Kara-Lis Coverdale is back both in residency at IAC and as performer at the upcoming Intonal. She is a fiercely independent voice in new music that champions an omnivorous approach to sound. She creates colourful and dense arrangements that blur the line between the human and the data with a unique penchant for long-form melody, harmony, and sonic detail. With a dynamic sense of play and conceptual dichotomy, her pieces are shimmering works of digital ether that evolve out of polymorphous arrangements of synthesized samples and keyboards processed in surreal and ornate ways.

She will work on her specially devised acousmatic work “Limbo”, partially developed during her residency at IAC last year. The work will be premiered at GRM’s Présences Électronique festival in Paris in mid-April, and then at Intonal.

Bio:
Kara-Lis Coverdale is a a fiercely independent voice in new music that champions omnivorous approach to sound. She creates colourful and dense arrangements that blur the line between the human and the data with a unique penchant for long-form melody, harmony, and sonic detail. With a dynamic sense of play and conceptual dichotomy, her pieces are shimmering pieces of digital ether that evolve out of polymorphous arrangements of synthesized samples processed in surreal and ornate ways. She has been named “one of the most interesting composers in North America” by the Guardian, and her works and performances have been widely acclaimed by publications like NPR, The Wire, and more. In a feature on experimentalism and foreseeing musics, Musicologist Adam Harper writes Coverdale is able to “navigate new sonic vocabularies and ecologies with a peace and accord we cannot yet comprehend.”
A classically trained pianist, Coverdale has been a resident church organist at several churches across Ontario and Quebec since age 13. She has written extensively on sculpted realisms in recorded musics, including a masters thesis titled “The Fallacy of Fidelity (2010).” Following a 2014 release of pieces for processed voice that highlight the nature of the voice in the age of data, Kara-Lis released a solo album Aftertouches (Sacred Phrases, 2015), which was named best of the year by The Quietus, The Wire, NPR,  and the collaborative album Sirens (Umor Rex, 2015), with LXV. She is also known for her collaborations with Tim Hecker (Virgins, and Love Streams) and her production work for How To Dress Well and Lee Bannon. She performs internationally, including in renowned theatres and cultural centers like The Barbican, Theatre du Chatelet, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the MAC in Montreal, Kraków Philharmonic, and Teatro Circo in Braga, and for festivals like Mutek, Semibreve, and Unsound. She has held residencies at GRM Paris, EMS Stockholm, and Oboro, and is a recipient of a “promising young artist award” by legendary Canadian composer Ann Southam. Coverdale is currently writing a commission on language for electronics and orchestra for Vanemuine Theatre in Estonia to be premiered in late 2017.