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May 7 - May 9

Featured Vocalists: Christopher Butterfield [Victoria], Cathy Lewis [Victoria], Susanna Hood [Toronto], Carol Sawyer, Robert Minden and Carla Hallett [Vancouver].

Photo of Susanna Hood by John Lauener 

Concerts
May 7, 8 pm Grace Lutheran Church, Cathy Lewis and Christopher Butterfield
May 8, 8 pm Open Space, Susanna Hood and Carol Sawyer
May 9, 8 pm Open Space, Robert Minden and Carla Hallett
Tickets $12/$10

Workshop
Saturday, May 9, 10 am – noon, Open Space, Susanna Hood
Tickets $5 

Featured Vocalists: Christopher Butterfield [Victoria], Cathy Lewis [Victoria], Susanna Hood [Toronto], Carol Sawyer, Robert Minden and Carla Hallett [Vancouver].

With Anna Hostman, Kim Cousineau, Massimo Pintus, Rodney Sharman, Steve Bagnall, and Sean Q. Lang.

Vocal entrepreneurs from Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto sing songs of love, politics, heaven and magic for the 5th annual Open Space Voice++ Festival. Three concerts over three evenings that feature sonic mixes with saxophone, flute, guitar, percussion, flowerpots, Theremin, musical saws, piano and other instruments, and an evening of vocal couplings with video and dance.

Opening the Festival on Thursday, May 7, local chanteuse Cathy Lewis presents a collection of Cabaret and Art Songs at Grace Lutheran Church (1273 Fort St.). The edgy social and political commentary in the work of Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler provides contrast and context to newer vocal works by Canadian composers Rodney Sharman, Anna Hostman, and Linda C Smith.

Victoria composer and musician extraordinaire Christopher Butterfield will end Thursday’s concert with his Incipit, a solo voice performance with libretto by John Bentley Mays and electronic accompaniment. The libretto’s protagonists are Hugo Ball, the organizer of Cabaret Voltaire, the Dada revue that took place in Zurich during 1916, and Vladimir Lenin, instigator of the Bolshevik Revolution, who was living on the same street as the Cabaret prior to his return to Russia in 1917. A rare treat indeed.

On Friday, May 8 Open Space welcomes visiting artists Carol Sawyer (Vancouver) and Susanna Hood (Toronto), two adventurous vocalists taking the voice into zones beyond speech and song to pure emotional utterance through extended techniques. Susanna Hood invokes the discipline of modern dance and sonic expressions of voice in her touching rendition of Steve Lacy’s Somebody Special. Carol Sawyer, a Vancouver visual artist and singer, presents Ramshackle Heaven for multichannel video and improvising musicians – a visual and sonic investigation into ideas of heaven, paradise and the close links between utopia and dystopia –with video artist Sean Q. Lang and saxophonist Steve Bagnall.

On Saturday, May 9 from 10 am to noon, Susanna Hood offers a workshop at Open Space. Everyone is welcome to explore Susanna’s practice of vocalizing from a body and movement perspective.

Vancouver’s Robert Minden Duo will close the Voice ++ festival on Saturday, May 9 for a full concert of magical storytelling with old, new, invented and found instruments. Robert Minden and Carla Hallet create a mesmerizing backdrop to their sound stories with an orchestra of the unusual - bowed carpenter saws, flowerpots, waterphones, bowls, bottles, Theremin and other sounding objects. Minden is known as a master storyteller, and Hallet’s lyrics explore identity and resonance within an enchanting and intimate acoustic sound world.

Susanna Hood: http://www.humdansoundart.ca/people.html

Carol Sawyer: http://www.ionzoomusic.com/

Robert Minden and Carla Hallett: http://www.lostsound.com/rmd/default.html