LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thin Edge New Music Collective’s operations take place in Tkarón:to (Toronto), which is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and a confederacy of Anishinabek and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Tkarón:to is also covered by Treaty 13 an agreement with the Mississaugas of the Credit.
Current-day Tkarón:to is home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and has been stewarded by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the arrival of colonial settlers. TENMC would like to acknowledge and honour the traditional caretakers of the land on which we live, and work.
Historically, Canada’s state policies have criminalized and devalued forms of Indigenous culture while supporting the work of settler artists to extract Indigenous songs, stories and art for consumption without the guidance, consent, credit, or compensation of Indigenous communities. Many practices within contemporary/experimental music have roots in colonial traditions both past and present. As a collective, we recognize that we have benefited from funding models that have historically oppressed Indigenous culture, valuing certain modes of artistic expression over others.
We believe that the music we are privileged to share with you is just one of an incalculable number of vibrant possible modalities that humanity uses to structure, express and experience sound. As we move forward into our second decade as an ensemble, TENMC is committed to an ongoing process of education, reflection, and action.
Photo Credit: Shayne Gray Photography
Founded in 2011, Tkarón:to (Toronto)'sThin Edge New Music Collective has emerged as one of Canada's foremost ensembles dedicated to presenting and commissioning composers of our time. Driven by an unquenchable curiosity, they've produced a vast array of innovative and intricate programs, while engaging in unique and ambitious collaborations. In addition to their annual concert season, TENMC are winners of the 2020 Friends of Canadian Music Award presented by the Canadian League of Composers/Canadian Music Centre. TENMC has performed on concert stages across Canada, Italy, Poland, Japan, Argentina, Germany, and Greece.
Mounted in 2016, the remarkable program Balancing on the Edge was touted by Musicworks as “provocative, thrilling and thought-provoking” and delivered cutting-edge music alongside evocative circus performance courtesy of co-creators A Girl in the Sky Productions. In fall 2018, they performed the Toronto premiere of Sarah Hennies' fêted film-and-ensemble work Contralto, co-presenting the poignant and abstract meditation on transfeminine identity with TIFF. 2019’s Ongaku Festival offered a rich three-day cultural exchange that unveiled new works by Canadian and Japanese composers alongside community and pedagogical events. Raging Against The Machine saw them tour across the country with Montréal's Ensemble Paramirabo culminating in a co-operative 2017 release on Vancouver’s Redshift Records described by George Grella of Bandcamp Daily as “an exhilarating, gripping performance…” and “ among the finest versions of these pieces ever put on record.” More recently, the 2nd installment of Balancing on the Edge: Anthropic Traces (Crow’s Theatre, July 2022) was considered a ‘haunting nugget of brilliance…luminous and gone too soon.’ (Intermission -Aisling Murphy)
TENMC's first solo album, Dark Flower on Redshift Records- featuring the music of revered Canadian composer, Linda Catlin Smith. Dark Flower has made its way to Bandcamp’s Best Contemporary Classical Music of 2023, and prestigious Adventures in New Music's top 10 list of 2023 released by The Wire. The album has also caught the attention of various radio stations and media outlets, including CBC Radio, BBC Radio 3, WPPM, WRUU, and Musica Kaleidoscopea, amongst others. Most recently, the album’s title track garnered Smith a Juno nomination for classical composition of the year.
While engaging with internationally-revered composers such as Maria De Alvear, Linda Catlin Smith, Allison Cameron, Mick Barr, Elliott Sharp, James O'Callaghan, Anahita Abbasi, Barbara Monk Feldman, Jessie Cox, Anthony Tan and Anna Höstman, the ensemble continues to nurture emerging voices, who comprise a considerable number of their 80+ commissioned works. It's all part of their distinctly eclectic and community-oriented outlook—endeavouring to bring 20th and 21st century music to an ever-expanding listenership