2019 SCA Ensemble in Residence
We're very happy to share this year's SCA Ensemble in Residence – Chris Blaber, Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani, Katerina Gimon, Casper Leerink. We should also recognize that Ghamsari-Esfahani and Leerink are also current MFA candidates here at the school. Together, the ensemble will be working with SCA music students and faculty in and out of class on a number of projects and performances, including events as part of this year's upcoming Music & Sound Festival. We'll keep you updated!
Chris Blaber
Chris Blaber is a percussionist and composer dedicated to presenting collaborative, interdisciplinary, improvised, and contemporary works. In the past two years alone he has premiered over 100 new works in concert. He’s passionate about incorporating multiple elements of performance – including choreography, narration, singing, and acting – into unified, innovative productions. He joined Scrap Arts Music as an ensemble member in September 2017. As a member of Scrap Arts he tours their new production “Children of Metropolis” internationally and throughout BC tours their school show SAM2. Scrap Arts delivers complex webs of rhythms with athletic choreography and high energy performance.
Over Summer 2019 Chris rode his bicycle around BC playing a solo show drum set and stereo electronics called “Changing Planet”. The show was made in collaboration with Ecstatic Waves composers Erica Regehr, Nadia Schibli and Jaya Story. Carrying around 150 pounds of instruments, speakers, food, water, tent, and basic survival equipment he biked over 2000km promoting climate activism and green living all the way.
Locally in Vancouver you can see Chris Drum with the Hitmen Drumline at Canucks home games (his friends tell him he has been on Hockey night in Canada for about 3 seconds!) and as a freelance percussionist in Vancouver with numerous groups including orchestras, musical theatre, chamber music groups, SFU Music Composition program ensemble in residence, and as the principal percussionist of the Postmodern Camerata Society.
Chris is the artistic director and founder of Ecstatic Waves. This collective creates experimental performances that are collaborative and interdisciplinary in nature. They have premiered over 50 new works by local Vancouver artists in 14 shows, self published a book of scores premiered in the concert series, and performed a 10 hour long concert for their book launch party.
Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani
Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani is an Iranian-Canadian composer-violinist, currently working on his MFA at Simon Fraser University. He has presented at festivals and artist residencies across North America and internationally, including: The Brush Creek Arts Residency in Wyoming, USA, the Arteles International Creative Residency in Finland, and the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab.
Various labels may describe his work with some accuracy: neo-romantic, contemporary-classical, electro-acoustic, soundscape, chamber, interdisciplinary, and so on. Kourosh strives to inhabit the intersections between performance, composition and improvisation.
Katerina Gimon
Named as one of Canada's ‘hot 30 classical musicians under 30’ by the Canadian Broadcasting Company; composer, improviser, and vocalist Katerina Gimon's uniquely dynamic, poignant, and eclectic compositional style is rapidly gaining her a reputation as one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Canadian composition. Katerina’s music has been described as “sheer radiance” (Campbell River Mirror), “imbued…with human emotion” (San Diego Story), and capable of taking listeners on a “fascinating journey of textural discovery” (Ludwig Van). Her works have been performed across North America, Europe, and Asia. She is currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Casper Leerink
Casper Leerink is a composer and pianist who is interested in exploring new possibilities for interaction that advancements in technology have to offer. In his compositions, Casper seizes the opportunity to integrate his two interests; technology is used to connect a variety of features within his compositions. With the help of various sensors and custom software, he creates projects where objects, video and sound do not act as separate entities, but are part of an interactive ensemble. Within his music, Casper creates opportunities for technology to connect humans and machines in ways that benefits both.