Haunting the periphery of the Canadian music and media art scene, Toronto-based singer, composer and video artist Laurel MacDonald has released several critically acclaimed CDs, each produced by her creative partner Philip Strong. This body of work features Strong’s distinctive sonic signature and MacDonald’s otherworldly vocals. Their music has been heard in countless film, television, theatre and dance productions, one of which earned them a Gemini Award in 2003.
In 2008 MacDonald introduced her solo performance project Videovoce, integrating her voice with electronics and video. With Strong at the sound design helm, she has taken this project to the Summerworks, Art School (Dismissed) and SOUNDplay festivals in Toronto, and to MUTEK in Montreal.
She premiered her video/sound installation XXIX as part of the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche festival at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in October 2010, where it received the Scotiabank People’s Choice Award in the Open Call category.
In 2011, XXIX and MacDonald’s experimental film Sequential Duet have screened at film festivals in five countries. The interactive tablet-based app and video installation Alone Together, created by MacDonald and Shawn Kerwin during a residency at Canadian Film Centre Media Lab, premiered at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in October 2011.
In 2012 MacDonald created the programmed choreography [Arc]hitecture for the kinetic Windscape installation at Luminato festival in Toronto, and performed as Videovoce at Factory Media Arts Centre in Hamilton, the SOUNDplay festival in Toronto, and at Sound Symposium XVI in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
MacDonald also sings with the Toronto-based ensemble Darbazi, which specializes in the polyphonic vocal music of the republic of Georgia. In 2012 Darbazi performed at Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, in the Toronto Botanical Garden world music concert series, and with Aradia Ensemble at Glenn Gould Studio, and they recently returned from performing at the International Symposium for Traditional Polyphony in Tbilisi, Georgia.
