Long overdue first appearance at OTO for musician, artist and ex-Yellow Swans member, Gabriel Saloman. Having carved out a justifiably revered position as one half of the now sadly defunct Yellow Swans alongside Pete Swanson, Saloman has not eased off on his prolific rate of production since the duo called it a day in 2009. His music has a strong grounding in political concerns, with most recent album, Soldier's Requiem, being originally composed for a dance piece exploring ideas related to the experience of war. Equal parts visceral and reflective, powerful and haunting, Saloman's music defies easy categorisation with a creative restlessness that proves consistently compelling. Support comes from self-taught Finnish musician Antti Tolvi, whose recent album on Fonal Records - Pianoketo - weaves all-enveloping microtonal clusters of piano notes into a densely bewitching reverie.




GABRIEL SALOMAN

Gabriel Saloman is a Vancouver based musician and artist who has been performing experimental, conceptual and freely improvised music for over 15 years. He is best known for his work as half of Yellow Swans, a Portland based noise group that has released over 50 recordings and toured internationally over the course of their 9 year existence. He has performed at numerous international music festivals including Sonar; Open Circuit; Sonic Protest; Arthur Nights and as a member of Art Council England's Free Noise tour. He currently performs solo under his own name or under the pseudonym Sade Sade, as well as in collaboration with Aja Rose Bond as Diadem. Most recently he has been commissioned to compose music for contemporary dance, including collaborations with choreographers such as The Contingency Plan, Daisy Karen Thompson, Lisa Gelly Martin, Rob Kitsos, 605 Collective and Vanessa Goodman.



Saloman's music acts as investigations into temporal abstractions, conceptual sound and gestural noise. Grounded in both committed politics and deep emotional and spiritual concerns, his compositions often explore particular areas of struggle, affectively evoking an uncompromising desire for freedom. Alongside this work is a parallel concern with the creation of sound art as both liberating practice and praxis.

Saloman also works as a writer and visual artist. His current work focuses on the production of visual artworks from time-based phenomena such as sound composition, dance, social practices and protest. He has exhibited internationally in biennials, museums and artist-run-centres including work for Manifesta, the San Jose Zero1 Biennial, The Walker Arts Center, and Creative Time among others. As a writer he has contributed writing to The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest; “….” (Dots and Quotes); The Journal of Radical Shimming, and various art publications. Saloman recently received his MFA at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts.




ANTTI TOLVI

"I was born in Panelia, in the west coast of Finland, June 3. 1977, and raised at a farm. There I started to do music with my brothers. In 2000-2001 I studied classical Indian music in Varanasi, and there all these free or avantgarde or noise or whatever musics opened for me. Soon when I returned from India, we started free jazz quartet Rauhan Orkesteri, where I’m playing wind instruments. After playing intensive many years free jazz we moved to Kemiö island, to countryside with my partner Laura Naukkarinen (Lau Nau) and I started to make more and more solo music. And in very remote / silence place, music started to become totally opposite from Rauhan Orkesteri’s chaos and speed. Harmonies, overtones, going into sound, no ends, no starts, from nothing comes something, just perfect, peace."

"What we hear is the piano playing itself through Antti Tolvi, and it’s a rare treat to hear a musician with not only the requisite humility to submit himself before the mystical aura of his instrument, but also the tenacity to follow it, resolutely, wherever it may take him." - Decoder Magazine, review of Pianoketo