Veda Hille

Veda Hille is a Vancouver musician, composer, theatre maker, and performer. She writes songs, makes records, co-writes musicals, collaborates in devised theatre, and fulfills other interesting assignments as they arise. Veda performs in a wide of array of places, alone or with bands, ensembles, symphonies, and casts. Her career spans 30 years of working in Canada and abroad, and shows no sign of flagging.

Veda spent a few formative years in music school and art school in Vancouver, laying the groundwork for a pretty elusive sense of genre. Her first album, an independent cassette, came out in 1991. She spent the rest of that decade working primarily as a recording and touring indie art-rock artist, releasing 6 more critically revered albums and travelling extensively in North America, Europe, and the UK. In the 90s she also composed scores and played live with many dance works, as well as beginning to explore forms such as song cycles and more experimental production.

In the early aughts Veda began working in theatre in Vancouver, while still continuing to record and tour. At first she considered theatre to be a side hustle, but soon it became clear that she was spending most of her time in rehearsal halls working on devised theatre, new opera, and contemporary musicals. All that said, Veda’s albums continue to be the core of her practice; she has made more than twenty full length recordings. Some are cast recordings from theatre work, and others are collections of songs written around a theme or a time in her life.

Veda’s work circles around many recurring interests: above all she writes about the natural world, amazement and the unknown, and the intricacies of human relationships. She strives for an ecstatic connection through weird detail, the universe visible through a microscope. All fancy language aside though, Veda Hille chases down the songs that are in her head and does her best to deliver them to the world, beautifully.

Nicholas Krgovich

Nicholas Krgovich (born 1982), also sometimes credited as Nick Krgovich, is a Canadian musician from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is most noted for the 2020 album Philadelphia, a collaboration with Joseph Shabason and Chris Harris which was a longlisted nominee for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize.

Krgovich was active in the early 2000s as a member of the indie pop bands P:ano, Gigi and No Kids, and as a collaborator with Veda Hille, Rose Melberg and Mount Eerie. He released his solo debut album Who Cares? in 2013, and followed up with further solo albums in the 2010s and 2020s. His 2018 album "Ouch" was about his breakup with his first boyfriend, and marked the first time he actively wrote and sang about gay themes in his music.

In 2021 he released This Spring, an album of Hille covers.

Lucien Durey

Lucien Durey (b. 1984) is an artist, writer and singer based in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. His mixed media and performance-based practice engages with found objects, photographs, sounds, and place. Recent exhibitions include …a story in the middle…, School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba; The Pandemic is a Portal, SFU Galleries; Crocodile Tears, Unit 17; Motion & Motive, Susan Hobbs Gallery; TWO ROOMS, Monte Clark Gallery; and Phenomenal Hosts, Neutral Ground. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and an MFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Chloe Kim

Violinist Chloe Kim has performed as soloist and concertmaster in prominent concert venues around the world, sharing the stage with internationally celebrated figures such as Rachel Podger, Masaaki Suzuki, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Richard Egarr. The recipient of the 2020 Mercury-Juilliard Fellowship, the 2016 Early Music America Scholarship, as well as a full-tuition scholarship to The Juilliard School, Chloe was most recently nominated for Canada’s prestigious Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award.

Chloe’s most memorable engagements include a Vivaldi women’s tour led by the inspirational Monica Huggett, as well as two recent trips to France for collaborations with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. In the summer of 2019, Chloe served as concertmaster of Juilliard415 for several sold-out productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in London’s Holland Park and the Royal Opera in the Palace of Versailles.

With her European tour engagements cancelled due to the pandemic, Chloe pivoted to create and direct Victoria’s Music for the Pause series, presented with her beloved West Coast colleagues. Recent highlights include a feature in the CBC’s 30 under 30 and a spotlight in the Juilliard Journal for her achievements. Chloe is looking forward to virtual collaborations with San Francisco’s Voices of Music as well as a concerto debut with the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, and to creating more in Vancouver and Victoria. She is especially indebted to her dear friends Elizabeth Blumenstock, Jeanne Lamon, Christina Mahler, and Heilwig von Königslöw

Julia Chien

Julia Chien currently holds the Principal Timpani position with the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra. Prior to obtaining this position, she held the principal percussion position with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. Some of the ensembles Julia also performs with include the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Turning Point Ensemble, and Continuum Contemporary Ensemble.

An advocate of new music, Julia has participated in the premieres of works including the Four Lands project with Toronto’s Continuum Contemporary Ensemble, as well as the Vancouver premiere of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians as part of the Modulus Festival with Music on Main’s All Star Band. In 2019, Julia was selected as an Emerge Artist for Music on Main’s Emerge on Main: Spotlight on Rising Musicians. She is also a member of Infamy Too! Percussion Duo with Aaron Graham.

Julia earned her Bachelors of Music degree in Percussion Performance at The University of British Columbia (UBC). After spending some time in Toronto studying with Nexus Percussion member, Russell Hartenberger and principal percussionist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, John Rudolph, she continued her master’s degree in Percussion Performance at UBC under the tutelage of Aaron McDonald and Vern Griffiths.