Parmela Attariwala has spent her life pursuing a fascination with sound; with its power to evoke

metaphor and captivate the imagination. As a child nurtured in the dual—and often dueling—spirits of Western individualism and South Asian social conservatism, the violin became her unfettered language. Eventually, music and sound became the modes by which she explored the commonalities of human experience and the circumscriptions of ethnocultural particularity.

Parmela holds degrees in violin performance and ethnomusicology (specializing in Sikh devotional music and Canadian cultural policy, respectively). In addition to performing traditional Western art music, she is dedicated to engaging in art that reflects the current era: contemporary and genre-bending musics, improvisation, and interdisciplinary creation. Parmela has released three critically acclaimed Attar Project albums that combine the virtuousity of Western strings with South Asian rhythm and form. She has also worked extensively—as composer, musician and movement artist—with choreographers across a range of disciplines, in particular bharata-natyam, butoh and contact.

In 2019, after twenty-five years in Toronto, Parmela moved to the west coast—to be near family, and to experience the place where her grandfather was brought as a child labourer over a century earlier. She continues to live an eclectic musical life, while also being deeply engaged in advocating for equity and ethics in Canadian musicking. In 2021, Parmela co-founded Understory, an interdisciplinary network and creation platform for Canadian improvising artists. https://understorysound.ca Her recent creative work includes collaborations with: Sujit Vaidya (Sacred Sacrilegious dance film); Peter Morin, Ayumi Goto and the Esker Foundation (sound installations); and Marion Newman/Calgary Opera (Namwayut opera).

John Brennan is an improviser, sound artist and drummer living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, Vancouver. His sound work includes installations and sonic sculptures that consider the relationship between the sonic memory of musical instruments, performance, and improvisation–The Temporal Drum Set (2018), Things Resounding Things (2019), and Rudiments for Hexidrome (2020). At the core of Brennan’s practice is collaboration. Among his current projects, Plan Your Future with Greg Saunier; PHYSIC  with John Dieterich;  dashes, a sound performance collaboration with Elisa Ferrari; Kamikaze Nurse with Casey Wei, Sonya Kim and Ethan Reyes; Bull Brennan Bull, an improvised performance trio with Hank Bull & Arthur Bull; Mo-Dale, an improvised performance duo with Justin Patterson, and Earth Ball, an improvised experimental ensemble with core members Izzy Ford and Jeremy Van Wyck and invited guests.

Elisa Ferrari is an artist who works with sound, performance, and writing. Her practice and collaborations are concerned with memory formations, idleness, sonic sediments, translingual ecologies, somatic inquiries, and the infrasonic. She hosts aux-sends—a quarterly radio series about experimental music, sound, and poetics—on Vancouver co-op radio. Ferrari’s recent solo and collaborative work has been presented at Nanaimo Art Gallery, British Columbia; Kamias Triennial, Quezon City; Vancouver Art Gallery; Western Front, Vancouver; Q-O2, Brussels; and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. She lives as an uninvited guest on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh territories and in Brescia, Italy, where she grew up.

Boundless inquisitiveness sits at the very heart of award-winning cellist Marina Hasselberg’s rich artistic practice. Over the past decade, she’s traveled a distinctive route that has variously led her through early music, free improvisation, the fringes of pop songcraft, electronics, contemporary chamber music, and an array of interdisciplinary collaborations that resist classification.

Hasselberg’s deep and meticulous explorations have culminated in a solo practice that blends disparate elements from various musical realms. Her forthcoming album Red (Redshift Records) sees her insightful interpretive vision colliding with her improvisatory prowess. Recorded by violinist and JUNO and Polaris-winning producer Jesse Zubot, the disc leads listeners through an eclectic, electronics-infused, and deeply personal collection that weaves compositions by everyone from Domenico Gabrielli to Linda Catlin Smith, together with spontaneous performances that feature Hasselberg amidst a cast of her frequent collaborators: Aram Bajakian, Kenton Loewen, Giorgio Magnanensi, and Zubot.

Alanna Ho is a socially engaged artist working and learning on the unceded and traditional territories of the Qayqayt, Squamish, Tsleil Waututh and Musqueam Coast Salish peoples. Alanna's work presents pedagogy and play as interconnected experiences; combining the use of new media and the reggio emilia approach, her workshops naturally foster fun sound exploration. Her multi-modal approach in S.T.E.A.M education has been facilitated through galleries and schools.

Alanna is the co-director of Inter/Mediate, a media art educational festival designed to empower under-represented groups by providing low-barrier access to workshops and mentorships. She is currently a sound artist in residence through the AiRS program in conjunction with the Vancouver School Board, exploring Pauline Oliveros’ concept of deep listening. In 2016 Alanna founded The Rainbow Forecast Project, a research initiative exploring the critical role of pedagogy in the arts, and empowering children and young women beyond the classroom. She has spoken at symposiums and panels discussing the lack of female and BIPOC representation in new media art and electronic music; her talks are aimed at inspiring organizations to invest in art and technology programs for young age groups.

Following stints working as a jazz pianist and music educator, playing keyboard/synth in rock bands, and tutoring programming, Joel Schuman currently lives in Minneapolis and is a Senior Application Developer with Crema, a Kansas City based digital product agency. Current interests include web audio technologies, systems design, and game development.