Gordon Grdina – oud
Mark Helias – bass
Hank Roberts – cello
Hamin Honari – tombak, daf, frame drum

If you’re from the North, Leela Gilday’s music is home. If you’ve never been, it will take you there. Born and raised in the Northwest Territories, she writes about the people and the land that created her. The power in her voice conveys the depth of her feelings of love and life in a rugged environment and vibrant culture, as if it comes straight from that earth. Leela’s family is from Délįne on the shore of Great Bear Lake and her rich vocals dance across the rhythmic beats of traditional Dene drumming as smoothly as a bass line onstage the largest venues in the country. And she has played them all.

She believes music has an inexplicable effect on people. It is a place where she can share light and dark and the most vulnerable moments, with a clarity and genuine purpose that reassures her listeners through every word. She is a storyteller, and through this, reflects the world onto itself.

Five years after her last album was released—five years of growth, healing and head-down work—Leela’s fifth album will be released in Spring 2019. It is more raw, more intimate and more Leela than anything you’ve heard from her before.

Multidisciplinary Métis artist, looping pedal mistress, spoken word poet, educator, artistic producer, public speaker, activist…

Moe Clark is a nomadic songbird with wings woven from circle singing and spoken word. Mistress of the looping pedal, she creates sonic landscapes of layered voice that invite audiences into a trance-like space. Her poetic songs soar through these landscapes, with tonal and lyrical resonance. In music collaborations, Moe’s intuitive and sensual approach to vocal improvisation pulls from soul, gospel, folk and spoken word genres. She’s trained with the likes of Rhiannon (Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra), Pura Fé (Ulali) and David Smukler (Linklater approach).

As performer, Moe’s work spans international borders and creative disciplines. Following the success of her debut album “Circle of She: Story & Song” (2008) she toured national and international stages. Her second album “Within” (September 2014) builds off this success to bring elaborated musicality. Highlight feature performances include Maelström ReÉvolution Poétique Fiéstival in Belgium (2013 & 2009), IDEA World Congress: Art for Social Change in Brazil (2010), Aboriginal Music Week (2012), Makusham APTN Series (2011) and she will perform as “Poet of Honour” for the 2014 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Her 2009 videopoem “Intersecting Circles” is now part of the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre.

A mainstay of the Chicago jazz scene and an active recent addition to the New York scene, Jaimie Branch is an avant-garde trumpeter known for her “ghostly sounds," says The New York Times, and for "sucker punching" crowds straight from the jump off, says Time Out. Her classical training and “unique voice capable of transforming every ensemble of which she is a part” (Jazz Right Now) has contributed to a wide range of projects not only in jazz but also punk, noise, indie rock, electronic and hip-hop. Branch’s work as a composer and a producer, as well as a sideman for the likes of William Parker, Matana Roberts, TV on the Radio and Spoon, is all on display in her debut record Fly or Die – a dynamic 35-minute ride that dares listeners to open their minds to music that knows no genre, no gender, no limits.