Saturday, June 7, 2pm Gallery 101, 51B Young Street, Ottawa (ON) 10$ Pierre-Yves Martel and Ben Grossman: two eclectic performers, two exotic instruments, a myriad of sounds and ways of making sound. Both performers draw on a variety of musical traditions – from medieval music to Swedish folk, from musique-actuelle to electroacoustic – and we invite you to experience their world. BEN GROSSMAN (Guelph) hurdy-gurdy, electronics Ben Grossman is a busy musician: improviser, studio musician, composer, noisemaker and audio provocateur. He works in many fields, having played on over 80 CDs, soundtracks for film and television, sound design for theatre, installations, work designed for radio transmission, and live performances spanning early medieval music to experimental electronica. Ben's tools of choice are electronics, percussion, and, especially, the hurdy gurdy (vielle à roue), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument with roots in the European middle ages. Through extended techniques, live-looping and processing, Ben seeks to use it as a physical interface into improvised sound creation, spontaneous composition and the exploration of acoustics, form and extended aesthetics. www.macrophone.org PIERRE-YVES MARTEL (Montreal) viola da gamba, objects Following a unique artistic path, Pierre-Yves Martel is constantly renewing his musical identity and practice. Though an instrumentalist, he identifies himself first and foremost as a sound artist whose work oscillates between research and experimentation. It is in this spirit that he has revisited the viola da gamba, utilizing this traditional instrument in new contexts and thus reengaging it with the contemporary world. Having created an authentic musical language through non-conventional techniques and instrumental preparations, he also works outside of instrumental music altogether, using a variety of objects rife with new sonic possibilities, from contact-mics and speakers to motors, wheels, surfaces and textures. www.pymartel.com