Ensembles

Ellis, Tanguay, Cram - ETC Trio

The Ellis, Tanguay, Cram ETC Trio is a collaboration whose time has come. Pierre Tanguay, Lisle Ellis and Paul Cram are career composer/performers who have shared together and apart a thirty year history of improvised music.

Paul Cram and Lisle Ellis began seriously working together in Vancouver in the late seventies. They formed the legendary New Orchestra Quintet with Paul Plimley, Ralph Eppel and Gregg Simpson and recorded the seminal album "Up Til Now." The quintet went on to found the New Orchestra Workshop, a musician-based collective that continues to this day in the form of the NOW Orchestra. Cram, Ellis and Simpson departed Vancouver together in the early eighties with the Paul Cram Trio and toured Canada extensively, particularly in Quebec. Cram then settled in Toronto and Ellis in Montreal where they pursued separate directions.

They played again in 1987, this time with Montrealer Pierre Tanguay, as part of a collaboration that brought Toronto and Montreal players together as the Rendezvous Orchestra for an historic performance at the Grand Café. Tanguay, Ellis and Cram performed again in the eighties as a trio at 2080, a Montreal club on Boulevard St. Laurent. Cram and Ellis re-united in 1989 to perform a duo tour of Ontario and Quebec. The nineties saw Ellis move to San Francisco and Cram to Nova Scotia. For the past 15 years the three musicians crossed paths, rarely playing together. Throughout these chance meetings Tanguay never failed to express to Cram the idea of “a Trio avec Lisle”. Over the course of the 2005 Halifax and St. John’s Jazz Festivals the idea came again. This time the stars began to line up.

The group performed its inaugural concert in the Ship Inn at the 2006 Sound Symposium in St. John’s Newfoundland to ecstatic applause. They also performed the following year with Fred Frith at Upstream Music’s Sonic Courage Festival in June 2007. The group is currently available to tour.

 

Lisle Ellis - Bio

Lisle Ellis is a multifaceted creator whose work reflects his interests in music, visual art, computers/technology, and community. As a composer and improvisor-bassist his oeuvre spans three decades and two countries and has brought him international recognition as an artist with an exceptional vision. Some critics consider him to possess an important voice and to have made a significant contribution to the field of experimental music. Recent years have also brought him attention as a creator of computer/electronic music and as a visual artist.
Ellis began playing electric bass in his teens and worked professionally from an early age in numerous environments including studios, radio & tv shows, and even strip clubs. When his teacher and mentor, Walter Robertson, suddenly died in 1974, Ellis abandoned his studies at a music conservatory in Vancouver, Canada in favor of the seminal, and now legendary, Creative Music Studio in New York. There, over a period of several years, he had intimate contact with the vital NYC music scene at a time of surging changes and extraordinary developments.
Lisle Ellis, as the 1986 winner and first recipient of Canada's prestigious Frederick Stone Award -- given annually to a musician for integrity and innovation -- affirms the pioneering role he played in the development of improvised and experimental music in his native Canada. Particularly, in Vancouver in the early 1980's, and the late 80's in Montreal, Ellis was a conspicuous activator of musician alliance organizations, performance venues, and concert series presentations. One collective in particular, Vancouver's New Orchestra Workshop, is still active nearly thirty years later.
Almost immediately after relocating to the United States in 1992, Ellis's music began to attract attention and acclaim on a global level. His recording, Kaleidoscopes: The Ornette Coleman Songbook (Hat Art), with pianist Paul Plimley, was given five stars in Downbeat Magazine and has been hailed as a modern masterpiece.
Ellis's distinct instrumental voice has been heard in a multitude of concerts on the world stage in the company of legends of the avant-garde such as Paul Bley, Peter Broetzmann, Andrew Cyrille, Joe Mcphee, and Cecil Taylor; leading contemporary players Marilyn Crispell, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, and John Zorn, and on more than 40 recordings for international labels such as Black Saint, DIW, and Hat Art, and New World.
Currently, Ellis's principal interest is in developing an electro-acoustic architecture he calls string-circuitry-confluence. Secondary to that are projects such as his long standing trio with Larry Ochs and Donald Robinson called What We Live, Di Terra, an Italy based trio with Alberto Braida and Fabrizio Spera, and duos with pianists Paul Plimley and Mike Wofford.
Ellis lives in New York City.

 

Pierre Tanguay - Bio

A percussionist, composer and inveterate inventor, Pierre Tanguay’s music shows the wide range of his experience in ancient and contemporary music, jazz, and music for dance, theatre and cinema. Born in Quebec City in 1957, he has devoted himself to music full-time since 1978.

He plays with some twenty established groups, such as Dangereux Zhoms, Évidence, Castor et compagnie and Karen Young, and is the founder of Strada, Midi Tapant and Derome Tanguay Danse. He has produced five albums and collaborated closely on some fifty others, and has more than twenty compositions for dance (Lucie Grégoire, Andrew Harwood, Irène Stamou and Francine Gagné) and a number for theatre and film (Allan Booth, Imago and Roberto Ariganello) to his credit. He regularly tours throughout Canada and Europe.

 

Paul Cram - Bio

Composer/Bandleader/Artistic Director Saxophonist/Clarinetist/Film Scoring www.paulcram.com
Paul Cram has a career that spans over thirty years from coast to coast in Canada. Originally from Vancouver he spent his formative years playing in R&B bands and burlesque houses . He studied composition with Elliot Weisgarber at the University of British Columbia and with jazz great Sam Rivers at Banff. He co-founded the New Orchestra Workshop, an organization that continues to this day to develop new ways of juxtaposing composition and improvisation in a large ensemble context. In 1982 he moved to Toronto and worked there for seven years. He toured Canada extensively and was nominated twice for Juno Awards for Best Jazz Album. In this period he developed a strong interest in writing music for theatre and film which led him to embrace technology before moving with his family to Nova Scotia in 1989. For several years he has been Artistic Director of the UpStream Music Association, a musician-based collective that produces cutting-edge collaborations in Halifax of local, national and international artists who share an interest in the flourishing of creative music. He has performed with top international artists: Barry Guy, Julius Hemphill, Peter Lieberson, Alain Trudel, Jean Derome, Matt Brubeck, Lori Freedman and Han Bennink to name a few. His CD “Campin Out” with the Paul Cram Orchestra was released to rave reviews and nominated for National Jazz Awards in two categories: best composer and best big band. The Orchestra performed at the prestigious Jazz em Agosto Festival in Lisbon, Portugal in 2004 and released “Live in Lisbon” on Ombu Records. Selected film and television work includes : Silent Messengers (2005) – a feature documentary for the National Film Board, Foodessence - 39 episodes for the Life Network, Stanton T. Friedman is Real - documentary for Space Channel, Gullage’s - a 13 episode comedy series for CBC shot in St.John’s, Newfoundland and One Heart Broken into Song, a CBC MOW that won him a FIPA D’OR for best dramatic score from the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuel in Biarritz, France. In theatre he has written scores for Neptune, Mulgrave, Eastern Front, Ship’s Company, Mermaid Theatre and CBC Radio Drama. He has been commissioned to write concert music by Bradyworks, UpStream, New Orchestra Workshop, Hemispheres and Symphony Nova Scotia. Currently, he performs as a saxophonist/clarinetist with the UpStream Orchestra, various PC configurations and A Love Upstream. He writes for television, theatre, and concerts. He is a member of the Canadian Music Centre, SOCAN, The American Federation of Musicians, Local 571, The Canadian League of Composers and the Guild of Canadian Film Composers.