Having grown up in Sudbury in Northern Ontario I have always related to the first part of the song Helpless as Neil Young writes about a town in North Ontario. Further study on the background of the song makes me understand why he didn’t say Northern Ontario instead –...

Introducing Friday Night Inn, the new music label created by van garden and beamer!, aka JJ and Theo! The first release was van garden’s Poetic Reconstruction, vol. 1: Montreal. It is the first in a series of releases inspired by the spirit of place, childhood memories and spontaneous bursts...

When I first heard pansori music I was struck by the raw emotion of the vocals, the intensity of the rhythm and I was determined to learn more. Pansori is traditional Korean folk music based around vocal storytelling and it has been included in the list of Intangible Cultural...

“prismatic textural universe … a deep dive into the emotional power of resonances” TheWholeNote (Canada) Out now, Michel’s new recording Ars Transmutatoria Iku-turso! The music was recorded in Helsinki as he gathered a group of talented musicians, Jorma Tapio flute, saxophone, Raoul Björkenheim guitar, Sampo Lassila double bass, old...

This experimental jazz opera is a musical investigation into the mysteries of an ancestral tragedy from WWII, as revealed through vocal rituals, ancestral tarot, free jazz and dreaming. With this work I wanted to answer several questions. The first was, what could I do to honour ancestors who were...

Welcome to Michel’s Ars Transmutatoria virtual museum! You can enter the exhibition space and take a tour of the visual scores at the core of the upcoming music release. As well as inventing this virtual exhibition for you, Michel has created a limited edition boxed set that includes four...

Perhaps it is logical that after spending some time singing my dreams I find myself carried along by complex ancestral stories. And what is the next logical step when that happens? Over the past year I have been researching different ways to deal with this kind of magical material...

When I finished reading every single book in the juvenile section of our local library as a kid, the librarian suggested I move along to romantic fiction. There I discovered the timeless novels of Emily Brontë, Jane Austen and so many more. Later I discovered the poems by Emily...

In this mournful period when the pandemic has taken hold of us all, one of our great sources of expression and comfort, singing together in public, was silenced. At the same time, finding myself at loose ends, I finally tackled some ancestral mysteries that had been popping up regularly...

song of the winter sprites by Jeannette Lambert Here is a bonus track for the album Genius Loci North. We recorded this track “song of the winter sprites” in March 2021 when we slipped away to a chalet by a lake near the Canadian/American border. It was cold and...