scholarly reflection. Particular areas of my interest in research-creation include artistic research, philosophy on stage, autoethnography, epistemology, women and feminist studies, post-human condition, decolonial theories, critical race theories, music performance studies, new strategies for interdisciplinary performance design, mixed-music composition and performance, interactive musical technologies, interface design and robotics, extended techniques and unconventional instrumental and vocal performance practice.

Anoush Moazzeni has received multiple awards and nominations from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts, Première Ovation, L’Ampli Québec, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), Concordia University, University of Tehran, Laval University, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and National Museum of Fine arts of Quebec City. Ms. Moazzeni, with more than 15 years of teaching experience, has been continuously giving workshops and master classes around the world and she currently collaborates as teaching assistant with the Concordia University.

Montréal-born soprano, Frédéricka Petit-Homme is celebrated for the warmth and strength of her full tone. She has distinguished herself as a dynamic and engaging performer in roles such as Annie in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (Opéra de Montréal), the Third Witness in L’Archange (Chants Libres).

Her musical prowess and collaborative spirit have provided her with opportunities to
perform with the city’s premier ensembles, notably l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, and l’Opéra de Montréal.

Frédéricka holds a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance and a Master of Music degree in conducting both from the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. She is passionate about music education and has taught in various educational institutions such as the Schulich School of Music, and primary schools of the Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys.

A believer in creating a space for vocalists to participate in music making and build community, Frédéricka provides artistic leadership to the River’s Edge Community Choir and begins her doctoral studies in Music Education at the Schulich School of Music in September 2021.

Frédéricka is scheduled to perform as a soloist with the Black Theatre Workshop in August, Musique 3 femmes in Fall and Ensemble Paramirabo next Spring.

Marie-Annick Béliveau has been active on the Montreal musical stage for over 20 years. Her recent performance of Scelsi’s solo “performance opera” Les Chants du Capricorne, under the direction of Pauline Vaillancourt, was unanimously praised by ritics, earning her an Opus Award for the Musical event of the year from the Conseil québécois de la musique. In 2021 she will become the new artistic director of Chants Libres, Montreal-based vocal creation company founded by Pauline Vaillancourt 30 years ago.

She has made a name for herself as an accomplished performer of the contemporary repertoire, premiering over 30 works in Canada and Europe. She can regularly be heard on CBC and has made several award-winning recordings.

Equally active on the classical stage, she performs as a soloist with several ensembles and has participated in many soundtracks, such as The Red Violin and Paul à Québec. Marie-Annick is also very active in her community, as a teacher in charge of classical vocal instruction at UQAM, at Camp musical Père Lindsay and CAMMAC music center, and as a performer for La Société pour les Arts en Milieux de Santé.

Sunanda is a graduate student at Computational Linguistics Lab at Concordia University, working on Natural Language Processing research for her Master's under the supervision of Dr. Sabine Bergler. She has a deep love and admiration of expression in various forms, and therefore, found herself deeply in love with learning as many languages as she can, for there is so much lost in the translation. Somewhere along the line, her fascination with languages on top of prior education in Computer Science, led to the development of an interest in automatic processing of natural language, i.e., Natural Language Processing (NLP). While studying and working for her Master's, Sunanda is also working at Dataperformers, a Montreal-based AI startup, as NLP Data Scientist, where she initially started off as an independent NLP consultant and researcher. Prior to this, for 2 years, she has loved interacting with the students and sharing her enthusiasm for learning while working as a Teaching Assistant for various courses at Concordia University - Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Expert Systems, Discrete Mathematics.

Before starting her Master's, she was as a Digital Design Architect at Poplify, a digital solution development startup in India, where she was responsible for the visuals and design management in all the projects, with products and services including, but not limited to - branding, graphics, front-end, theme development etc. As a student in the Computer Science department of Concordia University, given her prior expertise, as a part of RISE team, Sunanda is responsible for managing the design and development of the website.

When she is not working or studying, she likes to immerse myself in arts, literature or music and can often be found lost in reading or thought, sketching on a napkin or simply fiddling with her uke.