Toronto based improviser Karen Ng can be found in many different projects across a wide range of music. She has performed with The Weather Station, Andy Shauf, Lido Pimienta, Luka Kuplowsky, Badge Époque Ensemble, Tim Baker, L CON, Happiness Project, and Do Make Say Think. Currently Karen is involved in several improvising ensembles in the city including Rob Clutton Trio, p2p, Kind Mind, Craig Dunsmuir and the Dun Dun Band, See Through 4 as well as various ad hoc duos, trio and quartets.
In 2015 she was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant by the Ontario Arts Council to study with the saxophone section of the ICP Orchestra in Europe as well as the OAC National/International Residency grant in 2018 which took place in New York. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist award. Formerly a board member of the Somewhere There collective and Assistant Artistic/General Director of Guelph Jazz Festival from 2019-2022, she is the co-founder of TONE festival, and is Chair for the Music Gallery Board of Directors.
Matt Robidoux (they/he) is a San Francisco based composer, improviser, and educator interested in sound-gesture causality and the convergence of movement and sound as it relates to free improvisation and accessibility. Their primary instrument is the “corn synth” (Kinetically Operated Randomness Network), a modular system that interprets physical input from two “ears of corn” sculptures cast in aluminum.
Why corn?
I like to focus on the modularity/ubiquity of corn and this kind of illogical sculptural sound causality as a starting point for free improvisation. The instrument was invented during my residency at ACRE in Wisconsin, where I cast two corn cob moldings in aluminum at a metal pouring workshop in a cornfield. Movement and touch determine the parameters of pitch, velocity, and duration. This makes for an accessible instrument, at once charming and absurd, while also a merging of my practice creating space for unrestricted musical improvisation.
The modular environment, configured around two touch controlled aluminum cast ears of corn, is informed by my ongoing work with Pauline Oliveros’ final project AUMI (Adaptive Use Musical Instrument) in direct collaboration with the disability community and multidisciplinary arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The powerful echo and artistic legacy of Mills College CCM (1967-2022) resonates in my design of the corn synth, modeling it after the Buchla 158, the original synthesizer used at the San Francisco Tape Music Center beginning in 1963.They are part of a composer collective with Sally Decker, Brendan Glasson, Briana Marela, Michelle Moeller, and Mitch Stahlmann, and Flatways, an electroacoustic improvising trio with Jordan Glenn and Sudhu Tewari. They have a duo with Laetitia Sonami called The Gleaners that often collaborates with Paul DeMarinis. They have worked with Creativity Explored, Del Sol Quartet, Fred Frith, Eclipse Quartet, Dustin Wong, Julius Smack, William Winant, Jaap Blonk, Laura Steenberge, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Anla Courtis, J Mascis, Wendy Eisenberg, gabby fluke-mogul and Matt Norman.
They hold a MA in music composition from Mills College, where they studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, John Bischoff and James Fei. Their scholarly work is featured as a chapter in Improvising across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument via University of Michigan Press (2024).Matt has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan and has work available on Already Dead, Null Zone, Crash Symbols, Feeding Tube Records, Mystra, Exploding In Sound, Ydlmier, Carpark Records, and most recently their own imprint Air Tone.
Sweet Lips is the artistic collaboration between Owen Kurtz and Sierra Weston. They make avant-pop music that explores the cultural and technical frameworks of the genre using experimental performance and recording approaches. Their debut “Sweet Lips Debut” was released December 2024 on the Ministry of Phonic Services Label. They also make multi-media installation work which has shown at the plumb and 24 hr atm lotto in Toronto. Excerpts from these projects were released as “Sweet Lips Singles” in November 2025.
Colby Richardson is a media artist, experimental filmmaker, and sound artist currently based in Toronto, Ontario. Utilizing historic video equipment, everyday software, and consumer electronics, he creates dynamic and textural visual and auditory works, taking the form of; performances, installations, video-sculptures, music videos, expanded cinema, and single-channel film and video. His work embraces chaos in a playful, structural, and exploratory manner. Richardson’s collaborations with musicians on live concert visuals and music videos often feature a blend of vibrant and surreal camera work and analog-video mixing methods with a low-tech approach.
Over the last decade, Richardson has screened and exhibited his work internationally including: European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück, Germany), Antimatter (Victoria, BC), Alternative Space Loop (Seoul, South Korea), Fonderie Darling (Montréal, QC), Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Artists Television Access (San Francisco, CA), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Videofag (Toronto, ON), Milwaukee Underground Film Festival (Milwaukee, WI), WNDX (Winnipeg, MB), Confederation Centre of the Arts (Charlottetown, PEI), Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan), International Video Art Festival Madrid (Madrid, Spain), BIDEODROMO (Bilbao, Spain), and Democracy NOW! (New York, NY). His work has been featured in publications including Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Black Flash.