Formed in 2019, Like the Mind is a new instrumental ensemble led by Meredith Bates made up of six award-winning female musicians from Canada and Sweden. Peggy Lee (cello), Lisa Ullén (piano), Meredith Bates (violin), Lisen Rylander Löve (saxophone), Elisa Thorn (harp), and Emma Augustsson (cello). These women have pursued their careers to achieve excellence and be recognized both within and beyond their respective countries’ borders as raising the bar of artistic innovation and merit. Their accolades are countless and they continue to forge ahead in their fields as artists of absolute integrity and outstanding ability. Born out of the unmistakeable similarities between their musical sensibilities, Like the Mind is dedicated to creating sound works that represent the vast and limitless landscape that both Canada and Sweden share. The drastic vertical decent from mountain peaks to the ocean, the endless plains, and the permafrost of the North. Canada and Sweden share so many visible and tangible geographic elements, not to mention cultural and socioeconomic similarities, that it is inevitable that their musical output shares so much sonically. Improvised creative music is the spontaneous voicing of these cultural ties and represents, in the moment, through the socio-communicative language of sound, everything that we feel together.
Meredith Bates
Meredith Bates is a JUNO Award winning violinist based in Vancouver, B.C. Meredith is a founding member of the celebrated ensembles Pugs and Crows (JUNO Award winner 2013, JUNO Award nominee 2016, Galaxie Rising Star Award winner 2010, Polaris Prize nominee 2016, Western Canadian Music Award winner 2016), Gentle Party (Polaris Prize nominee 2017), ElkHorn, Gran Casa, Peggy Lee’s Echo Painting, Tony Wilson’s Burn Down the Cornfield and Looking Back, and Ford Pier’s Strength of Materials. She has collaborated extensively with some of Canada’s most innovative musicians, including C.R. Avery, Laila Biali, Ayelet Gottlieb, Chris Gestrin, Joshua and Jesse Zubot, Annie Lou, Matt Mayes, David Ward, The Fugitives,
Rodney Decroo, and Buck 65, and has performed alongside such varied musicians as Evan Parker and Rod Stewart, to name a couple. Meredith has toured internationally with Pugs and Crows, Peggy Lee’s Film in Music, Crowman, Annie Lou, and Dyad and has recorded on over 100 albums to date. Currently, Meredith is currently artist in residence at the Western Front in Vancouver and will be attending residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, and Flykingen in Stockholm, Sweden, in January and February, respectively. She continues to be an in demand session musician, performer, and teacher, known for her elegant and virtuosic sound. A talented improvisor and collaborator at heart, she relishes any opportunity to join forces with other likeminded artists. www.meredithbates.com
Lisen Rylander Löve
Lisen Rylander Löve is an internationally acclaimed musician and composer from Sweden that works in the field of jazz, electronic music, and improvisation. Over the years, she has developed a personal sound on the saxophone and by mixing acoustic instruments and voice with live electronics she also creates her own unique soundscapes. Currently, Lisen is doing concerts with her new solo project, she released her first solo album Oceans in April 2019. She is involved in and composes music in a several constellations, for example the jazz quartet The Splendor. During twelve years she was a member of the Swedish electronica/improvisation duo Midaircondo.
Lisen composes music for dance, performance, and theatre and has for example performed with Danskompaniet Spinn, New Opera CO, and Cirkus Cirkör. She has toured worldwide and (in selection) performed at Sónar (ES), Mutek Festival (CL), Vancouver Jazz Festival (CA), Molde Jazzfestival (NO), Xerox Rochester Int. Jazz Festival (USA), SOCO Festival (UY), ROJO Nova (BR), Holland Festival (NL), Domino Festival (BE), Berlin Music Week (DE), Dense Bamako Danse (ML), World Expo 2008 Zaragoza (ES) and in Morocco, Mexico, Italy, France, Portugal, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Romania, Austria and Switzerland.
Peggy Lee
Cellist, improviser, composer Peggy Lee was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She studied classical cello, completing a bachelors degree in performance at the University of Toronto as a student of Vladimir Orloff and Denis Brott. She furthered her studies on the cello with lessons with Martha Gerschefski in Atlanta Georgia. In the fall of 1988 Peggy began a year residency with a string quartet at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. It was here that she first became interested in collaborating with artists from different mediums and in veering away from the classical path. This led to a decision to move away from the known and thus to her relocating to Vancouver, B.C. where she now makes her home.
Peggy’s first forays into improvisation in Vancouver happened with dancers at the EDAM (experimental dance and music) studio at the Western Front and eventually led to her meeting and joining guitarists Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson in their respective bands; as well as becoming a member of the New Orchestra Workshop, which went on to have interesting and fruitful collaborations with Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, René Lussier, Barry Guy and George Lewis.
Peggy continues to collaborate frequently with Ron and Tony and with her husband, drummer Dylan van der Schyff, as well as with many other longtime musical associates including Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille and Lisa Miller. She also leads or co-leads a number of musical projects: The Peggy Lee Band, Film in Music, Waxwing (with Tony Wilson and Jon Bentley) and Beautiful Tool (with Mary Margaret O’Hara).
She has also collaborated extensively in theatre and dance with companies and artists such as Ruby Slippers, Rumble Theatre, Presentation House, David Hudgins, Peter Bingham and Delia Brett.
In 2005, Peggy received the Freddie Stone Award for integrity and innovation in music and in 2010 she was awarded a Jesse Richardson Theatre Award for outstanding composition. http://www.peggylee.net/
Lisa Ullén
For over two decades Lisa Ullén is one of Sweden’s most influential pianists in contemporary music, and a regular on the free- jazz and improvisational scene. Internationally recognized as a distinctive and uncompromising composer and musician. She has toured in Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan. On the strength of her 2018 triple CD of solo piano recordings, Piano Works, and the vinyl EP Sekvenser och Lager by Motståndsorkestern (the Resistance Orchestra) which contains Ulan’s compositions for a bigger band, she received the prestigious prize Composer of the year by Swedish Radio 2018. Piano Works was shortlisted as one of the best solo albums in New York City Jazz record , and won the prize for Best Jazz Album of the Year at Manifest Galan 2019. www.lisaullen.com
Emma Augustsson
Emma Augustsson is a cellist, singer and composer from Hedared, outside Gothenburg in Sweden. Her sound touches on classical, jazz, folk and world music, while her collaborative spirit includes interdisciplinary work in contemporary dance, theatre and visual arts.
Studied at the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg and a Master in NAIP at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Active composer and improviser focusing on experimental music in several genres. She has done collaborations with, among others, the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, Gothenburg Dramatic Theater, Atalante, Swedish National Radio and Magasin III,
toured internationally with several different ensembles and participated on many discs in a wide
range of terms. Now she is working on a performance with modern acrobatics for young adults where she compose music together with two colleges and also participate in a scenic way.
She is a regular member of the duo SWOTE who plays improvisation music, the jazz band Isabells Sekt, the jazz trio Lille Ildmaskine (Little Fire Machine in Danish), the free improvisation duo with the name Vattenverk and Harald Svensson’s 10-man ensemble. Has been running the record company Augusta Musik for a couple of years, which includes released theatrical music on cassette and Boulevarder by Glas’s debut album, where she wrote, performed and produced the music.
Elisa Thorn
Since graduating from the UBC School of Music in 2011, Elisa Thorn has become a much sought after addition to the Canadian creative music scene, known for her skilled use of extended techniques, electronic effects, and unconventional uses of harp. With the generous support of the British Columbia Arts Council she has studied composition with Dr. Lisa Cay Miller, music technology with Scott Morgan, and attended the International Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music at the Banff Center.
Her values in community have led her towards work as a curator and presenter, and much like her artistic musical inquires as a music creator, her inquisitions as a presenter focuses on how to create accessibility of challenging and/or abstract art through intentional methods of presentation. She ran an experimental interdisciplinary concert series called Sound(e)scape from 2013-14, co-curates a bi-annual mixtape called Bitch Tapes that features womxn-identifying artists, and has been running an outdoor house concert series called Woodland Patio Series since 2014.