Western Canada's foremost contemporary chamber ensemble, Standing Wave is a sextet of intrepid new music interpreters dedicated to commissioning and performing cutting-edge music from today’s most forward-thinking composers.
Acclaimed internationally for their virtuosity, vision, and artistry, Standing Wave has cultivated a reputation for electrifying live performance that pushes the boundaries of what chamber music is and can be.
20C Remix nominated for a JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year (Small Ensemble)!
To celebrate we're releasing two new projects! Our interactive mobile app designed by Chroma Mixed Media, featuring works by Jordan Nobles and James O'Callaghan (with more to come!), and a free EP of Re-Remixes from four emerging sound artists!
Huge thanks to the amazing Canadian composers who remixed the 20th century for us: Jocelyn Morlock, Nicole Lizée, Jennifer Butler, Jordan Nobles, Jared Miller, Christopher Mayo and Bekah Simms.
If you haven't heard 20C Remix yet, there's more info below and you can buy it on Bandcamp, or stream it on Spotify and Apple Music. Coming this summer is a special limited edition 180g vinyl release, stay tuned!
Standing Wave Mobile App
Looking for new ways to connect during Covid, Standing Wave targeted the one thing almost everyone spent more time with than ever: their phone. The Standing Wave mobile app, developed by Chroma Mixed Media, provides a platform for our listeners to experience music written for and performed by Standing Wave in unique interactive settings. The divergent musical aesthetics of the two composers whose works are currently featured on the app, James O’Callaghan and Jordan Nobles, are represented within the app by two very different immersive experiences. O’Callaghan’s in an archipelago welcomes the user to curate their own version of the piece, controlling the instrumentation and balance. In Nobles’ Echo Chamber, the user navigates through an acoustically ever-changing space, where each experience of the piece a unique journey.
20C Re-Remix Free EP
In a further extension of our 20C Remix project, Standing Wave asked 4 young sound artists to create short electronic “re-remixes” using the tracks from our 20C Remix album as their source material. Quebec-born, Netherlands-based Carmen Vanderveken’s snappy, incisive dither, Vancouver's Skim Milk (Sam Davidson)’s funky, stretchy Scalene Blue, Iranain-Canadian Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi’s angular Enlaced, and Vancouver-born, Melbourne-based D v D (Dexter van der Schyff)’s playfully ruthless Cry Me a Raver comprise this free EP available on Bandcamp.
20C Remix features music from the last century reimagined by seven of today’s leading Canadian composers. These new pieces showcase the composers’ individual voices while still conveying the essence of the original works.
Featuring Jocelyn Morlock reimagining Ann Coutham, Nicole Lizée deconstructing and reconstructing Dead or Alive and Justin Timberlake, and works from Jordan Nobles, Jennifer Butler, Christopher Mayo, Bekah Simms and Jared Miller, available now from Redshift Records. Embracing both 20th century tech and 21st century trends, 20C Remix will be pressed on 180 gram vinyl for a limited edition run, available spring 2022.
Standing Wave Ensemble
Western Canada's foremost new music chamber ensemble
Standing Wave ventures into a panoply of musical worlds with passion and assurance. Modern classics by Xenakis, Murail, Glass, and Vivier are staples of the ensemble’s repertoire, along with commissioned works by pioneering Canadian composers such as James O’Callaghan, Nicole Lizee, Jocelyn Morlock, Giorgio Magnanensi, and Jordan Nobles.
In its 30 year history, Standing Wave has commissioned and premiered well over 100 works. The ensemble has self-presented an annual season of concerts in Vancouver, toured across Canada, and collaborated with luminary artists such as Kokoro Dance, Ballet BC, Mina Shum, Peter Anderson, Talking Pictures, Veda Hille, and the Git Hayetsk Dancers.
Celebrated on stages across Canada, Standing Wave has been featured as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the Modulus Festival, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival, the Victoria Symphony’s New Currents Festival, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Montreal New Music Festival, and Ottawa’s Chamberfest, In 2022, the ensemble will be featured on Winnipeg’s Groundswell Concert Series’ 30th Anniversary.
In 2017, Standing Wave was named Artist/Ensemble of the Year at the West Coast Music Awards. Other recent highlights include performances at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the VSO New Music Festival from 2014-2018, and the presentation of Sculptress, the Music of Nicole Lizee, featuring the composer on live electronics, at the the PuSH International Festival and the Montreal New Music Festival. In 2012, the ensemble presented Raven Tales, a collaboration with First Nations Artist and Dancer Mike Dangeli, which featured the Git Hayetsk Dancers, as well as the premiere of a work by award-winning Vancouver composer Marcus Goddard.
Standing Wave’s latest recording, 20C Remix (2021), features works created as part of an ongoing project in which composers were in invited to rearrange or reimagine a piece of music from the 20th Century for the ensemble. Previous albums include New Wave (2017) which garnered the West Coast Music Award for Artist/Enemble of the year for the ensemble, Liquid States (2013), which was nominated for two West Coast Music Awards, and Redline (2007).
Dedicated to fostering the next generations of Canadian composers, Standing Wave created Compocon in 2019. Compocon is a summer intensive for composition students. Mentor composers join ensemble members during this week-long program that culminates in the development of new works by the students for Standing Wave’s ‘Pierrot + Percussion” instrumentation. Standing Wave has been an ensemble in residence at the University Of British Columbia School Of Music since 2004, working with members of the Composition Faculty to provide readings of student works, offering feedback and suggestions from the standpoint of a conductorless chamber ensemble, as well as open rehearsals and workshops.