Toronto’s Soundstreams presents Transoceanic, the subsequent iteration of their free TD Encounters Sequence, on January 19. The live performance, curated by Haotian Yu, examines the intersections between know-how and the disaporic expertise, and options music from Corie Rose Soumah, Kotoka Suzuki, and Anthony Tan.
The three diasporic composers supply works seen by means of the lens of science fiction, remodeling sound and lightweight, and step exterior the Eurocentric narrative that’s typical of the classical-contemporary music realm.
A dialogue and viewers Q&A with Yu will observe the efficiency.
The Music
Expertise, like notions of diaspora, is geographically fluid. It flows all over the place, everywhere in the world, however carries with it traces of the cultures the place it has lived.
Corie Rose Soumah: Limpidités VI (2025)
Described as “a short investigation on blooming, dread & tinted clouds”, Limpidités VI layers saxophones, cowrie shells, and electronics to evoke the essence of the Black Atlantic.
Anthony Tan: Horizontal and Vertical Forces (2014)
The composer writes about this work for electronics, “This piece performs with how we hear sounds as one factor or as many. Supplies generally lock collectively and really feel like a single supply. At different moments they pull aside into separate layers that intervene, overlap, and fade. Timing, tempo, and modulation push sounds towards fusion or separation. Nothing stays fastened for lengthy. Notion shifts because the piece unfolds. Timbre modifications with consideration, area, and time.”
Kotoka Suzuki: Delicate Anticipation (2023/25)
Delicate Anticipation makes use of percussion and stuck electronics with repurposed electrical lighting, creating delicate silhouettes that draw on Japanese aesthetics. It’s a use of shadow that contrasts the same old Western beliefs of sunshine and what we name progress.
The Performers
Bea Labikova, saxophones
Slovak-Canadian saxophonist and improviser Bea Labikova music spans the vary of free improvisation, avant-garde, fashionable jazz, and Slovak folks music. She performs in a wide range of ensembles similar to “No Starting, No Finish” alongside Germaine Liu and William Parker, the avant-groove ensemble future proof, the avant-jazz group Triio, and the modern afrobeat band Asiko Afrobeat Ensemble.
Alongside along with her specialty within the alto saxophone, she has been creating her personal fashion on the fujara, a Slovak overtone flute, an instrument she has taken out of its regular house within the folks music world to discover its percussive potential.
Bea is the co-founder, visible artist and one of many driving forces behind the Women From Space Festival.
Jeffrey Leung, saxophones
Performer, collaborator, and educator Jeffrey Leung is the Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Queen’s College, and serves because the Affiliate Director of the Worldwide Saxophone Academy. He performs with ensembles such because the Newfound Chamber Winds and Moanin’ Frogs saxophone sextet.
Jeffrey has offered recitals and concert events of repertoire that ranges from conventional to modern all through North America, together with appearances on the Maryland Wind Competition, and with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra, Kingston Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony Orchestra, and Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, amongst others.
His performances might be discovered on albums and recording initiatives by Michigan State College, individuals|locations|information (PPR), Arts Laureate, and Sly Pup Productions. He has premiered and commissioned greater than 30 new items for the saxophone, together with music by Viet Cuong, Shelley Washington, Joel Love, Theo Chandler, Spencer Arias, Annika Socolofsky, Keaton Garrett, Alexis Bacon, Timothy Peterson, Roydon Tse, Baldwin Giang, Matthew Browne, Joe Krycia, and Gregory Wanamaker.
Dr. Leung earned levels in Saxophone Efficiency and Music Concept from Michigan State College, College of Michigan, Northwestern College, and College of Toronto, and is a wanted visitor artists at faculties and universities throughout North America.
Michael Murphy, percussion
Chinese language-Canadian percussionist Michael Murphy has carried out throughout North America, Scandinavia, Europe, and Asia. He has carried out as an orchestral musician with the Toronto Symphony, the Nationwide Ballet of Canada, the Esprit Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, and the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg. Murphy commonly performs with organizations similar to New Music Live shows, Continuum, Arraymusic, Soundstreams, and Ensemble Scope, and has appeared in festivals similar to Nuit Blanche, the New Creations Competition, 2D2N in Odessa, and Frau* musica nova.
His is a passionate advocate for Canadian music, and has commissioned and premiered concertos by Alice Ping Yee Ho, Liam Ritz, and Bob Becker, and shared quite a lot of Canadian works with worldwide audiences. He performs and commissions new music each as a soloist and chamber musician in teams like Duo Holz (with Aysel Taghi-Zada) and Freesound.
Past the live performance stage, his credit embody recording percussion for and showing within the movie Tuner starring Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, and Havana Rose Liu, and he’s the featured xylophone-soloist within the videogame Cuphead (Scrumptious Final Course, 2022).
His discography of chamber and modern works consists of music by Brian Present (Lacking, 2025), Huang Ruo (Guide of Mountains and Seas, 2025), Paolo Griffin (Helps and Surfaces, 2024), Russell Hartenberger (Arlington, 2024), Sophie Dupuis (Comme Bon Lui Semble, 2023), and Chris Paul Harman (Works 2019-2023).
Michael has studied Japanese taiko, Iranian tombak, and Gagaku in Osaka with the Shitennōji Gagaku troupe Garyokai, and is a frequent visitor lecturer at universities in Toronto, Germany, and Japan,
Curator Haotian Yu
Haotian Yu is the winner of the 2025/26 Soundstreams New Voices Curator Mentorship Program for the Encounters Sequence.
Canadian composer Haotian Yu was born in Shanghai, China, and at the moment lives and works in Berlin. His music attracts from Chinese language musical traditions and social practices.
Yu studied on the HfMDK Frankfurt (Frankfurt College of Music and Performing Arts), and the Eastman Faculty of Music, together with seminars and different exchanges with a wide range of lecturers in Germany, Russia, and Canada. Yu garnered eight SOCAN Basis Younger Composer Awards (together with the 2023 Grand Prize), and has been twice included within the Canadian Part submission to the ISCM World Music Days.
From 2022-23, he was the artist in residence on the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and since 2018, he’s creative director of the Beijing-based AIR modern music collective. For the 2025-26 season, he’s the composer in residence with the Worldwide Ensemble Fashionable Academy (Frankfurt). He has collaborated with teams similar to ensemble mosaik (Berlin), Freesound (Toronto), Divertimento Ensemble (Milan), members of IEMA (Frankfurt), Ensemble Fons (Essen), AIR modern music collective (Beijing), Jaume Darbra Fa (Murcia/Cologne), and Michael Murphy (Toronto/Freiburg).
Soundstreams’ TD Encounters
You’ll be able to count on the sudden on the Soundstreams’ TD Encounters free occasion sequence, that are qual components efficiency, artist dialogue, and Q&A, offered in a relaxed and intimate setting.
- Transoceanic takes place on January 19 at Hugh’s Room Dwell. Register for the occasion, and discover extra particulars, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
