Poet Catriona Strang and clarinetist Francois Houle's collaborations explore the complex and sometimes antagonistic relationship between language and music. Strang is author of Low Fancy, from ECW Press in Toronto. Houle's latest CD is any terrain tumultuous.
Catriona Strang is a founding member of the Institute for Domestic Research, Catriona Strang is the author of Low Fancy, Corked, and Reveries of a Solitary Biker, and co-author of Busted, Cold Trip, and Light Sweet Crude with the late Nancy Shaw, whose selected works, The Gorge, she edited. She frequently collaborates with composer Jacqueline Leggatt, and lives with her two grown kids on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Lands.
Clarinetist François Houle has established himself as one of today’s most inventive musicians, in all of the diverse musical spheres he embraces. Inspired by collaborations with the world’s top musical innovators, François has developed a unique improvisational language, virtuosic and rich with sonic embellishment and technical extensions. He has worked with Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Joëlle Léandre, Benoît Delbecq, Evan Parker, Samuel Blaser, Gerry Hemingway, Marilyn Crispell, Harris Eisenstadt, Michael Bates, Myra Melford, René Lussier, Alexander Hawkins, John Butcher, Kris Davis, Georg Graewe, Jerry Granelli, Håvard Wiik, Gordon Grdina, Yitzhak Yedid, Guillermo Gregorio, Eyvind Kang, Hasse Poulsen, and many of Canada’s top creative music artists. His extensive touring has led to solo appearances at major festivals across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. A prolific recording artist, he has released over twenty recordings as a leader, earning multiple Juno Award and West Coast Music Award nominations. He is the founder of Afterday Audio, a record label dedicated to the documentation and dissemination of his many musical projects and collaborations. In addition, he has appeared on numerous recordings on the Songlines, Red Toucan, Leo Records, Drip Audio, PSI, Between-the-Lines, Nuscope, Spool, hat[now]ART, Redshift, CRI, among others. He was the featured soloist in Lutosławski’s Dance Preludes with the CBC Radio Orchestra, a performance hailed by the Los Angeles Times. He has composed numerous works for small and large ensembles, including a concerto for clarinet which he went on to record with the Turning Point Ensemble on the ATMA Classique label. A sought after soloist and chamber musician, he has actively expanded the clarinet’s repertoire by commissioning some of today’s leading Canadian and international composers and premiering over one hundred new works. A founding member of critically acclaimed ensembles such as Sea and Sky, The Turning Point Ensemble and Standing Wave, François has also collaborated with leading ensembles in Canada, including ECM+, Bozzini Quartet, Fibonacci Trio, among others. He has been listed on numerous occasions in Downbeat magazine’s Readers and Critics’ Polls as “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” and “Rising Star”. François studied at McGill University, went on to win the National Debut competition, and completed his studies at Yale University. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and is a Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy. He was a featured soloist in the International Clarinet Association’s 2007 and 2008 ClarinetFests. He is a faculty member at the Vancouver Community College School of Music, and former graduate clarinet studio instructor at the University of British Columbia. He served as Artistic Director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute for five years. In 2008 he was appointed as “Associate Composer” of the Canadian Music Centre.