infrared - program information
September 6, 2025 - Five world premieres of works by Roxanne Nesbitt, Mari Alice Conrad, Olivia Shortt, Mark Segger, and Lina Allemano. With support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Edmonton Arts Council. Holy Trinity Anglican Church, (10037 84 Ave NW,Edmonton) at 7:30pm. Admission $20, tickets available at the door.
The program
Roxanne Nesbitt -
i. grief rituals*
ii. forever chemicals*
iii. clouding*
Mari Alice Conrad - To Gather Paradise+
The Root Network
Skateboard Flow
Kick, Roll, and Rockets
Basement Sanctuary
Tethered to the Sky
Olivia Shortt - bone dust & glue*
Intermission
Lina Allemano - InfraRed*
Mark Segger - it’s like Bill Evans but not at all harmonic+
*Commissioned by UltraViolet with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. World premiere.
+Commissioned by UltraViolet with support from the Edmonton Arts Council. World premiere.
All works composed 2025.
program notes
To Gather Paradise is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem I dwell in Possibility, which ends with the image of “spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise.” For Dickinson, paradise is not fixed or ready-made but something fragile and expansive, assembled through acts of imagination.
This five-movement, graphic-map-based score extends this gesture into sound. Each movement is a fragment of organic memory mapping a collective of personal paradises: imperfect, genuine, remembered, and reassembled through sound. The five memories are drawn from times when the ensemble members and I felt free, safe, and uninhibited. Another element of consideration is the word paradise (from the Persian pairidaēza, “walled enclosure” or “garden”) which evokes both a place of flourishing and the protective boundaries that allow it.
As performers stretch outward to gather these fragments through improvisation and collaboration, the work invites listeners to consider how freedom, play, and creativity emerge most fully in spaces of safety, and how we might nurture such spaces again with each act becoming, in its own way, a gesture of gathering paradise.
bone dust & glue
Have you ever had a bone graft?
No?
Ok…well, essentially, it happens either after a tooth has been removed or you have some bone loss in your jaw. Sounds scary, especially if you didn’t have a tooth removed and the dentist keeps saying, “You’re too young to have bone loss”.
Thanks, it’s genetic.
Then you meet the periodontist.
They tell you, “We’ll give you anesthesia, cut open your gum, and then clean out the area and then insert this mixture of cadaver donated materials and a gel mixture to tell your bones to grow back and fill in the gap. Don’t worry, the bones know when to stop”.
Cadaver-donated-material????!!!????
“Yes”.
So, dead people bone dust mixed with glue will tell my bones to grow more bone?
“Yes”.
Do you know if it’s more than one person?
“No, but we don’t know for sure”.
Ah, ok, so it could be many people’s bone dust and possibly just one person?
“....”
So, what if I name my bone dust ghost? Is that ok? I’ll name them Lucy.
Will Lucy be nice?
“….”
Will Lucy communicate with me?
If I only have 0.0002% of Lucy in my mouth, will Lucy visit me
the equivalent of 0.0002% of their time?
Does Lucy visit other people, too?
Will Lucy haunt me?
InfraRed is a 3-part piece written for the new music chamber ensemble UltraViolet. In this work, as in most of my works, the line between improvisation and composition becomes somewhat obscured, with both elements being equally important to the integrity of the piece. Part 1 is a rhythmic introduction primarily using 2 pitches (notes), with a 3rd and 4th pitch making brief entrances. After an opening section with a randomized rhythmical texture, the pulse is introduced. As the piece continues, intricate polyrhythms are layered linearly to create a complex interlocked groove. The movement ends with a surprising departure or ‘mini-drama’ which leads into Part 2…Part 2 features each member of the ensemble in an improvised solo. The four solos act as threads weaving together the composed ensemble sections. Rather than interruptions, these solo improvisations become inherent to the flow and openness of the whole movement, creating a feeling of reflection and intimacy, enhancing the poignancy of the composed material. Part 3 opens with a shimmering theme introduced by piano and vibraphone that quickly develops into a duet improvisation. As the theme returns, it becomes fleshed out with the other voices and morphs into a new and angular, strongly rhythmic passage. An opening appears for the woodwinds - an improvised duet - which leads into the finale featuring an energetic baritone saxophone solo over the groove.
it's like Bill Evans but not at all harmonic explores ways of activating a space. It is full of imagined resonances, plausible and farfetched, that interact with the resonant behaviours of the room. Three longer improvised sections play in resonant zones of influential music.
about the artists
UltraViolet is: Roger Admiral, piano; Chenoa Anderson, flutes; Allison Balcetis, saxophones; Mark Segger, percussion.
UltraViolet’s musicians are forward-thinking, virtuosic, dedicated artists. UltraViolet is named in honour of composer Dr. Violet Archer, who encouraged her students to create their own opportunities for their music to be performed. Her impact was broad and deep in Alberta and throughout Canada. In 2013, UltraViolet was created as an ensemble for performing works curated at New Music Edmonton’s yearly festival, Now Hear This. UltraViolet’s members bring an immense wealth of experience to performing new music, individually and collaboratively. UV’s individual members have premiered hundreds of solo and chamber works, and been active in commissioning and performing new Canadian works.
Roxanne Nesbitt is a designer, composer, and sound artist. Following formal studies in classical double bass and architecture, Roxanne works between the fields of music and design. Her research explores radical instrument design, the meeting place of composition and improvisation, sculptural ceramics and participatory sound installation. Roxanne collaborates with instrument designers, musicians, composers, and choreographers to create work. Her music has been played across Europe and North America including performances at Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Utrecht, November Music in Den Bosch, Bauchhund in Berlin, Western Front in Vancouver, and the Center for New Music in San Francisco. Currently, Roxanne is working toward making her experimental instrument designs into public art works. She celebrates process making work that is intimate, inquisitive, and exploratory. Roxanne is currently based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, Canada.
Mari Alice Conrad is an award-winning Canadian composer completing her doctorate in composition at the University of Alberta. Her creative practice spans the concert stage and multimedia collaborations, encompassing solo, chamber, choral, large ensemble works, and sound installations. She is particularly interested in integrating classically trained musicians and improvisers with objects and interactive electronic interfaces. Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, her research-creation projects investigate how sound interacts with geography, memory, and personal history, often incorporating staging, light, and movement to generate innovative musical contexts. In 2022, she traveled to the Canadian High Arctic and Greenland for a youth-focused project addressing climate change through interactive composition. Her works have been performed by ensembles including the UltraViolet Ensemble, Vancouver Chamber Choir, BBC Singers, Allegra Chamber Orchestra, Okanagan Symphony, Standing Wave, Edmonton Winds, and the SHHH!! Ensemble. She currently holds a composer fellowship with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2025–2026 season. Critics have praised her music for its “artistic merit and depth” and its “ability to convey complex emotions and exquisite use of texture” (Hinshaw Music Publications, 2025), as well as for performances that “transported listeners to a stark, serene landscape…holding the crowd spellbound” (Penticton Herald, 2024). Her choral works are published by Hinshaw Music, musica printima, and Cypress Choral Music, with recent recordings from Exultate Chamber Singers, Ensemble ArtChoral, Edmonton Winds, and Canadian violinist Erin James.
(Nipissing First Nation / Irish) Olivia Shortt is a weirdo, noisemaker, sound designer, wannabe fashion icon, video artist, and composer. Described by Musicworks Magazine as a “glittering, rising star in the exploratory music firmament”, Shortt was named by the CBC as one of “6 Indigenous composers you need to know in 2024”. Shortt has been presented at The Whitney Biennial (NYC), The Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC) as well as send+receive (Winnipeg), Cluster (Winnipeg), New Music Edmonton, The Music Gallery (Toronto), Open Ears (Kitchener-Waterloo), Open Waters (Halifax), to name a few. Iconic moments include appearing and playing saxophone on CBC Kids’ ‘Gary the Unicorn’ and Atom Egoyan’s films ‘Guest of Honour’, as well as lending their voice off-screen for Stephen King’s ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Season 3 of Syfy’s ‘Chucky’. Recently, Shortt was Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University’s Music Department and the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, and will be Artist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus at the Indigenous Creation Studio during the 2025-2026 school year. Shortt is a graduate of Dartmouth College (USA).
Lina Allemano is a Canadian trumpeter, composer, improviser and bandleader with an active international career in cutting-edge contemporary music primarily in improvised, jazz and experimental settings. Born and raised in Edmonton and now based in Berlin and Toronto, Allemano is recognized as one of the leading innovative trumpeters/composers on the scene today. She collaborates with many international artists, runs her own record label for adventurous music LUMO RECORDS, and leads multiple groundbreaking projects including her JUNO-nominated longtime acoustic quartet LINA ALLEMANO FOUR, trumpet/electronics duo BLOOP, and power-trio OHRENSCHMAUS. For the past 4 years, she was named in DownBeat Magazine's Annual International Critics Poll for Rising Star Trumpet, and Rising Star Jazz Group for LINA ALLEMANO FOUR. Allemano was nominated for the German Jazz Prize 2025 (Brass Instruments) / Deutscher Jazzpreis 2025
Mark Segger is a performer, composer, and improviser. Recent chamber works include it’s like Bill Evans but not at all harmonic (2025) and ASMR for Saxophone Quartet (2022). Other compositional work of his centres around electronic systems for improvisers, including Opus 0 no. 0 (2023), Score Exchange (2019), and Acoustic Laptop Music (2016). Segger has released two critically acclaimed recordings of his compositions with the Toronto based Mark Segger Sextet, including Lift Off (2020). As an improviser, he has performed with Lina Allemano, Dave Burrell, Steve Swell, Nate Wooley, and many others across North America and Europe.