Riva Symko (she/her), is a white settler from Treaty 6 Territory in Alberta. As the Head of Collections and Exhibitions, and Curator of Canadian Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq, she is particularly committed to breaking down the historical hierarchies of the art world which positions women, Indigenous, and racialized persons as objects of consumption rather than as active cultural contributors. She has lived and worked across the continent – from Newfoundland to Alaska, holding posts with institutions such as the Kimura Gallery, University of Alberta Museums, [x]curated curatorial collective, and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. Her current areas of critical and curatorial concern include gender equity, climate change, and anti-racist pedagogy and methodology.

India Gailey (she/they) is a cellist, composer, vocalist, and improviser who appears most often in the realms of classical and experimental music. Named by CBC as one of “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30,” India moves fluidly as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator with various disciplines to create works of exploratory art. She has worked with numerous living composers, including Nicole Lizée, Amy Brandon, Philip Glass, Fjóla Evans, Andrew Noseworthy, and Michael Harrison. India’s album to you through (Redshift Records), was praised as “a truly exceptional display of unparalleled talent” (Take Effect) that “flows like poetry” (The Whole Note). Problematica (People Places Records, 2024) presents a series of commissioned works written especially for India.

As a composer, India has written music for concert, film, dance, and theatre, often exploring environmentalism and magical realism in her work. In 2022 she composed music for Symphony Nova Scotia to illustrate Mi’kmaw poet Rebecca Thomas’s children’s book I’m Finding My Talk, followed by her own cello concerto Butterfly Lightning Shakes the Earth in 2024. India is the recipient of numerous honours, including awards from Arts Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Talent Trust, the Canada Council for the Arts, Upstream Music, and Acadia & McGill Universities. India is currently based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). 

India Gailey is generously supported by the N. Murray Edwards Family Fund.
 

Miranda Currie is a captivating northern Indigenous singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, living and working among the Dene people in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. She walks in two worlds, with one foot in her Swampy Cree heritage and the other foot in her Euro-Canadian ancestry.

In 2022, she was awarded Indigenous Artist of Excellence by Music NWT. Her solo debut album Up in the Air was nominated for Aboriginal Songwriter of the year by the CFMA’s in 2015.

In 2025, Miranda will be Sub-Arctic Sing-A-Long! This, her third children’s album, introduces listeners to different genres of music, all from a northern indigenous lens. Songs like “My Ribbon Skirt” are up-beat and celebratory while “Do You Know Why?” speaks sensitive truths about why we wear our orange shirts on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Miranda’s songs are interactive and include indigenous language and stories that will delight family audiences.

Miranda has graced stages of festivals, including Folk on the Rocks, Canmore Folk Festival, and Snowking's Winter Festival, and showcased her artistry at Breakout West. Her performances are infused with passion and authenticity, leaving audiences spellbound with her unapologetic vocals and storytelling prowess. Through her music, Miranda Currie attempts to change the Indigenous narrative in Canada in a positive way

Miranda Currie is generously supported by the Jenny Belzberg Endowment and Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

Described as “darkly lyrical” by the New York Times, an awardee of 2023 Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant, a winner of 2022 Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition, and a 2019 recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Grant and National Sawdust Hildegard Commission Award, Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic musicians, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, International Contemporary Ensemble, Camerata Pacifica, Library of Congress, Center for Contemporary Opera, National Sawdust, New Music USA, Shriver Hall, Forward Music Project, PUBLIQuartet, Loadbang Ensemble, Calidore String Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, and Ensemble Connect at numerous festivals and venues including BBC Proms, Ojai Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, Mostly Mozart Festival, and many more. A founding member and co-director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nilou is a strong advocate of music education. She currently teaches theory and composition at Longy School of Music of Bard College and Berklee College of Music. Nilou also regularly performs with her ensemble, Decipher.

Niloufar received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University under the supervision of Sheila Silver.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh is generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

The Pandan Quartet is a dynamic young string quartet based in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music since 2023. They have been the recipients of Flint Initiative, Shansi, and Oberlin Winter Term Grants. The Pandan Quartet was invited to participate in the 2024 Singapore Chamber Music Festival, where they performed to critical acclaim for local audiences, renowned artists, and various international embassies. They are honored to have had the opportunity to pave the way for more academic, musical, and cultural exchanges between East Asia and Oberlin College. Later in 2024, the Pandan Quartet was invited to be the Artists in Residence for the Off The Hook Arts: Music Spoke Concert Series, located in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Working alongside the Dalí Quartet, the Pandan Quartet performed a range of different concerts, including multiple educational and outreach performances for families and children, various donor events to help support the festival, and more formal concerts. The Pandan Quartet was invited to Banff Center for the Winter 2025 Musicians in Residence where they will work with the Kronos Quartet among other renowned artists. Other quartet projects include learning two of the Kronos Quartet’s “50 for the future” pieces and performing in senior care facilities. 

The Pandan Quartet has worked with a host of incredible artists, including Tabbea Zimmerman, the Takacs Quartet, the Dalí Quartet, the AOI trio, the Verona Quartet, Sunny Yang (Kronos Quartet), Kirsten Doctor (Cavani Quartet), Sibbi Bernhardsson (Pacifica Quartet), Bill van der Sloot (Villa Marteau Quintet), Peter Slowik, and Leslie Tan.

The Pandan Quartet is generously supported by the Cyril and Elizabeth Challice Fund for Musicians, and the Banff Centre Artists' Awards.

Krystina Marcoux is recognized for her flamboyant energy, musical precision and artistic versatility. In 2012, she won first prize at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s Standard Life Competition, where her “unique connection with the audience” was highlighted by the jury, who called her an “exceptionally promising young artist.” In August 2019, she made her solo debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Kent Nagano, and in December 2022 she will present a solo marimba recital at the prestigious Montreal Bach Festival.

Krystina firmly defends the idea that the stage is a malleable material that needs to be folded, curved, just like modeling clay. Combining theater, dance, stand-up, mime, humor or even sports with her percussion, Krystina strives to open her musical universe to an ever wider audience. Despite her young age, she has already signed 9 shows. Originally from Quebec, Krystina obtained her PhD under the supervision of Jean Geoffroy at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, specializing in the relationship between theater, dance and music in hybrid shows. Her research-practical work was recognized by the jury as 'constituting a pioneering essay in the field of research-creation in France'.

For the past five years, Krystina has shared the stage with cellist Juan Sebastian Delgado. Their duo Stick&Bow explores the repertoire of each era, while adapting it to the wide possibilities offered by this instrumental combination (cello & marimba). Stick&Bow's critically acclaimed debut album, Résonance, was hailed by Toronto's The WholeNote as "simply brilliant" and "totally delightful" and by La Scena Musicale as "full of beautiful surprises." Their second album, released by Analekta, explores JS Bach's Trio Sonatas with renowned harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour. In June 2022, their third album Veni, Vola, Veni was released by Analekta. This album features works by Piazzolla with legendary tango-jazz pianist Gustavo Beytelmann for marimba, vibraphone, cello and piano. Critics have noted the duo as: a youthful and daring approach as well as a more than solid musicality based on impeccable classical studies end up making the Montreal duo a lasting meteor that impresses the music scene here and elsewhere. Gustavo Beytelmann, former pianist of Astor Piazzolla, reworks the latter's compositions with the notoriety of his experience: The meeting between the two young Quebec musicians and the Argentinian patriarch of this learned tango, one of the few still in this world, is important and offers a whole panache not only to this music but also to this duo that amazes the gallery wherever it goes.

Krystina has been an artist at Adams Percussions since 2017 and Stick&Bow has been represented by Barbara Scales at Latitudes45arts since July 2018 and the record label Analekta since 2020.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Soloist, chamber musician and creator, Montreal pianist Pamela Reimer is renowned for her versatility and great musical complicity. She has created, toured and recorded with the Bradyworks ensemble, the Blue Rider Ensemble, the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, Orford Six Pianos, Erreur de Type 27, the Ensemble Paramirabo, No Hay Banda and in duets with flautist Marie-Hélène Breault and percussionist Beverley Johnston. Her passion for dance and theatre has led her to interdisciplinary collaborations with Les Grands ballets Canadiens, the National Ballet of Canada, and to the creation of theatrical concerts, including Les Non-dits (2023) with Krystina Marcoux and Nick Carpenter; '50 questions @ 50' (2019), directed by Marie-Josée Chartier; and Perspectives d'Hildegard (2016), directed by Alice Ronfard. She has received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. From 2016 to 2018, she was artist-in-residence at Concordia University, and in 2020, guest pianist in London with the London Sinfonietta. Her recent recordings are 'Mes hommages' (2019): works for flute and piano by Quebec composers, with Marie-Hélène Breault; and 'Musique de François Tousignant' (2021), with the Ensemble Paramirabo, where she can be heard on piano, harpsichord and synthesizer. She teaches at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

Viviana Gosselin has been presented as a soloist by ECM+ and Paramirabo. She performs in concert with ECM+, the ARKEA ensemble, the Sinfonia de Lanaudière, the Orchestre symphonique de l'Estuaire, the Opéra bouffe du Québec and the Radio-Ville-Marie choirs and the Petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal. She has collaborated with the groups of Mario Pelchat, Marc Hervieux and OktoEcho. Viviana graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal in Carole Sirois' class. She was an intern at the Orchestral Institute of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa during the 2010-2011 season. She is a prizewinner of the Concours de musique de la Montérégie and Verdun and received the Montée des arts (2006) and Wilfrid Laurier (2008) scholarships. In addition to her talents as a cellist, she is also active on the Montreal scene as a graphic designer and computer graphics artist.

Photo by Brenden Friesen

A 2016 graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal where he studied with Johanne Arel, Hubert Brizard is a violinist from Longueuil. Recipient of several summer scholarships, he had the opportunity to perfect his skills with great violinists such as Pinchas Zukerman, Grigory Kalinovsky, William Van Der Sloot, Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan. He has been a member of the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM+) for 3 years, in addition to being a supernumerary for ensembles such as I Musici, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke, as well as the Orchestre Symphonique de Longueuil. He can also be seen occasionally in SMCQ concerts.

Passionate about new music, he has participated in many memorable creations, such as Hockey Noir by André Ristic (ECM+), Evta by Ana Sokolovic (ECM+), Who Can Go Up to the Mountain of the Eternal by Katia Makdissi-Warren (NEM) as well as …and at the End… by Brice Gatinet.

Photo by Brenden Friesen