Luke Dawson

For his residency at the CEM, Luke Dawson proposes to form a band, with all that this implies in terms of collective choice of name, sound and visual identity, and performance logistics. It's about making this band really exist, as if it could go on tour the next day, and on the momentum of an album marketed as it should be. This band will offer a form of musical theater revisited, centered on staging through song, and guided by the real and local experience of the people involved. Also, it will be a question of working via sound and visual recording from the beginning of the writing process, upstream but also in synchronicity with the composition on score, the lead-sheets and the improvisation. The concert of this new group will be a complex and multiple experience, based on the simplicity of the forms but on an aesthetic enriched by the interpretation and the unique voice of each member, and where improvisation acts as a moving filter on perception. of the listener.

  • Luke Dawson
    • Bass
    • Double bass
    • Composition
  • Isabeau Valois
    • Voice
  • Jean-Simon Boulianne
    • Trombone
    • Voice
  • Thomas Dakin-Perron
    • Guitares
  • Sébastien Delorme
    • Guitares
  • Sheenah Ko
    • Keyboards
    • Synthesizer
  • Émile Boucher-Cloutier
    • Percussion
  • Mathieu Létourneau
    • Drums

LUKE DAWSON (Québec, 1980) works as a composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist and organizer in popular and experimental music circles. He is currently completing a master's degree in composition at Laval University with Professor Aaron Liu-Rosenbaum, which brings him back to writing for chamber music that has been neglected for several years.

At the same time, he remains close to his favorite tool of expression: the band. Communal, variable, multiple and unpredictable, the groups he is part of range from folk and pop (Les Chercheurs d’or, Pied Léger, Alexandra Lost) to metal (Saints Martyrs, Crackgate) and the unequaled magic of improvisation ensembles (Le GGRIL, L’EMIQ, Land of Kush, Lieues). He has played more than a thousand concerts across Quebec, Canada, Europe and the United States, while appearing on some twenty albums distributed. Among his influences we can certainly detect No Means No, Charles Ives, The Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman) or even Gordon Lightfoot.

Since 2021, Luke Dawson has acted as general manager of the Festival Off d'été, where he promotes the dissemination of new, innovative and marginal productions in downtown Quebec City.