︎︎︎ E. Angell M. Hasselberg ︎︎︎
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A talented improvisor and performer, multiple award-winning violinist Meredith Bates is known for her elegant and virtuosic sound.
MEREDITH BATES
A talented improvisor and performer, multiple award-winning violinist Meredith Bates is known for her elegant and virtuosic sound.
She has spent most of the past twenty years recording and performing around the world in celebrated ensembles, such as Pugs and Crows (JUNO winner 2013, WCMA 2016), Gentle Party, and projects led by Vancouver music icons Tony Wilson, Ford Pier, Leah Abramson, and Peggy Lee. She is a collaborator at heart and relishes any opportunity to join forces with other like-minded artists.
Recently, Meredith has been focusing on her own projects. She has founded a new instrumental sextet “Like the Mind’, with renowned improvisors from Canada and Sweden (Peggy Lee, Lisa Ullén, Lisen Rylander Löve, Elisa Thorn, and Emma Augustsson). In the Fall 2020, Meredith’s artist residency at Western Front in Vancouver culminated with the composition and performance of an immersive multi-disciplinary work called Sound Migrations.
In December 2020, she released an epic ambient and experimental debut solo album, ‘If Not Now’, produced by Chris Gestrin on Phonometrograph. Featuring
lush
layers of processed violin and viola, it is inspired by our relationship to one another and our natural surroundings. In June 2022, she released her secon album, “Tesseract”, on Phonometrograph. Both sombre and more audacious
than its predecessor, it occupies the same monumental scale,
swelling over two CDs.
Meredith lives on unceded Coast Salish territory. She is the artistic director of the Vancouver Improvised Arts Society (VIAS), a non-profit organization aimed at supporting the creation and presentation of improvised works by womxn, BIPOC, and LGBTQ2S+ artists.
See
also:
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Bandcamp
Tidal
Videos
2023: Tesseract
2021:
Broken Music II
2020:
If Not Now, Teaser 1
2020:
Isolation Commission #26
Selected Discography
Solo:
2023: Tesseract
2020:
If Not Now (phonometrograph)
As
performer, with other projects:
Gentle
Party
Like
the Mind
Peggy
Lee’s Echo Painting
Pugs
& Crows
Sound
Migrations
Tony
Wilson’s Burn Down the Cornfield
Artistic
Director
Vancouver
Improvised Arts Society (VIAS)
Press:
Bandcamp (2023)
Fifteen Questions (2023)
The Vancouver Sun (2023)
Outside Left (2023)
Musicworks (2021)
Disquiet (2021)
Press Quotes:
“There's restless innovation to these soundscapes as Meredith walks an instrument, the violin, to the very edge of its capabilities. What you hear is the sound of an artist trepanning for gold”. - Outside Left“My first language was music. It gave me a voice and it provided the basis of my social and emotional relationships”. - interview in Fifteen Questions
"Meredith Bates was the sonic star here, her rich tone on electric violin cut with a questioning edge that kept easy sentimentality at bay." - Georgia Straight
“This sounds like broken music”- Silas Gestrin-Bates
Contact
actartmgt@gmail.com
Photo
credit:
Marc BjorknasChris Gestrin
Joanna Stoga