Liz Barron is a founding member of the Harbour Collective (harbourcollective.ca). Working within the Indigenous media and visual arts, Harbour Collective engages in research activities, artistic programming and service delivery for Indigenous filmmakers, media artists and visual artists. Harbour Collective has hosted four LAB series and is currently working on Indigenous artist rights working in artificial intelligence, along with commissioning five Indigenous artists to create augmented reality stories based on their traditional moon stories with a launch in Vienna in November 2024.

Barron has been in the arts for the last 30 years. She started her cultural career at Plug In ICA as their digital producer. During her time with Plug IN ICA, she met Louise Ogemah and Debra Prince who invited her to join them to create Urban Shaman, a contemporary Indigenous artist run centre, in Winnipeg. 

Barron’s connection to place is the homeland of the Metis. Her mother is from St. Francois Xavier, Manitoba and her father is from St. Francois Xavier/ Pigeon Lake, Manitoba. Her maternal grandparents are from St. Charles, Manitoba (Peltier / Pelletier) and Harperville, Manitoba (Miller). Her paternal grandparents are from St. Francois Xavier (Barron / Chalifoux). The Chalifoux were identified as Cree on the Canadian Census and claimed scrip. 

Barron is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a member of the Catfish Local, Winnipeg.

Daphne Boyer is a Canadian visual artist of Métis descent. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, long-time resident of Québec, Daphne currently lives and works on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples of Victoria BC, where she is an active member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia. 

A graduate of McGill University (Plant Science), Daphne’s work lies at the intersection of art and science. Daphne combines plant material, porcupine quills, women’s traditional handwork and high-resolution digital tools to create art that celebrates her Indigenous heritage and honours plants and animals as kin. 

Daphne recently invented two innovative photo-based digital techniques that mirror the spectacular beading and quillwork her ancestors used to embellish clothing and gear. Like traditional Métis art forms, her techniques are meticulous, technically demanding and time-consuming art practices. 

Daphne has used these practices to create a large body of work that has been exhibited at numerous solo and group shows, including at the Remai Modern (Saskatoon), MAI (Montréal), Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina), Legacy Art Gallery (Victoria) and Art Windsor-Essex (Windsor). Her art is held in various public and private collections across the country. Daphne is passionate about community engagement; educational tours and art-making workshops form an integral part of her exhibitions

Marjorie Beaucage is a filmmaker, art-ivist and educator, a land and water protector. Born in Vassar, Manitoba, to a large Métis family, Marjorie’s life’s work has been about creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right relations. Marjorie’s goal has been to pass on the stories, knowledge and skills that will make a difference for the future. For Marjorie, story is medicine. 

As a Two-Spirit Métis Elder, Marjorie’s work is focused on giving voice to, and creating safe cultural spaces for, traditionally silenced or excluded groups. She is the Elder for OUT Saskatoon and the youth-led Chokecherry Studios in Saskatoon. She has created over 35 community based videos, including her recent harm reduction video portraits on reducing the harms of colonialism and Grandmother Moon Power. 

Her recent book, leave some for the birds - movements for justice is also part of her legacy for the future. Marjorie was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts 2024 Governor General Award For Media Arts for her work in creative documentary.

Raised Red River in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Jason Baerg is now a registered member of the Métis Nations of Ontario. He serves his community as an Indigenous activist, curator, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. Baerg graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University. Baerg teaches as the Assistant Professor in Indigenous Practices in Contemporary Painting and Media Art at OCAD University. Exemplifying their commitment to community, they co-founded The Shushkitew Collective and The Métis Artist Collective. Baerg has served as volunteer chair for organizations such as the Indigenous Curatorial Collective and the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition. 

As a visual artist, they push digital interventions in drawing, painting, and new media installation. Select international solo exhibitions include Canada House in London, UK, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, and the Digital Dome at the Institute of the American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. They sat on numerous art juries and won awards through such facilitators as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and The Toronto Arts Council. For more information about their practice, please visit JasonBaerg.ca.

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace by multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings is, in a sense, a debut album. And yet, the album also serves as a reintroduction to the artist, a levitating, stunning work chock full of the lessons he’s learned over the course of his life and career. And perhaps, most importantly, it represents the spirit of exploration that the artist is most tapped into these days.

London-born, Hutchings spent much of his childhood in Barbados. Beginning at age nine, he studied the clarinet, playing in calypso bands while studying classical repertoire, often practicing over hip hop beats by artists such as Nas, as well as to the music native to Barbados. He imparted that at the time, “The idea of being a particular ‘type’ of musician who limited themselves by genre was totally alien to me and my peers, it was just about playing with skill and dedication, and whether music moved me or left me cold.”

Consequently, after studying clarinet at Guildhall School of Music from 2004-2008, he collaborated on a kaleidoscopic range of projects: recording and/or touring with Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, Soweto Kinch, Floating Points and Courtney Pine amongst many other bands, as well as being a part of the London Improvisers Orchestra. He’s also composed pieces for the BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Ligeti Quartet, and performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Britten Sinfonietta as well as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

Over the course of the past decade, the lion’s share of his touring and recorded work has been with three bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming and Shabaka and the Ancestors. “In these formations,” he shared, “I’ve been able to display a fundamental approach to creative practice in different contexts spanning Afro-Caribbean fusion, London dance music club culture and the rich South African jazz tradition – all within the freedom afforded by the legacy of the American ‘jazz’ tradition.” That approach reflects a mantra he absorbed early in his life.

Kalia Vandever is a Grammy Award Winning trombonist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her approach to the trombone is distinctive and defined by her sonorous tone and lyrical improvisational voice. She leans into the challenges of the instrument and allows patience and melody guide her process.

In her compositional practice, Kalia draws from her love of songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener. She released her debut ensemble album, "In Bloom" in 2019 which has been described as "the rise of an exciting voice for the music" (Seton Hawkins, Hot House Jazz Magazine). Her sophomore album, Regrowth released in May, 2022 on New Amsterdam Records and "confirms her strengths as a composer and bandleader with a distinctly contemporary point of view." (Nate Chinen, WBGO Jazz) Her debut solo album,We Fell In Turn featuring her works for trombone, voice and electronics released on AKP Records in March, 2023.

Kalia received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School in 2017. She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, performing at festivals such as the Winter Jazz Festival and BRIC Jazz Festival. She is also known for her work as a side-woman, performing with jazz artists including Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkins, Fay Victor, to name a few. She has also performed with popular artists including Harry Styles, Lizzo, Japanese Breakfast, Moses Sumney, Jennifer Hudson, and Demi Lovato. She has appeared on Saturday Night Live twice, as well as Samantha Bee's Full Frontal.

Photo by Bao Ngo.

Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her new album, simpletrio2000, is an exploration of polyrhythm and a celebration of a decade of working with her band Simple Trio. Featuring Matt Mitchell on piano and John Hollenbeck on drums, simpletrio2000 is the group’s fourth album, and a follow-up to the critically-acclaimed release Idiom, which earned Webber the accolade of being named the top composer of the year by JazzTimes in 2021. Her music has been called "visionary and captivating," (Wall Street Journal), and “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body” (NPR). In 2024 alone, she received the Herb Albert Award in the Arts, a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission, and was voted top of both the tenor saxophone and flute “Rising Star” categories in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll.

A prolific bandleader, Webber is also known for the Webber Morris Big Band, a group she co-leads with saxophonist and composer Angela Morris, and her quintet Shimmer Wince (featuring Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mariel Roberts on cello, Elias Stemeseder on synthesizer, and Lesley Mok on drums) which explores Just Intonation in a jazz context. She has additionally performed and/or recorded with projects led by artists such as Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki, Roscoe Mitchell, Ranja Swaminathan, Jen Shyu, Dave Douglas, Matt Mitchell, Ches Smith, John Hollenbeck, and Trevor Dunn, among others.

Webber is a 2021 Berlin PrizeFellow, and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been honored with the Margaret Whitton Award (administered by the Jazz Gallery); grants from the Copland Fund (2021 & 2019), the Shifting Foundation (2015& 2022), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2017), the Conseil des arts et des lettres duQuébec, and the Canada Council for the Arts; and residencies from Exploring the Metropolis (2019), the MacDowell Colony (2017 & 2020), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). Webber is originally from British Columbia.

Holly Melgard is the author Read Me: Selected Works (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023), which surveys her poems, short stories, critical essays and creative book projects produced over the last fifteen years, as well as Fetal Position (Roof, 2021), a poetry book named one of “Artforum’s Best of 2021.” Prior to this, she co-founded and co-edited Troll Thread Press for over a decade, a dual release print-on-demand + free .pdf platform that straddles the digital and print paradigms, where she self-published ten other books of poems including The Making of The Americans and The Poems for Baby Trilogy. Her work has appeared in Best American Anthology of Experimental Writing, BOMB Magazine, LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the German journal Merkur among other places. She currently holds a PhD in Poetics from SUNY Buffalo, and lives in New York City where she teaches writing.

Sandeep Bhagwati is a multiple award-winning composer, theatre director, poet and academic, born in Mumbai (India). He studied composition and conducting at Mozarteum Salzburg and Musikhochschule München, and computer music at IRCAM Paris. His operas, multi-disciplinary staged works, compositions and comprovisations are performed worldwide at leading venues, festivals, theatres and museums and by renowned ensembles* and by eminent soloists**. He has published widely, both as a public voice and in academia, and is a sought-after keynote speaker and jury member and has founded/curated inter-arts festivals (e.g. A*Devantgarde München) and trans-traditional (a term he coined in 2010) projects with Asian composer-performers and European new music ensembles. Professor of Composition at Karlsruhe Music University since 2000, he became Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Arts at Concordia University Montreal in 2006. There he founded matralab, a interdisciplinary and trans-traditional research/creation node for live arts. Since 2013, he founded and directs trans-traditional music ensembles in Berlin, Pune, and Toronto. Between 2017-2023, he led the TENOR Network, a global research forum for new music notation practices and technologies. Since 2020, he is co-founder / co-editor of “TURBA - The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation”. His artistic work was the focus of a “Homage Season” 2023/24 initiated by the Quebec New Music Society (SMCQ) and has been a consultant for New Music Concerts Toronto since 2022.

Photo credit: Alain Lefort