|
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay Tremblay founded the [iks] modern jazz ensemble in 1996. In addition to being composer, artistic director, leader and bass player for the band, he composes and plays with other artists of various musical genres and writes electroacoustic and mixed music. He spends most of his spare time (sic) reading, doing art photo or with his family. Founder of the collective no-tv, he doesn't own a working television set.
While he started exploring classical guitar at the age of eight, Pierre Alexandre discovered bass guitar in high school. He studied and jazz under Michel Donato and musical composition with Michel Tétreault, Marcelle Deschnes and Jonty Harrison. He was awarded a ph.d. in composition in 2005 and teaches composition at University of Huddersfield, in England.
Stefan Schneider joined [iks] in January 2002 as percussionist and drummer. He also performs and composes for other groups, including funk group Parkside Jones, the Bell Orchestre modern dance troupe, and the Montreal Puppet Project's production The Memory Tree.
Born in Ottawa, Stefan began studying drums and percussion at age 12. After high school, he explored World Percussion with Glen Velez and Trichy Sankaran at a workshop at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He went on to earn his B.A. in jazz performance and composition at McGill University in Montreal.
One of the original members of [iks], Sylvain Pohu explores the fascinating world of modern jazz while developing the expressive wealth of electroacoustic composition. Concurrently, he composes music for cinema and art videos and heads up his own jazz ensemble.
Introduced to the organ at the age of seven, he went on to study classical guitar with Luc Lévesque while exploring tuba and popular guitar on his own. He is a founding member of the punk group Men'O'Steel and the hard-funk group Secret Picnic Spot.
Nicolas Boucher joined [iks] in 1998. Aside from playing piano for the group, he is credited with one of the band's more significant aesthetic turns by introducing a sampler as an electroacoustic instrument.
Nicolas began studying piano at the age of 12 and pursued his classical training at CEGEP, where he was introduced to jazz. While studying composition at Université de Montréal under Marcelle Deschênes, in 1995 he founded an electroacoustic improvisation ensemble, Les Impromptistes. Interested in independent film and video, he is the vice-president of a communications firm.
Introduced to the piano and the classical repertoire in his first years, Sébastien Arcand-Tourigny choses the saxophone at the age of eleven. He takes on classical and jazz interpretation studies while devoting time to electroacoustic and instrumental composition, in private lessons and later at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent and the Université de Montréal. His teachers are Frank Lozano, René Masino, Marcelle Deschnes and Rémi Bolduc. Throughout his studies, Arcand-Tourigny is also co-leader of Secret Picnic Spot and Facteur-X.
Saxophonist for [iks] from its beginnings until 1998, Sébastien reunites with the ensemble in 2004. He has also taken on University studies in fundamental mathematics, practices yoga and is fascinated above all by the development of the human being in his physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects.