12:49 PM
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Event Details
Encircling the World is a musical project designed to illuminate the common experience of musicians and music lovers from many traditions. Against the noise of division and polarization heard around the world, we propose a different approach, with music as the means of exploration – what do we share, what do we have in common despite apparent differences, how can we better understand one another, and what is this beautiful thing called music?
This show is part of an ongoing series of such events presented by North Wind Concerts, and focuses for a second time on flutes with the following musicians:
JIN CHO, daegeum
DEBBIE DANBROOKE, shakuhachi
LASSO SANOU, flüte peule
ANDREW TIMAR, suling
Bringing together flute players from four different traditions, Encircling the World: Flutes II is an evening of solo and group music making, commentary and discussion, and interaction with the audience. The flutists work in Korean, Japanese, Burkinabe and Indonesian playing traditions and beyond, on diverse flutes made of bamboo or wood.
Each musician will play a solo set and speak about what they see as most meaningful to share - their musical education, experience, philosophy, and/or the purpose of music in their own lives and the world at large. They will also play prepared and improvised music together, in various groupings, and the audience will also be able to interact with questions and discussion.
We’re suggesting an admission fee of $25 but feel free to offer what you wish. Anyone paying $35 or more per seat can receive a tax-deductible receipt. North Wind Concerts is a registered charitable organization.
We’re all looking forward to it – please join us for an ear- and mind-opening evening!
Featured Program
Flutist JIN CHO specializes in historical and contemporary performance on Baroque flute, modern flute and Daegeum (Korean transverse flute). Jin studied modern flute performance at Peabody Conservatory as a major, with Baroque flute as a minor. He went on to study historical performance at the master’s level at the University of Toronto, where he also started to collaborate with contemporary composers and experiment with new techniques that expand the expressive range of the Baroque flute. Jin is currently based in Toronto, where he performs as a soloist and ensemble musician. Jin has performed with the Aspen New Music Ensemble and Lucerne Festival Alumni Ensemble, in addition to performing in South Korea, South Africa, India, Germany, France, China and Italy.
DEBBIE DANBROOK is a musician, composer and recording artist specializing in music for meditation, relaxation, gentle movement and healing. She is a Master player of the Shakuhachi flute, an ancient Japanese instrument that was originally played by monks as a type of Zen called 'Suizen' or blowing Zen. Debbie is the first woman to have mastered this difficult instrument and weaves the Shakuhachi together with her voice in her ethereal music.
Her music has been embraced by healers and spiritual practitioners around the globe. She has released over 20 CD's of music through her company Healing Music. www.healingmusic.com She has performed internationally and played at EXPO in Japan and played for the Japanese Prince and Princess at the opening ceremony for a Zen meditation garden. Debbie was invited to offer her healing music at the Genocide Memorial in Rwanda.
Debbie is a founding member of Music Can Heal, a non-profit organization that brings peaceful, healing music to uplift and soothe those in need whether in hospital, retirement homes, long term care or palliative care. www.musiccanheal.org Debbie is an ordained Reverend and Priestess and officiates and offers healing music at Memorials and Celebration of Life ceremonies. Healing Music also offers a Sleep Program to help listeners get a deeper and more beneficial sleep. www.sleep-program.com
LASSO SANOU was born into a griot family in a small village in the north of Burkina Faso in West Africa. He grew up in an environment where music and songs were at the centre of people’s lives, and quickly discovered his great gifts for singing and playing several traditional African instruments. He first learned percussion (balafon, tamani, djembe) and later the kambélé n’goni, a traditional African stringed instrument. Thanks to his famous cousin, Dramane Dembélé, Lasso discovered the flûte peule in 2004 and developed a real passion for this instrument. With its blend of the elements of air (through the player’s breath) and earth (through the wood from which it is made), the sound of this mystical and ancestral instrument touched him deeply. He quickly became one of the most celebrated flutists in the country. Lasso moved from Burkina Faso to Quebec in 2009 and since then has become a mainstay of Montréal’s music scene. He combines traditional and original music in a variety of collaborations and ensembles including Lasso & Sini-Kan, Kuné, and others.
ANDREW TIMAR is a Toronto suling player, composer, multi-instrumentalist, gamelan music educator and music journalist. Though he plays many instruments of the gamelan orchestras of West and Central Java, Indonesia, his specialty is performing on various types of suling, the bamboo ring flutes played by the Sundanese people (from West Java) he plays with Toronto’s Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan. Cofounding ECCG in 1983, he has composed numerous works for it, toured internationally with ECCG, is featured on over 15 of its albums and served as its Artistic Director and Director of its community gamelan.
With classical training on the bassoon and period European reed instruments and the recorder, Andrew irrevocably switched to the suling in 1983-84, serving as the ECCG’s suling soloist ever since. His suling teachers have included prominent Sundanese suling masters Burhan Sukarma and Endang Sukandar. Andrew has made five study and concert trips to Indonesia. In 2008 Sundanese hit songwriter and prominent composer Nano Suratno dubbed him "North America’s leading suling player” in recognition of his contribution to diasporic suling performance.
Andrew has performed with a very wide variety of musicians from the 1970s on, including Laurie Anderson, NEXUS, CCMC, Nada Rasa, Aradia Baroque Ens., Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Bill Parsons and percussionist Trichy Sankaran, appearing on the last three’s albums. Andrew has also produced music for numerous theatrical dance, film, video, opera and stage productions during the course of his career.
As a gamelan music educator he served as Course Director at York University and introduced gamelan performance studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music, ROM’s education department and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, among other institutions. For 8 years he introduced Javanese gamelan performance to tens of thousands of students in over 80 Toronto District School Board schools.
Andrew’s numerous compositions have explored many genres. For two years he served as a mentor composer for Esprit Orchestra’s education outreach programme, bringing the ECCG’s gamelan degung to Toronto high school student composers.