Lukas Pearse has received resounding critical acclaim for many of his works and performances:

“The groove sustained a feeling of motion even when the decks were cleared for a soloist like Lukas Pearse to open up his big bass sound right down to the sub-basement of his extended low register.”
“As performance art and musical/ electronic wizardry, Pearse’s Temporal Follies is amazingly imaginative — brilliant even.”
“The sound down there is almost not heard as a pitch. But no matter, considering that Pearse was scrubbing his bow across, down and in a circular polishing motion, enveloping the stage in grinding overtones which felt like they could polish the grit off your back teeth, and sounded as huge as the rest of the band put together.”
“…buoyed by an enormous sound coming from Lukas Pearse’s double bass, astonishing in its power and richness. The sound enveloped the ensemble in a huge bear hug.”
“Pearse’s contribution, called Dissociation, a musical exploration of the psychological phenomenon of withdrawal, alternated organized harmonic-melodic passages with stretches of chaotic disintegration to represent the descent of the mind into its own world.”
 

Press: Upstream Jazz Orchestra directed by Graham Collier

By Stephen Pedersen, from the Halifax Chronicle Herald

How do Halifax’s jazz musicians do it? Opportunities are few. Occasions to rise above ordinary excellence even fewer. Yet 14 local players drawn together as the Upstream Jazz Orchestra came up Sunday night with one of the hottest jazz bands ever to hit the Dunn stage.

Big bands offer the most exciting possibilities in the business for firing up the blood. And British jazz composer, band leader and writer Graham Collier made more of those possibilities than any of us in the packed auditorium thought possible. Read More

Press: Upstream unleashed fireworks

By STEPHEN PEDERSEN | Concert Review | Halifax Chronicle Herald

A Love Upstream Nonet’s opening concert of the 20th anniversary concert weekend at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery Friday night blew our minds as it blasted our ears.

High energy and amplified instrumental fireworks attained hurricane strength in first whipping up small, localized, perfect storms of musical imagery and then fusing them together in explosive episodes of massive musical mayhem. Read More

Press: Jackson burns up stage as Vonda

By STEPHEN PEDERSEN | Concert Review | Halifax Chronicle Herald

Vonda de Ville in Temporal Follies is something of a tour de force. As a vehicle for the flam boyant virtuosity of soprano Janice Jackson it is rich in imaginative possibility, and Jackson makes a full-deal meal of it in the 40- minute opera that opened Wednesday in the Bus Stop Theatre and plays through Sunday at 8 p.m. every night.

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