Humbucker Music, with Sandy Ewen

"For the third edition of Humbucker Music's residency at the Tranzac we are delighted to be presenting a solo set from the inimitable Brooklyn-based, Toronto-born guitarist Sandy Ewen.

Ewen’s audio practice focuses on extended guitar techniques, improvisation, graphic scores, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her unique approach to guitar incorporates a wide array of implements – railroad spikes, sidewalk chalk, threaded bolts, steel wool, and other items become an arsenal of abstraction. Ewen has worked extensively with film makers, dancers, poets, and musicians to create films, audio recording, sound interventions, and performance art and is an intrepid and active live performer. Her ongoing projects include duo with bassist Damon Smith, the trio Etched in the Eye, and a duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs. Her extensive discography includes collaborations with the likes of Maria Chavez, Weasel Walter, Violeta Garcia, Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Rowe, Kevin Shea, Lisa Cameron, Henry Kaiser, and Aaron Russell of the band Weird Weeds (of which she was also a member.)

Humbucker Music, meanwhile, is a new improvising quartet founded by Nick Storring and featuring Mira Martin-Gray, Colin Cudmore, and Jason Doell all of who perform using their namesake—acoustic guitar humbucker pickups—which are used both to amplify and sound a variety of metal objects and instruments. "

Humbucker Music is a new improvising quartet comprising Nick Storring, Mira Martin-Gray, Colin Cudmore, and Jason Doell — some of Toronto's most beloved experimental musicians. The group spontaneously creates a sort of musique concrète, yet without any electronic trickery. Instead, their detailed landscapes of tone and texture are performed live with ferromagnetic instruments and found objects, amplified via their namesake — humbucker pickups, which carry their own, highly unique sonic properties.