Acclaimed experimental musicians Darren Williams (tenor saxophone) and Rebecca Bruton (vocals and guitar) will be performing in Ottawa. Darren Williams has toured across Canada, having performed with many internationally celebrated musicians including Juno award winning guitarist Gordon Grdina (Canada), Chris Corsano (USA), Mats Gustafsson (Sweden), and Han Bennink (Netherlands.) For over two decades Williams has enjoyed a semi-regular collaboration with guitarist/banjoist Eugene Chadbourne (USA), being featured on Chadbourne’s 2011 album Stop Snoring. Based in Kelowna, British Columbia, Williams is involved in many other projects, notably as one third of the Branchroot Ensemble which released their debut album Far From the Tree in 2023. This concert performance is in support of his new album Musical Idiot, a collection of original compositions for solo tenor saxophone using extended instrumental techniques, released this year on The Infidels Jazz label.
"Williams plays a series of compositions for solo tenor that have all of the spiritual gravity of an Albert Ayler or a David S. Ware while spinning and extrapolating his thought into endless circular breathing routines that give the nod to Evan Parker or Joe McPhee but that somehow sound like no one else." - David Keenan of Volcanic Tongue, The Wire
https://www.darrenwilliams.ca/
Rebecca Bruton is a Calgary-based composer, singer, and guitarist creating experimental classical music, film scores, improvisations, and songs. In August 2024 Bruton released a root or mirror, blossom, madder, cracks; together, an album of instrumental compositions she co-created with Toronto composer Jason Doell for Quatuor Bozzini of Montréal and Toronto’s junctQín keyboard collective. For nearly a decade Bruton has worked with multidisciplinary artist Angela Rawlings, having set Angela’s 2017 book si tu to microtonal music for four voices (I n s t i t u, 2021), and collaborated with Angela in the polyvocal duo Moss Moss Not Moss (Tectonics Glasgow 2016). In 2022 Bruton debuted a shimmering ornament of silt, an electro-acoustic installation she co-created with Icelandic composer and violinist Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir (Sphere/ Sphère Festival, National Arts Centre, Canada). She also leads Swanherds, an experimental folk supergroup set to release her debut album Swanherds in 2025. For this concert Rebecca will perform a solo guitar and voice version of acclaimed Toronto composer Martin Arnold’s chamber work Tam Lin, a 40 minute beautifully introspective reinvention of the legendary Scottish ballad of the same name.
"In Bruton’s “Faerie Ribbon,” it’s the composer’s
