Viviane Houle

"Houle not only owns the many avant vocal styles on display here, she has something unique — sometimes stunningly brilliant — to bring to each of them."
The Squid's Ear

"Intimate, eerie, electrifying, Treize is a tour de force of vocal improvisation. ...an auspicious debut recording from an attention-riveting artist."
- Exclaim!

"throwing dictionaries out of windows, the sound of a trombone digging up a grave, ripping out everybody's larynx with your bare hands...a genius example of this audacious approach to music...one of the year’s best albums."

- CokeMachineGlow

"Houle warbles and scats like some demented cross between Yma Sumac and Slim Gaillard, but also does the Phil Minton thing of squeezing non-musical grunts and sighs from a closed larynx." 
- The Sound Projector

"[Louis Andriessen] was then joined on stage by Vancouver’s powerful and unmatched Viviane Houle. It turns out that she embodies a kind of Kiri Te Kanawa who has swallowed the DNA of Yma Sumac. The heights of Houle’s vocal folds are stratospheric. We get grand opera, French chanteuse, and abstruse, cryptic, and arcane contemporary classic singer capable of anything deeply vocal."
- Vancouver Observer





happy 2008!
I'm happy for the new year. I have some exciting gigs lined up including a show at FIMAV in Victoriaville, Quebec.It's FIMAV's 25th anniversary and they are featuring folk like John Zorn and Fred Frith so I'm pretty thrilled to be part of it. I'll be performing with gesture4, a collaboration between myself, Stefan Smulovitz (laptop and viola), Noam Gagnon (dance) and jamie griffiths (visuals).
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I'm happy for the new year. I have some exciting gigs lined up including a show at FIMAV in Victoriaville, Quebec. It's FIMAV's 25th anniversary and they are featuring folk like John Zorn and Fred Frith so I'm pretty thrilled to be part of it. I'll be performing with gesture4, a collaboration between myself, Stefan Smulovitz (laptop and viola), Noam Gagnon (dance) and jamie griffiths (visuals).

I also received some excellent news from the Canada Council for the Arts - they approved my grant to record a CD of duets with 12 of Canada's top musicians/improvisers including Paul Plimley, Peggy Lee, Stefan Smulovitz, Chris Gestrin, Lisa Miller and more ... . Jesse Zubot will be producing. I have been waiting a long time to do this CD.

Our goldfish (well, most of them) are surviving the winter so far and we haven't had as much snow as last year so getting to our place has been a little easier.

Hope you're all doing well as we start off 2008. For more info about my upcoming shows click on the performances link.

Cheers,

Viviane


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Viviane Houle
Canada Council
 
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