Patria 7: Asterion - Summer 2008

LINKS

New! Slide show.
Selected images

background
a thematic introduction

ASTERION main

patria home

Dates and plans for 2008:

Plans are underway for this summer. There will be a build period in June fiollowed by artist workshops in July and then text readings. Please let us know if you wish to be kept informed as we finalize our plans.

If you are interested in participating in any way or have questions that are not answered in these pages, please send an email to Asterion

Artist Bios:

Colin Mack                 July 15 - 20

Colin Mack is a native of Ottawa born in 1957. He began piano studies at 1962 with his mother and from 1966-69 studied with Robin Wood at the Victoria Conservatory. He would later study piano with Douglas Voice and Jean-Paul Sévilla at the University of Ottawa. He performed the Liszt Concerto with the Ottawa Youth Orchestra in 1977. His formal composition studies were with Steven Gellman, Michel Longtin, André Prévost and Serge Garant. Additional music studies were with Bruce Mather, Jean Papineau-Couture, Francois Morel, José Evangelista and Larry Crosley (film music) A three-time recipient of the Ontario/Québec Exchange Fellowship, he obtained a Master of Music in composition from the Université de Montréal in 1985.
In 2006 he was one of three composers chosen for Pacific Opera's liblab.

His compositions include a variety of solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal, choral and film works, which have been recorded for CBC, Radio-Canada, and the NFB. Commissions have come from the Ontario Arts Council and Espace Musique. His music has been performed in Canada, the United States and Poland. His song cycle "The Names of Water" (text by Toronto poet Sharon Singer) was released on the CD "Hail" (CanSona Arts Media, 2006) and broadcast on "Canada Live". They are now collaborating on a mini-opera "Isis and Osiris" and recorded a demo CD of the Resurrection Scene in February. Colin is currently working on a composer profile CD of his music funded by the City of Ottawa.   It will include "The Shadow-Maker" - a song cycle with text by Gwen MacEwan.

Other texts he has set to music are "In Beechwood Cemetery" by Archibald Lampman (SATB and piano), and "Lean Out of the Window Goldenhair" by James Joyce (soprano and lever harp choir). He has also written a chamber cantata "The Wife of Job" for soprano, viola, harp, organ/piano and 2 percussion.

In addition to composing, Colin teaches piano, theory and composition and operates a piano tuning and repair business.

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"I have participated in Asterion workshops in 2006 and 2007 and   attended   presentation/performances of "Spirit Garden", "The Enchanted Forest", "The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix" and "Princess of the Stars" in Ottawa and Haliburton. It is a privilege to have done so - not only to experience the rare quality of the Schafer's work but be a part of discussions with Murray, camp out on his bucolic farm and meet some of his closest collaborators. The people that are attracted to Asterion are very engaging. Working with them has been a pleasure - both challenging and rewarding. The food and camaraderie is excellent. I leave the workshops a little the worse for wear but very inspired. I am trying to help make Asterion happen."

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Sue Balint                         July 22-24 and 29-30

Sue Balint is a playwright and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include Pagan Love Songs for the Uninitiated, Visiting Aphrasia and fforward. She also acted as dramaturge for Theatrefront’s three-year Canadian-Bosnian collaboration, The Sarajevo Project, which went on to receive five Dora nominations including best production. Sue is currently Director of Development at Modern Times Stage Company. She is a graduate of Queen's University (Theatre and Religion) and King's College (Broadcast Journalism).

Sue's interest in Asterion stems from her research and road trips focusing on relationships between performance, ritual and sacred architecture.  In addition to working in traditional sacred spaces, she has traveled on a Canada Arts Council grant to several labyrinths and collaborated with a group of international artists and facilitators in the creating of a new labyrinth at a retreat in Texas.

Susan Spicer                         July 18 - 20

Susan Spicer is deeply appreciative of her long association with the works of R. Murray Schafer, in particular, The Patria Cycle. In the early 1980s, she workshopped the role of Ariadne with Thom Sokoloski directing and Diana and Jerrard Smith designing. She went on to perform the role of Madame Isis in the workshop and full production of The Greatest Show in Peterborough, in 1986/87. In 2003 and 2005, she rejoined the company to direct The Enchanted Forest , a wilderness opera that calls all of us to live in harmony with the natural world at both Wolverton Hills and Haliburton Forest. Her fondest memories of those productions are of tromping through the wilds with Murray, seeking the perfect locations for musicians so that the audience would hear the music as Murray hears it - from a distance, carried on the wind, speaking with nature. She was delighted to be invited to join the company who are dreaming and building Asterion into being and looks forward to leading performance workshops on several of the segments this summer.

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Tamara Sargent June 23 - ___, July 29 - August 1

s'pose at best i'm a writer, which makes me uncomfortable to write and continue to write this for your judgment. i do a lot of pseudoartistic junk, largely reactive rather than progressive. but, to label my artistic contribution: i'm a writer.

my mum and dad were divorced before my little brother was born, who is exactly one year and eleven months younger. i hate him, my dad, not my brother, whom i love. and, i love mum, who moved away from Calgary and dad, to Owen Sound and her dad. my popa was my father model until his alzheimer's was too developed and he died for eight years.

i moved away from home to school, and school to Montreal. a year in that fancy city, then to Vancouver, via the most meaningful bus ride to date. a beautiful year in Vancouver, then away back home to reconnect with my roots, show the city whom i'd become.

i submitted to a monthly paper, i organized props and took a small role at the little theatre, i volunteered weekends at the tom thompson art gallery, (always arriving early to browse through their archives); whilst working weekdays at the bean cellar, creating lattes and organizing monthly art installations.

i pretend to be a gypsy and got restless in the spring, moved away to Halifax to take that in.

one year later and basically, now i'm in Toronto, looking around.

so, i'm wondering what i'm meant to contribute in this project, beside my humble presence. all i'm certain is a funky thing is being done, and i want to help. s'pose the rest will follow, as it does.

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Judith Brisson                    July 15 - 18 or 19

With ancestral roots in both Quebec and Newfoundland, Judith Brisson is an artist, teacher, activist and dancer. Having developed a talent for drawing at an early age, Judith soon began painting. She lived and worked in Mexico for several years in the early 1980's as a fabric artist, before returning to Canada to pursue a career in teaching and the arts. Collaborating with actor and theatre director, Doug Hooper, Judith has co-created and painted the sets for several amateur theatre productions, including Hamlet, Macbeth, A Comedy of Errors, and The Mouse That Roared .

A devoted student of Baladi, she has studied the ancient dance form for over a decade with Dominique Favreau, Claire Rose and Samantha Berenson. As an activist and writer, Judith has participated in several human rights delegations to Mexico as an electoral observer and fact-checker with San Francisco-based Global Exchange and the Mexico Solidarity Network. She has written several articles on human rights issues for small publications including The Upstream Journal, Caminando, The Sherbrooke Record, Siafu and the Brome County News.

Judith founded the Eastern Townships Social Justice Committee in 1996, and collaborated with others to organise conferences, speakers' tours, peace ceremonies, and youth forums around various human rights issues.

In 1999, after having practiced watercolour painting for over a decade, Judith exhibited her work for the first time. She has continued to do so ever since, taking part in numerous group shows in Montreal, the Eastern Townships, Toronto and San Francisco. Her work was featured this year at Toronto's Ben Navaee Galley for their Global Warming and Earth Day shows. Start Soma Gallery in San Francisco featured three of her pieces in their political poster tour entitled " Propaganda ". Her work is also featured on Joseph DeLappe's web-based Iraqi War Memorial, an on-line collection of international artists who have devoted some of their practice to honoring the lives of civilian victims of the war in Iraq.

She has used her art to support many organisations, including the Social Justice Committee, Vermont-based Global Justice Ecology, Apathy is Boring and the Oscar Romero Foundation. Recent projects include organising a two-week documentary film festival/exposé on mining entitled " Mauvaises Mines " in collaboration with the Canadian Network for Corporate Accountability and working on the set of R. Murray Schafer's " Asterion" .

This year, Judith collaborated with Julia Espana Keller to curate From the Vault , a group show held at Espace les neuf soeurs in Point St-Charles, and was also one of the team of curators for the Concordia Painting and Drawing Association's show at Galerie C-Blu in Montreal. She will be curating a large multimedia/multidisciplinary art show on the history of the Lachine Canal and its local communities in September 2008.

Judith has taught environmental and physical science, Spanish and dance at Massey Vanier High School in the Eastern Townships for seventeen years. She is currently completing her BFA at Concordia University in painting and drawing. Her work is found in private collections across Canada, the USA and Mexico.

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