MOONLIGHT + MAGIC PERFORMANCE + PRESENTATION – Public | All Ages | Free
The Comox Valley Art Gallery is excited to host multi-award-winning performer, composer, and producer Ruby Singh, who will join the festivities…
- Live Hip Hop Performance:
7:30pm | Moonlight + Magic Stage at CVAG Plaza - Music Videos:
Intergalactic-themed Tooth’N’Claw and EchoLocate from the artist’s album kraKIN
Streaming on the gallery’s giant LED screen facing CVAG Plaza + Duncan Avenue
Moonlight + Magic is presented by the Downtown Courtenay Business Improvement Association with support from CVAG, 97.3 the Eagle, Comox Valley Arts, The Joint Physiotherapy, Foveo Running, and Elevate.
KRAKIN
Ruby Singh’s kraKIN is a more-than-human hip hop collaboration bringing together his sonic stylings and the amphibious intellect of Michael Datura (AKA professah exile), and a boom-bap menagerie of West Coast plants, amphibians, and mushrooms. In an age of ecological crisis, this multi-species assemblage aims to decompose human dominion and reintegrate our minds with the resonant ecology of a living world. kraKIN creates their unique place based sound by cutting and crossfading samples of field recordings of biomes throughout western Canada and incorporating “biosonification” — a technology that translates the bioelectric signature of flora, fauna and fungi into musical information. Singh named his latest project, kraKIN, based on the birth of the project in the Octopus Islands, the habitat of the giant pacific red octopus, in Desolation Sound. The tracks include everything from cedar tree basslines, wolf-howl and orca song synths, fungi-triggered 808s, to woodpecker hi-hats – resulting in an ecological portrait aiming to shapeshift perceptions and help us stay awake to the ways of the world.
“A visionary artist… blending the technological world with art, social and environmental causes… Singh’s work reveals a new, malleable reality that is long overdue.” – CBC Radio Canada
“Mesmerizing, vibrant… Singh isn’t just crossing genres, he’s straddling astral planes.”
– Globe and Mail
“Singh spins the sounds of plants and animals into a symphony.” – Vancouver Sun
RUBY SINGH
Ruby Singh is a multi award winning performer, composer and producer residing on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh Nations (Vancouver, BC.). His creativity crosses the boundaries of music, poetry, photography and film engaging with mythos, memory, justice and fantasy. Singh is an artist whose work is informed by sound found all around us, from the whirling planets and stars of distant galaxies to percussion of an umbrella under coastal rains, to the perpetual moving birdsong of the dawn chorus, constantly circling the globe. The richly imaginative visual textures to his sound design have found kinship in the theatre, film and dance worlds, where he has been celebrated by multiple Jessie and Leo award nominations. His distinct approach uses traditional and emergent sonic practices to create compositions that express the vast spectrum of the human experience. In 2022, Singh received the Lieutenant Governor’s Jubilee Award for excellence in Art and Music. In 2023, he received his inaugural Juno nomination and he won both the WCMA award for best Global Music Artist of the Year and BC Touring Council’s Artist of the Year.
On November 16, the day after Moonlight + Magic, Ruby Singh will be leading a hands-on workshop in which participants will embark on a journey through sound, voice, and nature.
Register now!
From December 21, 2024 – January 11, 2025. A new video + sound + text work commissioned by CVAG and developed as part of Ruby’s Polyphonic Garden series will premiere in CVAG’s Window + Plaza Media Gallery.
IMAGE: Michael Datura (AKA professah exile) and Ruby Singh, courtesy of the artists.