a root or mirror, blossom, madder, cracks; together

Quatuor Bozzini and junctQín keyboard collective play music by Rebecca Bruton and Jason Doell

PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE - THE CONCERT IS NOW AT 3PM, WITH DOORS OPENING AT 2:30PM

 

March 15th 2026

3PM | Doors 2:30PM  

 

St. Stephen's Anglican Church

1121 14th Ave SW

Venue Accessibility information: The building is wheelchair accessible. There is a ramp on the side of the main church doors that provides accessible access to the sanctuary, as well as an elevator down to the lower level with the washrooms. The only viewing space that is not fully accessible is the balcony.

 

Tickets: $45 | $30 | $20

We use a tiered system so buyers can decide what level of investment aligns with their financial situation.  In a more traditional tiered system these would be labelled as General, Student/Senior/Arts Worker etc.  We prefer a neutral labelling system.  Please select the pricing option that aligns best with what you're able to contribute, no questions asked.

 

*****

A world premiere performance of two works for expanded string quintet (string quartet + piano six hands) by NWC’s own Artistic Director rebecca bruton, and Toronto experimental composer Jason Doell.  Released in August 2024 as two sidelong works for vinyl LP, these remarkable works have steadily made their way to listeners and critics around the globe, receiving international acclaim not only for their ingenuity and singularity but also for deftly virtuosic realizations by the combined mega ensemble of Montréal’s Quatuor Bozzini and Toronto’s junctQín keyboard collective.  

 

Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice and strong advocate in new, experimental and classical music since 1999. Driving the hyper-creative Montréal scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an ethos of risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration, venturing boldly off the beaten track. With a rigorous eye for quality, it has nurtured a rich and diverse repertoire, regardless of trends, and leading to a great number of commissions and some 500 premiered works. Its open, collaborative, artist-led approach has resulted in the realization of numerous innovative and highly praised productions, including inter-disciplinary projects with video, theater and dance.  Quartet members are Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, Stéphanie Bozzini, and Isabelle Bozzini.

To ensure the continual development of the artform, Quatuor Bozzini’s musical ‘laboratories’, the Composers’ Kitchen, Performers’ Kitchen and Bozzini Lab, work to mentor and support new generations of composers and performers. The quartet runs its own recording label, Collection QB, and has released many critically acclaimed albums (including Juno nomination 2020, German Record Critics’ Award) which have become reference recordings in the field. They have also issued albums with Wergo-Deutscher Musikrat, Edition Wandelweiser, Another Timbre, Hubro, ATMA Classique, and Centrediscs.

Praised by its “intense musicality and immense sensitivity” (Musicworks, Canada), Quatuor Bozzini was qualified in the Bandcamp Daily as “one of the most daring string quartets of the entire world.” Quatuor Bozzini is a self-managed organization, producing a concert series in Montréal and touring extensively in Canada, the USA, and Europe.  Notable festivals and venues include MäerzMusik Berlin (DE); Guildhall Barbican, Aldeburgh, Huddersfield (UK); Klangspuren Schwaz, Porgy&Bess (AT); Festival Présences, Festival Riverrun (FR); Angelica, SoundSCAPE (IT); Oslo Poesi (NO); Gaudeamus, Muziekgebouw, NovemberMusic (NL); Kortrijk (BE); Ostrava Days (CZ); SIPFEST (ID); Tsuda Hall (JP); TIMESPANS, Other Minds (USA).

Juno Nominee in 2020 for their album Short Stories, Quatuor Bozzini was awarded the prix Opus — Performer of the Year by the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) in 2018. They were also finalist to the 28th Grand prix (Conseil des arts de Montréal, 2012), and recipient of three prix Opus “International Outreach” (2007), “Contemporary Disc of the Year” (2004), and “Discovery of the Year” (2001) as well as the Étoile-Galaxie Prize from Radio-Canada (2001), the Förderpreis Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (2007), the German Record Critics’ Award for Arbor Vitae (2009) and the Friends of Canadian Music Award (2014).

 

junctQín (pronounced ‘junction’) consists of pianists Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti, and Stephanie Chua.  The name of the collective is taken from junctio – the Latin word meaning to join, and from Qín – the Chinese character for keyboard instrument.  junctQín’s goal has been to recast the idea of the piano as more than a solo recital instrument.  The ensemble has discovered and re-introduced works for multiple hands from the 20th and 21st centuries alongside commissioning new works for piano six-hands, unusual keyboard instruments such as toy pianos, melodicas, and synthesizers, as well as those featuring everyday objects and live-electronics.

 

More recently, they've launched the digital platform PLAYrePLAY featuring breakthrough interactive compositions for the ensemble by Canadian composers Germaine Liu, Nicole Lizée, and Lieke van der Voort. The group has also collaborated with Canadian composers such as Vincent Ho, Emilie LeBel, Aaron Gervais, and Hiroki Tsurumoto, multimedia artists Kenneth Doren and Derek Liddington, as well as Europeans Karlheinz Essl (Austria) and Tomi Räisänen (Finland). Notable performances include the Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Centre, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Open Ears Festival (Kitchener- Waterloo), and a double bill with Pauline Oliveros at the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium. The ensemble's acclaimed debut recording reTHINK was released on Redshift Records in 2020 with support from Canada Council for the Arts and FACTOR.

 

rebecca bruton is a composer, arranger, producer, vocalist, and trained violinist who now primarily plays the guitar.  Her practice embraces many ways of working, often collaborative, and traverses many genres and cultural settings. 

rebecca’s chamber compositions are widely performed, having been commissioned by Ekmeles vocal ensemble (NYC), Quasar Quatuor de saxophones (Montréal), Arraymusic (Toronto), Ultraviolet Ensemble (Edmonton), and more.  In 2024 she co-released ‘a root or mirror; blossom, madder, cracks, together’, an LP featuring two twenty-minute works (one by bruton, one by Toronto composer Jason Doell) for the combined mega-ensemble of Quatuor Bozzini (Montréal) and JunctQín keyboard collective (Toronto).   She is also the bandleader of song-based experimental ensemble ‘Swanherds’.

As a film composer rebecca has earned acclaim for her collaboratively produced live scores, featuring improvising ensembles alongside traditional orchestration.  For Calgary’s Kino Sum Productions she has composed, directed and produced four feature soundtracks (Lucky Star [2024], Orphaned [2021], Everybody Altogether Now [2022], and Circle of Steel [2018]), working with a different co-composer and live ensemble for each project. 

Rebecca is an avid collaborator, especially across disciplines.  She has worked in various configurations with Halla Steinunn Stefansdóttir, Nicole Mion, Angela Rawlings, Heather Ware, Darren Williams, Alexandra Spence, and others.  Since 2020 rebecca has served as the Artistic Director of New Works Calgary.

‘…deliciously alien, limning elegantly proportioned lines and shapes… a solemn, melancholy reverie of unabashed beauty and deceptive simplicity.’ – Peter Margasak for Bandcamp Weekly, on rebecca bruton’s ‘The Faerie Ribbon’ (2024). 

 

Drifting across aesthetic, poetic, and political dimensions, Jason Doell understands his practice as a type of experimentalism, where to experiment operates as reverie—dreaming through potentials and lingering on what emerges amidst a kaleidoscope of diversions, discrepancies, references, reflections, shadows, spirits, translations, & transformations. He engages with experimentation as a wildly inclusive and pluralized collection of practices, often with interdisciplinary collaborators - allowing for unpredictable potentials that can meander, intermingle, and circulate without being codified.

New album with multi-instrumentalist Naomi McCarrroll-Butler, FOUR FORMER MYRRH FORMERS FORMED HER HORN FOR MURMURS out on Watch That Ends The Night Records (CA).