Banff CentreThe Banff Winter Arts Festival
Ohbijou; The Adam Brown; Gigi

Banff Indie Band Residency

The Shows | The Bands | Faculty

From February 25 to March 9, Music & Sound at The Banff Centre will launch a unique opportunity for three of Canada’s top emerging young bands to rehearse, write and record new work, perform, and mix with recording engineers, faculty, and other young musicians as part of the first-ever Banff Indie Band Residency. The bands chosen by faculty and directors for this first-ever program were selected based on recent recordings, professional and performing experience, and planned goals for the two-week residency. Each band will have a dedicated rehearsal space and production support to assist in the creation of new material, and will have four full days in the Telus recording studios with full audio technical support. The studio sessions will be under the guidance of faculty producers including Tony Berg, Howard Bilerman, Josh Dolgin, and Shawn Everett, and will have one full day of mixing in the studio.

 

 

"The Indie scene in Canada is one of remarkable creativity and growth. The Banff Centre has a long history as a place of leadership in the support of new creative work in various genres. The three bands invited to this residency join a rich community of artists at the Centre, and I look forward to seeing these three bands and celebrated faculty contribute to an ever richer campus experience."
— Barry Shiffman, Director of Music Programs

 

The Shows

Each of the three participating bands will have opportunities to perform on and off campus, and will be recorded and broadcast on CBC Radio Two. There are two showcase performances scheduled for Wild Bill’s Saloon in Banff.

Sunday, March 2 — Sunday, March 9

Broadcast on:
cbc radio 2


The Bands

Ohbijou

Ohibijou
Band Website

Ohbijou is a seven-member group based in Toronto with one EP, Zips and Zings, and one album, Swift Feet for Troubling Times already released. They have toured across Canada, have recorded with CBC 3, and have a third album in the works for release this fall. Guested on CBC’s Fuse and Q, they were nominated as Galaxie Rising Stars, and were described by Chart magazine as “a pile of instruments and a chunk of talent.”

 

The Adam Brown

The Adam Brown
Band Website

Montreal’s Adam Brown, Shawn Petsche, Matthew Foster, and Marc-Andé Grondin make up The Adam Brown. With one album and one EP, they have a third recording, Lightnin’ Lightnin’ planned for this year. Winners of the award for most promising local songwriters at the 2006 Montreal Independent Music Initiative Awards, The Adam Brown has contributed multiple songs to the soundtracks of the film C.R.A.Z.Y. and the television show Naked Josh.

 

Gigi

Gigi
Band Website

Based in Vancouver, the music collective Gigi has never performed live, but is self-described as “an ambitious experiment in the creation of pop music.” Made up of producer and engineer Colin Stewart, singer/songwriter Nick Krgovich, and more than 15 singers and musicians playing instruments including pianos, organs, bassoons, drums, electric guitars, and cellos, Gigi has recorded a series of throwback tracks that recall the best of Phil Spector, and the early denizens of the Brill Building.


 

“Being avid amateur music historians and fans of albums recorded in isolation (The Band’s Music from Big Pink) and in collaborative settings (Change of Heart’s Smile), we hope that our own band can benefit from similar environments,” The Adam Brown’s Shawn Petsche says about the residency. “Whether this creative environment vastly affects our creative process and output or not, we’re sure that the experience will seep its way into our own reflective rock n’ roll.”
— Shawn Petsche, The Adam Brown

 

The Faculty

Tony Berg

A former sessional guitarist who has played with countless musicians including Tom Waits, the Neville Brothers, and Morris Day, Los Angeles-based producer Tony Berg has produced albums for Aimee Mann, Squeeze, X, Public Image Ltd., and The Replacements, among others, and as an executive for Geffen Records, signed musicians including Beck and Remy Zero. With his own imprint at Columbia Records, for the past five years, Berg has produced albums by Jakob Dylan, Pete Yorn, Bruce Hornsby, and Phantom Planet.

Howard Bilerman

A Grammy-nominated musician and producer, Howard Bilerman is co-owner and head engineer of the hotel2tango recording studio in Montreal. At the centre of Montreal’s independent music scene, Bilerman has recorded music for bands including The Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Dears, Vic Chesnutt, and Jordy Rosen, which he co-produced with Rufus Wainwright.

Josh Dolgin

A musician and songwriter whose intricately crafted Yiddish rap albums are recorded under the name Socalled, Josh Dolgin has appeared on more than a dozen recordings as a pianist, singer, arranger, rapper, writer, and producer. He has collaborated with David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness!, Toronto’s Beyond the Pale, the band Shtreiml in Montreal, and with Los Angeles-based The Aleph Project. As Socalled, he performs and records with artists including Killah Priest, Susan Hoffman-Watts, Frank London, and Irving Fields.

Shawn Everett

An alumni of The Banff Centre’s audio program, Shawn Everett has been working in Los Angeles with producer Tony Berg, on his imprint with Columbia Records.

 

 

“The Banff Centre is this little artistic paradise tucked away in the Rockies. “I’m thrilled to be involved in this pilot project – it’s so rare that bands get to focus on their music, and music alone, without the metropolitan distractions of daily life. I look forward to being involved in this intensive creative process with them.”
— producer Howard Bilerman

 

Media Information

Media release

High resolution downloadable photos


The Banff Indie Band Residency is supported by:


    SOCAN


Wild Bill's Saloon