Robyn Jacob & Architek Percussion: New Forevers

Robyn Jacob & Architek Percussion: New Forevers + Immix Wednesday, May 5th, 2027 St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, 1121 14th Ave SW 7:00 PM | Doors 6:30PM $45 | $30 | $20 We use a tiered ticketing system so buyers can decide what level of investment aligns with their financial situation. Please select the pricing option that aligns best with what you're able to contribute, no questions asked. For this performance we bring together West Coast composer, pianist, singer, and educator Robyn Jacob (unceded Coast Salish Territories) alongside Architek Percussion (Montréal) to present live performances of a selection of works from Robyn's recent album New Forevers (Redshift Music, August 2026). Robyn’s multifaceted practice as both composer and performer exemplifies a growing movement of creators working across forms, genres, and approaches within underground and experimental music communities across Canada and internationally. Having spent years honing her compositional craft as the leader of the acclaimed avant-pop quintet Only A Visitor, alongside other adventurous activities such as co-leading Gamelan Bike Bike (a Balinese-informed gamelan group that harvested the raw materials for its instruments from the scrap metal bins of Vancouver), New Forevers is her first long-playing release as a composer for chamber ensemble. We’re thrilled to welcome the radically innovative Architek Percussion, an ensemble that has commissioned and/or premiered over 50 works by composers from Canada, France, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxumbourg, Norway, Sweden, USA, and the UK, to present the album in its entirety alongside a few special guests from the local Calgary music scene. The lineup will also feature the world premiere of a new percussion piece that New Works Calgary commissioned from Robyn in 2026*. Robyn will open the evening with her solo voice and electronics project, Immix. *with support from the Quenten Doolittle Commissioning Fund, and SOCAN Foundation. More about New Forevers Composer, pianist, singer, and educator Robyn Jacob exemplifies the sort of hungry curiosity that has come to characterize underground and exploratory music-making within the past decade. Based in the unceded territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations (Vancouver), she has toured Canada and internationally with her avant-pop quintet Only A Visitor, whose 2023 album Decay appeared on the stalwart indie label Mint Records (Neko Case, Cub, Tough Age, Kiwi Jr.). From 2013-2025 she also co-led Gamelan Bike Bike, a Balinese-informed gamelan group that harvested the raw materials for its instruments from the scrap metal bins of Vancouver. Her newly-released album New Forevers (Redshift Music August 2026) documents yet another facet of her output: composition for chamber forces. Percussion instruments are the emphasis with Architek Percussion acting as the core lineup with appearances from Grammy winners Sō Percussion, SHHH!!! Ensemble, and additional guest performers. Jacob’s environmentalism exerts itself in various ways on all but one of the pieces in this collection. Her outlook on this sort of activism is unique, though, veering sharply away from more familiar doom-laden narratives, instead endeavouring to elicit what she terms a ‘productive tension,’ where the weight of the emergency doesn’t obscure the potential for solutions. text by Nick Storring Robyn Jacob is a composer, pianist, vocalist and educator living and working from the unceded territories of the Sḵwxwú7mesh, Xwməθkwəyəm and Səl’il’wətaʔ Nations, also known as Vancouver. She has completed commissions for ensembles such as Grammy winning Third Coast Percussion (Chicago), Architek Percussion (Montreal), Grammy winning Sō Percussion (Brooklyn), Chor Leoni (Vancouver), and the Victoria Symphony, and has collaborated with visual artists, instrument makers, dance and theatre. Her debut record of concert music New Forevers was released in 2026 on Redshift Records. Her avant-pop project Only A Visitor (Mint Records) has toured internationally and released four albums to date. She has released two albums with her duo project The Giving Shapes in collaboration with harpist Elisa Thorn. Her new solo project Immix explores the vocoder as its own instrument, digging into the emotive narratives of voice and electronics to find an emergent vocabulary hidden within the glitch and grain of synthesized voice. From 2012 - 2024 she was part of the multi-disciplinary art collective Publik Secrets, whose work included a variety of public space interventions, performances, installations and ephemeral gatherings, including Gamelan Bike Bike, which she co-led with artist and composer George Rahi for over ten years. Robyn is currently one of the members of the Five Blessings Collective, whose work celebrates the complexities found within stories and traditions from the Chinese diaspora through songs, audio plays, film and staged works. Immix’s songs ricochet within the bounds of limited tools to expand the possibilities in the combination of natural and synthesized voice. With a sound world that embraces the magnetism of bodies, the emotions of late-capitalist hearts, and the dreams of ghosts and angels, Immix’s songs dance between vulnerability and an emergent vocabulary that plays with glitch and grain. The Montreal-based quartet ARCHITEK PERCUSSION creates musical experiences that entertain, captivate, and challenge audiences, often simultaneously. Founded in 2012 by graduates of McGill University, Architek quickly established itself as equally comfortable in performing classic repertoire and exploring new terrain through commissions and premieres. Architek regularly performs in Montreal, having partnered with Codes d’Acces, Innovations en Concert, Le Vivier, Suoni per Il Popolo, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). In addition, the quartet has performed extensively in the context of the Montreal Arts Council’s CAM En Tournée program, which presents free, accessible arts programming in the city’s 19 boroughs and 15 on-island suburbs. Architek has toured across Canada multiple times, concertizing and providing outreach activities in conjunction with New Music Edmonton, the Winnipeg New Music Festival, The Cluster Festival of Music and Integrated Art (Winnipeg), Jeunesses Musicales Canada, Debut Atlantic, The University of Toronto New Music Festival, The Music Gallery (Toronto), and the Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax). In 2021, Architek partnered with Suoni Per Il Popolo to present the inaugural UnDrum Festival, a multi-day event showcasing artists dedicated to pushing the frontiers of drum set performance. Architek has commissioned and/or premiered over 50 works by composers from Canada, France, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, USA, and the UK. Architek’s diverse repertoire is presented in a manner inspired by the quartet’s belief that given proper context, every audience member should feel welcomed and included through the performance of contemporary art music.