Since 2014, the collective Grdina/ Houle/Loewen has kept a busy performing schedule, performing at major festivals, concert halls and music venues in Canada, the USA and Europe. Their 2017 performance at Jazztopad Festival in
Wrocław, Poland was enthusiastically received. The group has forged a new stream of complex compositions that meld together density, ferocious energy and technical virtuosity. The group’s versatility and wide dynamic range has become finely honed, creating an intricate web of sonic states that can change course dramatically at any moment. Grdina-Houle-Loewen Collective has recorded with French pianist Benoît Delbecq and has collaborated with composer Linda Bouchard during an artistic residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2017.
Born in Québec, Canada, Linda Bouchard has been an active composer, conductor, and producer for over 30 years. Her works are heard regularly on both sides of the Atlantic and are recorded by the CBC, Analekta, Marquis Classics, and CMC in Canada; ECM in Germany; and CRI in the U.S.
Linda went to the U.S. in 1977 to study composition with Henry Brant and lived in New York City from 1979 to 1990, where she composed, led new music ensembles, and made orchestral arrangements for The Washington Ballet, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and various churches in the New York metropolitan area. She was Assistant Conductor for New York Children's Free Opera from 1985 to 1988 and guest-conducted Orchestra of St. Luke's, the American Dance Festival, the New York New Music Ensemble and others.
In 1991, Bouchard returned to Montreal in time for the world premiere of her composition “Elan” with the Orchestre Métropolitain. She was composer-in-residence from 1992 to 1995 with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada. In 1997, she moved to San Francisco, where she currently resides with her husband and son.
In 1999, Bouchard received first prize for “Composer of the Year” from Conseil Québecois de la Culture and the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her honors in the U.S. include first prizes from the Princeton Composition Contest, the Indiana State Competition, and the National Association of Composers USA Contest and a Fromm Music Foundation Award from Harvard University. Linda was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley during the Spring 2016.
In 2017, she received the Davidson Award from the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Canada. She also received a multiyear grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to research and create. Her project titled “Live Structures” will unfold over the next two years in partnership with Matralab at Concordia University in Montreal.
Keith Turnbull is a director, dramaturge and producer committed to contemporary and new work in both theatre and opera. He was artistic director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre; of Second Stage, Neptune Theatre; and founding artistic director of the NDWT Co with which he started a First Nations theatre company from which emerged many of Canada’s most noted native performers and writers.
He is the past Artistic Director/Executive Producer of Banff Theatre Arts. He has taught extensively throughout Canada. He has directed over eighty plays in theatres across Canada and has directed opera/music theatre for Cultural Industries (Toronto), Music Theatre Wales, Peteå Chamber Opera (Sweden), Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Cardiff & Swansea), UK in NY Festival (New York) and Vancouver Opera. For Banff Theatre Arts, he directed works by Aperghis, Maxwell Davies, Finnessy, Kagel, Menotti, Stravinsky, Weill, and Zimmermann; produced works by Antheil, Berg, Birtwistle, Daugherty, Henze, Nyman and Vivier; and directed the world premieres of Boiler Room Suite (Doolittle), Ubu (Toovey), Kafka’s Chimp(Metcalf) and Zürich: 1916 (Butterfield). In Montréal he directed José Evangelista’s Exercices d’Opera and Isabelle Panneton’s L’Arche.
In 2012, he directed the world premiere of The Elephant Man by composer Carl Unander-Scharinand librettist Michael Wiiliams for Norlandsoperan (Sweden).The Elephant Man was selected one of the ten most significant cultural events in Sweden for 2012. In Toronto and Edmonton, he directed the world premiere of Shelterby Juliet Palmer and Julie Salverson for Tapestry New Opera in coproduction with Edmonton Opera.
In 2015, he was dramaturge and director for the much-acclaimed world premiere of Under Milk Wood – an opera by composer John Metcalf with text by Dylan Thomas for Taliesin Arts Centre (Swansea), Companion Star (New York) and Le Chien qui chante (Montréal) in association with the Welsh National Opera. The production opened in Swansea followed by a tour to four Welsh cities. The production was chosen by the Royal Philharmonic Society as one of the top three UK opera productions, by The Guardian as one of the top ten UK productions and by International Opera Awards as one of the top ten world opera productions. The double CD recording was selected by British Airways for their In-flight entertainment.
Keith Turnbull is Canada's most experienced producer and director of contemporary opera.
Kim is a freelance Director, Creator, Teacher, and was the Artistic Producer at Electric Company Theatre for 17 years- which she co-founded in 1996.
With Electric Company Kim was the co-creator / director of a large body of work that toured nationally including: The Full Light of Day, Tear The Curtain, Studies in Motion, The Score, The One That Got Away, Brilliant and No Exit; a live film adaptation of Sartre’s classic play. The work has been presented at Canadian Stage, FTA, Luminato Festival, The National Arts Centre, American Conservatory Theatre, San Jose Rep, Theatre Calgary, The Citadel Theatre and beyond. Kim directed a film version of their play The Score ( Screen Siren Pictures, CBC) which toured film festivals internationally. Kim moved to Toronto in 2011 and joined the programming and senior management team at Canadian Stage as a resident artist and director of a new Masters in Direction Program. (with York University) Recently she directed a new interpretation of Sweeney Todd for Vancouver Opera, Saint Joan and Angels in America Millennium and Perestroika (Arts Club Theatre), The Great Gatsby (Theatre Calgary), Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet (Bard on the Beach) and Red (Canadian Stage, Vancouver Playhouse, Citadel Theatre) Carried Away on the Crest of a Wave (National Arts Centre) Kim was honored to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Thompson Rivers University. Kim is the recipient of the prestigious Elinore & Lou Siminovitch Prize for Directing; 4 Jessie Richardson wards and a Sterling and Ottawa Critics Award for Direction. She is the recipient of the Vancouver Mayors Arts Award and is a Graduate of Studio 58 as an Actress.
Technical Director Nicholas Jacques runs a production company based in Vancouver, BC. Recent Operations Management positions he has held include Music in the Morning and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He specializes in working with new music presenters (Music on Main, Vancouver New Music, Red Shift Music Society and Standing Wave Ensemble) in traditional but also in unconventional concert spaces. Ranging from acoustic performances to highly technical shows, and from opera concerts to outdoor orchestral festivals, Nicholas is dedicated to realizing the visions his clients cast before him.