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

fall is here

We finally had our firewood delivered for our woodstove. Just in time I think; fall is in the air and winter's around the corner. Last year we were snowed in for eleven days in the creek, with no electricity for three days, so firewood is a good thing.
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I have a great gig coming up this Saturday at 1067 with the amazing, talented, hardest-working Vancouver guitarist, Jeff Younger. We'll be playing some improv as well as performing Version #2 of an improvised song cycle. The text was written by Vancouver writer, Colin Browne. I performed the first version of this cycle with Stefan Smulovitz last month at the Jazz Cellar and was very excited with the sounds we came up with. I can't wait to see what form the song cycle takes this time around. The plan is to perform and record the song cycle with a different improviser each time: same texts, no pre-discussion or plan before, instant compositions.

Also coming up on November 16th is an exciting performance with the NOW Orchestra featuring Amina Claudine Myers and a wild Chorus including: Christine Duncan, Phoebe MacRae, Peter Hurst, DB Boyko, Matthew MacTavish and myself. Should be a wild vocal extravaganza. I'm very excited to be performing with these wonderful vocalists and the NOW Orchestra.

A bientot ... keep warm.

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