Sunday 13 September | 12pm | Guelph Youth Music Centre
Joëlle Léandre . double bass, voice
Anna Bowen . interviewer, host
photo by Christophe Charpenel
Joëlle Léandre is a French double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation. Born in Aix-en-Provence, France, Joëlle is regarded as one of Europe’s most gifted and versatile avant garde bassists. Trained in orchestral as well as contemporary music, she has played with l’Itinéraire, 2e2m, and Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain. Joëlle Léandre has also worked with Merce Cunningham and with John Cage, who has composed especially for her—as have Scelsi, Fénelon, Hersant, Lacy, Campana, Jolas, Clementi, and nearly 40 other composers.
As well as working in contemporary music, Léandre has played with some of the great names in jazz and improvisation, such as Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Evan Parker, Irene Schweizer, William Parker, Barre Phillips, Pascal Contet, Steve Lacy, Lauren Newton, Peter Kowald, Urs Leimgruber, Mat Maneri, Roy Campbell, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Mark Naussef, Marilyn Crispell, India Cooke, and so many others…
Since the early ’80s, Léandre has been redefining what it means to be a bassist. Her playing is marked by its utter unpredictability and radical virtuosity. She is known for her virtuosity and her ability to create innovative soundscapes with her instrument. A virtuoso whose playing is marked by a radical approach that challenges the conventions of her instrument, she often works with improvisers and composers to create new forms of music, blurring the lines between composition and performance. Her work is confrontational and visceral—and always fascinating to listen to.
Léandre is perhaps most well-known for her use of extended techniques on the double bass. She has developed her unique style of playing that incorporates percussive elements, such as slapping and tapping on the strings and body of the instrument, as well as using the bow in unconventional ways. She is also known for incorporating her own voice in unique ways and sometimes for the use of electronics, like effects pedals and amp distortion, to create different sounds. Her work spans many genres, and she is truly a master of her craft.
joelle-leandre.com
@joelleleandre
Anna Bowen (she/her) is a Guelph-based writer, editor, and arts worker. Anna is the curator of Wet Sounds, a quarterly series that invites musicians and artists working with sound to perform and talk about their practice in relation to the emerging interconnected crises from queer, decolonial, and feminist perspectives, and the adjacent Wet Sounds fellowship program. She is the commissioning editor of the Complicating Care series on artseverywhere.ca and part of the Publication Studio Guelph editorial committee. She holds an MA from OISE at the University of Toronto in Social Justice education (formerly Sociology and Equity Studies in Education) and Women and Gender Studies, with a focus on critical race studies. As a poet, she has collaborated with visual artists on projects related to space, care, labour, landscape, and access and has published the chapbook, Holding Places (Glove box Press 2024), as well as poetry for the collection (Re)Mediate. Anna works and lives on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, neighbouring the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee. She is part of the queer rock outfit tube top, as well as the indie folk band Magpie. She is the former co-host of Bookish Radio, the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival podcast, available in the CFRU 93.3 FM campus and community radio archives in Guelph.