BIOS

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Dinah D is a stand-up gal with a stand-up bass.  When not touring across Canada or accepting Juno nominations, Dinah can be heard – and seen – plying her strings from Silva Bay to Berry Point in a variety of guises.  A fine musician and spinner of yarns, Dinah D is frontwoman to both theContraband Swingclub and the Martini Foursome. She has also earned a huge fan-base of little bass fanatics as co-founder of the hit children’s band, The Kerplunks.

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Trevor Gear is an artist. He works in fibre arts making felt hats, as well as drawing and painting. His circus arts career has spanned 20 years where he is best known for his clowning and juggling shows. His circus character Clever Trever has a mission to inspire fun and laughter in as many people as possible! He dances, juggles and plays odd tunes, sometimes even atop a unicycle! Clever’s hat juggling is like none other; he throws, rolls, and spins top hats, delighting audiences and bringing to life this century old art. Clever Trever loves to inspire and has been all over the continent performing his own unique brand of clown.

 

Andreas Kahre is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and sound designer whose work combines images, sound and text in many different configurations. Since the 1990s, he has collaborated on more than a hundred projects with music, theatre, dance and media ensembles across Canada and internationally. As a percussionist, he has worked on jazz, new music, and world music projects across Canada, including the Improvised Jazz, contemporary gamelan, audio art installations, radiophonic work and sound design for film, theatre and dance.

 

Alexander Varty is a senior West Coast journalist specializing in cultural reporting of all kinds. Formerly the Arts, Music, and Books editor of the Georgia Straight weekly and a contributing editor for the Toronto-based journal Musicworks, he is now concentrating on freelance projects. Mr. Varty has also won national and regional awards for his food writing. In addition to reporting on the literary, culinary, and performing arts, he has worked as a producer in the cultural community, serving as music curator of the Western Front artist-run centre in Vancouver and president of the Poetry Gabriola Society on Gabriola Island, B.C. An active musician on several instruments and in a variety of genres, Mr. Varty has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as Veda Hille, John Oswald, Art Bergmann, Randy Raine-Reusch, Randy Bachman, and audio poet Hilary Peach. His most recent musical project is an as-yet-unreleased trio recording with American avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser and Pulitzer Prize–nominated trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.