Unknown Photographer, Natalie Brettschneider performs “Morning Glory”. No date. Silver gelatin print. Natalie Brettschneider Archive.
Natalie Brett Quartet
Calgary Edition
Carol Sawyer will be joined by an all-star ensemble of Calgary musicians: Chris Dadge, Mark Limacher, and Nate Waters – to create music inspired by Natalie Brettschneider’s brief foray into mainstream jazz. Expect unorthodox versions of jazz standards, infused with free improvisation, noise, and musical digressions.
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Doors: 5:30 PM
Performance Begins: 6:00 PM
Exhibition Opening to follow.
FREE with registration. Due to limited seating in the Auditorium registration for this performance is required.
About the Performers
Carol Sawyer
Carol Sawyer is a visual artist and singer working with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. In 2017 The Canada Council awarded Sawyer the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award.
Sawyer earned an Honours diploma in photography from ECUAD, and a Masters in interdisciplinary arts from SFU, where she studied acting, music performance, critical theory, and music composition. As a young woman, Sawyer studied classical singing, focusing on opera and art songs, before training in extended voice with Richard Armstrong. She has performed extensively in improvised music contexts and incorporated her singing voice into her artworks in performances and videos. She has released three CDs with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, and collaborated and recorded with American composer and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich. The much-awaited Natalie Brett Quartet LP was launched in December 2022, with music recorded at the Warehouse Studio, using vintage microphones, plate reverbs, and other historical analog gear.
Chris Dadge
Chris Dadge lives in Calgary, Alberta, where he works as a percussionist, producer, composer, recording engineer, record label operator, and concert organizer.
He co-leads Lab Coast, has played in Sub Pop recording artist Chad VanGaalen’s backing band, The Bleach Wipes, and has appeared on the two studio albums by Toronto-based indie-pop darlings Alvvays. Their last album Antisocialites took home the Juno in 2018 for "Alternative Album of the Year". Dadge also plays drums for and co-produces records with Samantha Savage Smith plays drums in Sections, a new band from Darrell Hartsook (Lab Coast, Grown-Ups, Sissys), and can often be seen as part of Marlaena Moore's ever-shifting backing band.
Over the last few years, Dadge has developed a reputation as a recording engineer and producer in his home studio, Child Stone Studios, where he specializes in a combo of analog and digital recording technologies, unorthodox recording techniques, and diverse instrumentation. His activities in improvised music were umbrellaed under the name Bug Incision- a concert series and record label run by Dadge.
Mark Limacher
Mark Limacher is a composer, improviser, arranger, and genre-crossing pianist currently based in Calgary, Canada. He is a graduate of New School University in New York City and has studied privately with composers Linda Catlin Smith (Toronto) and Laurence Crane (London, UK). In 2013 he served as an apprentice to composer Bunita Marcus in Brooklyn, NY.
His compositions focus on small gestures and contemplative textures, centring around works for solo instruments and small ensembles. In 2022 he was invited to be an Artist in Residence for the Festival of the Sound’s Music Scores 2022, featured by the National Arts Centre as part of their Music Alive program. His arrangements and orchestrations have been heard in collaboration with vocalists Ellen Doty, vocalist & playwright Allison Lynch, Kensington Sinfonia, Theater Calgary, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.
Nate Waters
Nate Waters is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist from Calgary and has performed and recorded in a number of disparate musical iterations. He has contributed to the city’s musical fringe as half of the freely improvised Friesen/Waters Duo and as a part of the minimalist quartet Nobody Say Anything
He has appeared in more classical and contemporary contexts with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Alberta Winds, Timepoint Ensemble and the Calgary Chinese Orchestra. As a jazz saxophonist, he leads a quartet under his own name and has shared the stage with such acts as Juno-nominated vocalist Heather Bambrick, local chanteuse Ellen Doty, and Ironwood mainstays The Prime Time Big Band.
He has also featured prominently in pop groups such as The Cable-Knits, Hunter-Gatherer and Samantha Savage Smith, and recorded and appeared with a number of acts, such as Lab Coast, Aleem Khan, Prepared, and Raleigh. He has performed at such festivals as the Calgary Folk Music Festival, Pop Montreal, Sled Island, the Calgary Summer Jazz Festival, Femme Wave, the University of Calgary’s Monday Night Jazz Series, Sound Off, Alberta Culture Days, and Block Heater.
Presented by
Irene Bakker
Cheryl Gottselig, K.C.
Sharon Martens
Nuvyn Peters
Carol Ryder
Karen Radford
Jan Tertzakian
Supported By
Murphy’s Mid-Century
Have you ever stopped to think about the lives of the objects around us? The way a piece of furniture can pass from one family member to another or travel from one side of the country to the other at the whim of its owner? With no capacity of its own to do anything but be exactly where you left it. Our “things” are vulnerable to their keepers. Loved, lost, forgotten and treasured, travelling through the years until they are broken and replaced. Our things can travel the world, be bought and sold and sold again - silently sharing in our intimate spaces and daily routines.
At Murphy’s Mid-Century we have dedicated our time to gathering old things, freshening them up and presenting them to new owners who will repeat the whole cycle. Extending the life of these well-crafted items for decades to come. Many of these objects were intended to last a lifetime. What we’ve found is that many of them (with some restorative help) can last many lifetimes. Offering practical solutions for everyday needs - with an authentic style and charm not readily available in the modern marketplace of “things”.
At Murphy’s Mid-Century we focus on wooden and upholstered furniture, lighting and ceramic arts from the 1950s. 1960s and 1970s. We almost exclusively work with items from Denmark, Sweden and Norway but occasionally get to work with Canadian-made items from this era too.
We’ve curated a selection of our pieces to accentuate this exhibit “Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschnieder Archive”. We invite you to interact with them all and become a part of their story.
- Harrison Murphy
Murphy’s Mid-Century has been serving Calgary for 5 years, from our showroom in the historic Inglewood neighbourhood.
