Vancouver New Music launches On Curation Mentorship Project, featuring four emerging Canadian curators
Mentors include Raven Chacon, who recently became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and Western Front curator-at-large Aki Onda
Aki Onda. Photo by Brian Whar
Raven Chacon. Photo by Adam Conte
VANCOUVER NEW MUSIC has announced the artists who will be involved in its On Curation Mentorship Project from 2024-26. The new program is designed to nurture the development of curation work and research in music and sound disciplines.
The project will allow four emerging Canadian curators—Anju Singh, Freya Zinovieff, and Simon Grefiel from Vancouver, plus Terri Hron from Montreal—to develop programming for Vancouver New Music’s 2025-26 season under the guidance of established mentors Raven Chacon, Peter Hatch, Laura Netz, and Aki Onda.
Diné composer, performer, and installation artist Chacon saw VNM present the local premiere of Chacon’s Voiceless Mass in the Pacific Spirit United Church as part of its 50th-anniversary season. The piece—which won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2022, marking the first time the title was awarded to a Native American artist—reclaims space for historically “unsung” voices within the church, and Vancouver’s largest pipe organ was incorporated into the immersive show.
Each of the other mentors brings a unique perspective to the project, as well. Hatch, a B.C.–based composer and music curator, works across a multitude of genres spanning electroacoustics, chamber music, and instrumental theatre; Netz, based in Barcelona, is currently researching new tendencies in sonic-arts curation at the University of the Arts London’s CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) centre; and Japan–born, New York–based curator Onda, who is curator-at-large of Western Front in Vancouver, centres their artistic practice (which often involves site-specific projects) around memories.
Likewise, the mentees are approaching the collaboration with diverse skillsets of their own. Grefiel incorporates sculpture, dance, drawing, found objects, and plant life into his DJ and producing work that focuses on ancient, pre-colonial Southeast Asian and Pacific histories; Zinovieff, who also works across disciplines, is currently completing a PhD examination of the political potential of sound at Simon Fraser University. Sound artist and multi-instrumentalist Singh uses experimental techniques to explore texture; and musician, performer, and multimedia artist Hron works with field recordings, custom videoscores, and ceramic instruments to analyze relationships and belonging.
Over the next two years, the eight artists will collaborate on new ideas as they rethink the foundations of music curation.
They have been paired off into four mentor–mentee partnerships to begin their research: Chacon and Singh, Hatch and Hron, Netz and Zinovieff, and Onda and Grefiel. 
Related Articles
