Dear friends of Cardboard Studios, a great and happy new year to you all!
2015 was an interesting, fun, challenging, crazy year, in many ways. It saw the birth of some new projects and ideas which have started to percolate, some travelling, lots of playing and developing, in short, a year of lots… I was awarded a grant from the Canada Council to study Turkish music, I’ve had a great time so far, finally starting to demystify slightly what has always been a deeply beautiful, but incomprehensible magic for me. I hope to get going in earnest towards the end of the year and over the winter.
The Cardboard Studios Concert Series continues, we’ve had some really fantastic performances here with the nascent Turkish trio Loti, Tango Yona, Lamia Yared’s Ensemble Zaman, Sound of the Mountain, Nous Perçons les Oreilles, Samuel Bonnet, and the Siach Hasadeh duo.
With Ihtimanska, we’ve focused on performing this past busy year, developing our existing material and working on some new stuff for a recording which will hopefully happen in 2016. We’ve been to Toronto twice, Ottawa twice, New York, participated in Kulturfest, the Nuit Blanche, and the Vitrine des Musiques Locales Métisées in which we were awarded the Prix de Coup de Coeur de la Place des Arts et de Vision Diversité, which gives us the opportunity to play at the Place des Arts in February 2016. There’s even a very special trip in the works to visit the home country that I’ve never yet been to, to take lessons with some great musicians and expand our vocabulary.
Siach Hasadeh has been in a cocoon in 2015, working on many ideas that are about to spring forth in 2016! There is a very very special video in the kiln of the amazing Chris Henschel. Our dear bassist, Joel Kerr became a father this summer, which has brought some great little gurgles and coos into our rehearsals since. 2016 promises to be an incredible year, with a residence and performance planned for March 8-12 at the Maison de la Culture Ahuntsic, collaboration with a visual artists in the works, almost enough new material to record a third album, and, we have been awarded the CAM en Tournée which means lots of great new opportunities! In the mean time…. <page 2>