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Singer and oud player of Lebanese origin, Lamia Yared specializes in the repertoires of classical Arabic and Ottoman music. She is involved in various projects aimed at preserving and promoting the musical heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean region. Collaborating with outstanding musicians, she has produced the album "Chants des Trois Cours" (2019), endorsed by Songlines magazine, as well as the album "Ottoman Splendours" (2022), under the Analekta label. https://www.songlines.co.uk/review/chants-des-trois-cours Her presence has been noted at numerous festivals in Canada and internationally. As artistic director and musician, she brings together exceptional musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds. She has been invited to present projects with ensembles such as Labyrinth Musical, La Cigale, Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, One Ecquall Music, Oktoécho, and Ensemble Scholastica. Her projects benefit from grants from CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec), CAM (Conseil des arts de Montréal), and CAC (Canada Council for the Arts)

Gordon Grdina is a JUNO Award winning oud/guitarist whose career has spanned continents, decades and constant genre exploration throughout avant-garde jazz, free form improvisation, contemporary indie rock and Arabic music. His singular approach to the instruments has earned him recognition from the highest ranks of the jazz/improv world. Grdina has performed and collaborated with a wide array of field-leading artists including Gary Peacock, Paul Motion, Marc Ribot, Mark Helias, Mats Gustafsson, Hank Roberts, Mark Feldman, Eyvind Kang, Colin Stetson, Mat Maneri, Christian Lilinger, Matt Mitchell, & Jim Black. In 2019, he took two years out to develop his classical guitar technique before recording a series of classical guitar albums. The new direction allowed the dense harmonies and polytonal complexity to blend and soften creating a blending of sonorities unlike any of his previous work. For moments on pieces such as “Prior Street” and “Pendulum”, the Oud takes on a new roll experimenting in the same atonal world as the guitar before settling back down into the intricate world of Maqam. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or position. The Arabic maqam is a melody type. It is a technique of improvisation that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a piece of music and is unique to Arabian art music.

Clarinetist François Houle has established himself as one of today’s most inventive musicians, in all of the diverse musical spheres he embraces. Inspired by collaborations with the world’s top musical innovators, François has developed a unique improvisational language, virtuosic and rich with sonic embellishment and technical extensions. He has worked with Dave Douglas, Mark Dresser, Joëlle Léandre, Benoît Delbecq, Evan Parker, Samuel Blaser, Gerry Hemingway, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, René Lussier, Alexander Hawkins, John Butcher, Kris Davis, Georg Graewe, Håvard Wiik, Guillermo Gregorio, Eyvind Kang, Hasse Poulsen, and many of Canada and the International scene’s top creative music artists. His extensive touring has led to solo appearances at major festivals across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. A prolific recording artist, he has released over twenty recordings as a leader, earning multiple Juno Award and West Coast Music Award nominations. He is the founder of Afterday Audio, a record label dedicated to the documentation and dissemination of his many musical projects and collaborations. In addition, he has appeared on numerous recordings on the Songlines, Red Toucan, Leo Records, Drip Audio, PSI, Between-the-Lines, Nuscope, Spool, hat[now]ART, Redshift, CRI, among others. He has been listed on numerous occasions in Downbeat magazine’s Readers and Critics’ Polls as “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” and “Rising Star”. François studied at McGill University, went on to win the National Debut competition, and completed his studies at Yale University. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, and was a featured soloist in the International Clarinet Association’s 2007 and 2008 ClarinetFests. He is a faculty member at the Vancouver Community College School of Music, and a former graduate clarinet studio instructor at the University of British Columbia. He served as Artistic Director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute for five years. In 2008 he was appointed as “Associate Composer” of the Canadian Music Centre.

Nova Scotian native Sheila Hannigan received her Master’s in Cello Performance from the Université de Montréal, studying with Yuli Turovsky. She also participated in programs at the Banff Centre in Alberta, le Centre d’Arts Orford, the Orchestre des jeunes du Québec (Quebec Youth Orchestra) in residence at the Orford Festival as principal cellist, and the Menuhin Academy in Switzerland. She is the recipient of a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, which permitted her to further her exploration of improvisatory cello techniques with Berklee College cello professor Eugene Friesen. Sheila Hannigan plays regularly with the Orchestre Métropolitain, I Musici de Montréal and Allegra Chamber Music. She has been past principal cellist at La Piétà, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and the SMCQ. Tours have taken her to Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US: enlever puisque le paragraphe suivant fait reference aux tournées. Parallel to her classical music activities, Sheila continues to develop her skills in world and improvisatory music and multi-disciplinary projects. She is cellist of the ensemble Cordâme (winner Opus awards, Rideau awards), Romulo Larrea tango ensemble (Opus award, ADISQ award) and accompanies Brazilian musician Bia (ADISQ award). With these artists, she has toured Québec, Canada, the United States, Europe, Brazil and South Korea. In 2016-18, she performed with composer Gabriel Thibaudeau live improvised music and original compositions for silent films presented by the American Film Institutes at UCLA (Los Angeles) and Washington DC, performing as a piano-cello duo and with traditional Japanese musicians. In recent years, she has delved into Middle Eastern and Byzantine music, playing and recording with the American-Iranian singer Azam Ali, as well as recording and touring with a Persian classical music project by the composer/setar player Pooria Pournazeri. She is also a member of the ensembles Urwami and Oraciones, led by Lamia Yared, featuring an Arabic, Turkish, and Sephardic repertoire. More recently, she has collaborated with musicians from the Ontario Labyrinth Ensemble for several concerts at the Chapelle du Bonsecours, Montreal. Since 2012, Sheila Hannigan is cellist with PPS Contemporary Danse, touring with the shows Danse Lhasa Danse, Corps Amour Anarchie, and the new creation Perles in 2023/24. Active in the recording industry in Montreal, Sheila Hannigan has recorded on various soundtracks to films, albums, theatre productions and television. Teaching is an important part of her life, and she has been a past teacher at the CAMMAC music Centre and UQAM (Quebec University in Montreal). She currently is a chamber music and string performance instructor at Marianopolis College in Montreal.