New York Review of Cocksucking + Laura Swankey & Patrick O'Reilly + Del Stephen

Event Details

Event type: Ages 19+

NEW YORK REVIEW OF COCKSUCKING (Bandcamp)

The New York Review of Cocksucking was formed by Richard Kamerman & Michael Foster via Tinder, where after finally meeting at a noise show in someone's house they promptly decided to forgo all formalities associated with online dating and start a noise duo together instead. Writing for Jazz Right Now, critic Clifford Allen describes the duo as belonging “in a tradition somewhere between John Duncan and Alfred 23 Harth, a path that will continue to fascinate and upend and which is absolutely necessary in this darkly draconian age.” Composer Sarah Hennies calls them “The perfect music for this queer political moment. Incredible.” NYRoCS’s performances range from the barely audible to full blown harsh noise.

LAURA SWANKEY & PATRICK O'REILLY (Bandcamp)

Vocalist, composer, and improviser, Laura Swankey (she/her) is known for her artistry, versatility, vocal aptitude, creative spirit, and compassionate approach to collaboration and education. n mid-2023, Laura will be releasing an album of improvised music with long-time collaborator and friend, guitarist Patrick O’Reilly (W/DRWN Records). This music was captured by engineer, Mike Romaniak over two days in the winter of 2019 in a snowy cottage outside Meaford, ON.

Laura has worked with artists such as Juno award-winner Mike Murley, Poet Laureate Dennis Lee, Christine Duncan, Mark Feldman, and Ralph Alessi, and has premiered works by Juliet Palmer, Germaine Liu, Lieke van der Voort, Tova Kardonne, Elio Villafranca, and Mike McCormick. Along with her solo project for voice and electronics, Laura has extensively collaborated and toured throughout Canada, Scandinavia and the United States with Parade, Elisa Thorn’s HUE, Plastic Babies, Mike McCormick’s Proxemics, Jazz Bras Dot Com, Dr. Purgatory, and Star Triptych. In 2018, Laura joined the University of Toronto and Humber College as an instructor in their respective music departments. 

As an active member of the Canadian music community, Laura continues to focus on exploring her voice; to exploit its full capacity in both live and studio settings, as a solo singer and collaborator. In addition to her teaching and creative work, Laura is currently completing a MA in counselling psychology.

Patrick O’Reilly is a composer/guitarist and a community-driven fixture in the Toronto creative music scene. His open-minded approach embraces both beauty and brashness; he operates the W/DRWN record label and is co-curator of the Furniture Music workshop series.

A sought-after collaborator, he contributes to a diverse range of projects that have all added to the rich musical landscape of his own work. He can be heard most often on tour with art-pop band Language Arts, at Toronto's Tranzac Club with creative music ensemble Never Was, in Kensington Market with epic-afro-funk trio Wapama and improvising with ad-hoc groups in basements and DIY spaces throughout the GTA.

His new album The Remembrancer: Justin Haynes Plays the Compositions of Patrick O’Reilly is available now. The album features Patrick’s compositions performed and recorded by the late Justin Haynes in what would prove to be one of his final collaborations.

  
DEL STEPHEN (Bandcamp)

Del Stephen is an exploratory artist and organizer who creates music that often blends spontaneous composition with a carefully crafted collaging of cassette-tape field recordings, experimental movement, and translation-emotion-express poetry. His vast collection of self-produced albums and constantly evolving live performance projects throughout the past decade, both on his own as well as with an artistically diverse range of collaborators, not only suggest a certain devotion to a life of creative action and persistent art, but also a desire to carry on exploring his ever unfolding relationship with sound, language, and the world around him.

TONE is made possible through the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, Long & McQuade, and Burdock Brewery.

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