Performers

François Houle Aerials (B.C.)

Composer and clarinetist François Houle has emerged in recent years as one of the most distinguished musicians in Canada. His technical mastery and broad musicality allows him to work within and across numerous musical domains, including classical, jazz, contemporary, improvised, and world music.

As an improviser, he combines a precision of execution with a questing spirit through which he has developed a truly astonishing extended instrumental vocabulary. Guided by his uncanny musical intelligence in performance, this vocabulary helps to define Houle’s unique place among the elite of improvising wind players, worldwide.

Similarly, Houle’s virtuosic and idiosyncratic sound palette has made him an in-demand soloist in chamber music contexts; he has commissioned and premiered over one hundred new works in this field. While a considerable amount of his career, particularly as an improviser, has been comprised of collaborative work (Houle last visited the Guelph Jazz Festival with Jesse Zubot and Jean Martin as Laconner in 2005), solo music has increasingly dominated Houle’s musical life in recent years.

The audience in Guelph will thus be treated to one of Canada’s most original and creative artists engaged in his primary project. It is a wholly appropriate context in which to hear one of Canada’s finest improvising musicians at work with characteristic focus, energy, conviction, and creativity.

Website:

www.francoishoule.ca