CURRENT PROJECTS

CONNECTIVE TISSUE

CONNECTIVE TISSUE highlights the intersection of art music, video, and aspects of popular culture. It weaves together folklore and nostalgia in a way that both foregrounds the role technology and digital culture play in our lives today and predicates itself on the fundamentally communal—and connective—nature of human interaction. Works by Canadians Eliot Britton, Myriam Boucher, and Nicole Lizée as well as Wojciech Kilar (Poland) and John Psathas (New Zealand) are augmented with video created principally by Boucher and Lizée, leading audience members through a 70-minute audio-visual experience.

CORPORATE RETREAT

Congratulations Employee 501111! You’ve been selected for voluntary compliance training at the QUIGITAL CORPORATE RETREAT. In this theatrical percussion-centric performance augmented by technology, Quigital, Architek Percussion, and Sarah Albu (soprano) invite you to experience the future of work: faster, louder, and playfully soul crushing. Powered by relentlessly enthusiastic algorithms, vocalist Sara Albu will guide you through product launches, loyalty tests, and passive-aggressive e-mail lounge ballads. Stay alert: compliance training is mandatory, termination is inevitable, and your cell phone can be used for real-time audience metrics. Business casual encouraged. If you’re on time, you’re late.

OBJECT PROJECT

The premise behind OBJECT PROJECT’s theme is simple: Architek musicalizes household, quotidian, or custom-built objects combined with amplification, live electronics, and pre-recorded fixed electronics. The excitement behind developing and performing repertoire using objects in place of instruments lies in the creation of sound worlds not conceivable with traditional instruments. As an evolving project over 10 years, this program has featured new and established works by John Cage (USA), Hanna Hartman (Sweden), Fredrik Gran (Sweden), Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad (Norway), James O’Callaghan (Canada), Nicola Giannini (Italy/Canada), Ana Dall’Ara-Majek (Canada), Emily Doolittle (Canada/UK), and Catherine Kontz (Luxembourg/UK).

PAST PROJECTS

SIX CHANGES

SIX CHANGES is a connected set of instrumentals composed by Ben Duinker and Architek Percussion. The colour palette on Six Changes is bold, warm, and saturated and stylistically, the album channels pulsating minimalism through the sophisticated extroversion found in experimental rock and beat-based electronica of various kinds. Asymmetrical rhythms ricochet off and drift away from one another while glowing mallet-instrument figures braid together. Robust drum kit often provides a firm and precise foundation but rather than imposing rigidity it offers a base onto which the ensemble lay ever-shifting polyrhythmic surfaces. Each movement of Six Changes manages to exude the propulsive candour and physicality of rock, all the while offering a deliciously elaborate rhythmic profile and subtle ensemble shadings.

BLIPS AND BEATS

Featuring repertoire composed for or inspired by the drumset, BLIPS AND BEATS explores a world where rhythm is king. This program showcases works that groove in unconventional ways, exploiting the vast possibilities of four drumsets alongside one another. Experience the dramatic juxtaposition of grooves moving in different tempi, drummers shifting into and out of phase with each other, and the excitement of dense rhythmic counterpoint. Includes works by Taylor Brook, Dennis DeSantis, Andy Pape, Julia Wolfe, Duncan Schouten, and Beavan Flanagan.

MELODICA

MELODICA is a diverse program for mallet instruments draws its inspiration from video game music, mass transportation, flamenco music, electronica, the Russian choral tradition, and middle eastern music. Featuring repertoire from three continents, this program showcases subtle nuance not commonly associated with percussion playing, and highlights Architek’s skill as arrangers and composers. Includes works by Eliot Britton, Christos Hatzis, Ben Duinker, Nico Muhly, Wojciech Kilar, and others.