Kelsie is delighted to be writing regularly for S+N! When not applying fingers to typewriters, she can be found teaching dance and yoga, collaborating with iDance Edmonton and attempting choreograph her cats in elaborate musical theatre numbers.
Bio for S. A. Bjørn: an Objective Investigation of Subjectivity by S. A. Bjørn
Born in small-town-Alberta, S. A. Bjørn currently lives in Victoria, BC. He holds a degree in humanities from the University of Victoria and a doctorate in metaphysics (valid only in the United States of America, formerly the greatest nation on earth) through the Universal Life Church. He is an ordained priest in The Church of the Latter-Day Dude and is the only known practitioner of the 16th century religion Dīn-i Ilāhī.
Along with running the The Sound and Noise West Coast Branch, his time is spent composing, producing, and performing music, designing robotic systems for musical application, and generally creating neat stuff. Some may call him an inventor, others a philosopher, but for most it is enough to say that he is.
He can be contacted directly via email: info@sabjorn.net; or through his Twitter feed (which he uses as a continuous notebook): ElliottLANGLEY
Hello All,
I am an animal; more specifically a political animal and have given an inordinate amount of money to the University to be able to call myself just that. At eleven years old my parents took me to France and Germany. When asked what I wanted to do on our trip, I replied “I want to touch a bullet hole along La Ligne Maginot and I want to eat black forest cake in the Black Forest.” Since then I have lived in Mexico, volunteered my way through Central America, and toured France with my French-Canadian dance troupe never ceasing to be amazed by other cultures and communities. I am arts oriented and am strongly affected by sound i.e. when I watch a scary movie I’ll always plug my ears instead of closing my eyes. I am new to Sound and Noise and can’t wait to get sh*t done!
Carol Cheung
Carol hails from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, enjoying music preferably in a live format, reading borrowed books from the library, writing her family history, sketching/painting her life’s journey, snapping quirky photos, generating ideas until she can’t sleep at night, sleeping in from the over-generation of ideas, and dreaming up creative ways of looking at the world.
Lana Cuthbertson
Lana Cuthbertson grew up in Edmonton and did a Bachelor of Arts in English and Music at the University of Alberta. She did a semester abroad in Cortona, Italy in 2008, and volunteered in an Israeli children’s hospital in the summer of 2009. She worked at the Edmonton Journal as a reporter, at the U of A Students’ Union as Student Group Services Manager and at Volunteer Alberta as a project coordinator. She did a masters degree in journalism at Carleton University, where she explored urban development and sustainability in a radio documentary format for her major research project. She loves to travel, sing in choirs and brag about Edmonton.
Michael Doyle
Lapsed Catholic, ex-punk, and former poet. Currently recording folk-industrial music in Edmonton and writing non-fiction on music-theatre-arts. Researching and reviewing site specific art, the kind of album that grows on you, and the Wunderbar. If it reads like a riddle, it’s well written.
K. Trent Hamwater is an undergraduate student of film and music at the University of Alberta, occasional performance artist, music fan and trucker. He is in possession of a lap top, a camera and wifi connection.
Born in the shadow of three hills and left to incubate for days, he emerged with a taste for loud guitars, buzzing synths and a vendetta against things that suck.
Hello there! I am currently finishing up my Arts Degree from the U of A with a psychology major and sociology minor. This is my first semester with Sound + Noise and I couldnʼt be more excited for the opportunity. I have an avid passion for music that extends into a love for playing the guitar.
My name is Holly Pickering and I’m currently doing my BA in Linguistics and Scandinavian Language and Literature here at the U of A. I come to Sound and Noise not as a writer but as a photographer, having been involved in photography for 8 or 9 years now. Although my major is in Linguistics, I plan to turn a 180 and go into Cultural and Media studies for my graduate work. In my future research and work I hope to bring many of my various interests together, such as Ethnomusicology, Sociology, Film Studies, Systems Theory, Synesthesia, Critical Pedagogy, Open Source Culture and of course Cultural and Media Studies, amongst others, in order to both understand how to educate and to actually educate undergraduate students in 21st century media literacy. I believe that Sound and Noise is a great platform for students to critically engage with media, especially locally, thus why I’m so interested and happy to be part of the team!
I’m a musician with a Bachelor of Music in flute performance. I have also studied classical theory and pop music. I bike to work at the Edmonton Symphony Society whenever it is not -25, which is when I get to listen to lots of music at a traffic-friendly volume. MaryGrace is currently working on a novel – an erotic thriller which will be self-published in fall, 2013.
David Letersky
David Letersky was born in Edmonton, where he grew up to eventually attend the University of Alberta, completing a Bachelor of Arts in English in 2010. Since then he has devoted his time to music, playing guitar and keyboards as part of local band Ghost Cousin. David has a keen interest in experimental and ambient music, and is a strong proponent of Edmonton’s music scene. In volunteering with Sound + Noise he hopes to help support Edmonton artists both in the city and abroad and to ensure that Edmonton continues to establish itself as an influential and innovative producer of art.
My name is Sam, and I am an undergraduate Film Studies and Music student at the UofA. This coming year will mark my 3rd with Sound + Noise as a writer and 1st as an Editor. As a member of S+N’s editorial staff, I will oversee a special cross-section of my own particular interests in music journalism: album reviews, concept pieces, cultural essays, and various inter-generic catalogue-atry. Personally, I tend to gravitate towards alternative pop and noise pop, downtempo electro, singer-songwriter rhetoric, and poetic hip hop. As well as being a local musician myself, I co-host a show on CJSR 88.5 FM called The Lyricists’ Lounge which specializes in underground and alternative hip-hop.
I am fascinated by the psychology of choice and the growing disparity between popular music or “Top 40” music, and the so-called “underground.” There has hardly been a time in which one’s music taste can generate polarity and taxonomical assignment to such a degree as we observe today. If one admits to spending most of their time listening to Kanye West, or Bad Brains, or Dan Mangan, or Captain Beefheart, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or T-Pain, they’ve just touched a stereotypical hotkey that affects the way in which they are perceived by others. I am constantly exploring differences between the music of those who spend their time at Oil City Roadhouse, wrapped in latex and clubsweat, and those that spend time at in a snowy cabin, rapt in the gnarled hollows of induced psychosis.
Hey everyone!I am a graduate of the University of Alberta School of Business, with a major in Marketing. This is my second year being involved with Sound + Noise – I’ve spent time as a writer covering Edmonton’s theatre scene, and am now involved with co-ordinating promotion of Sound + Noise. Theatre is one of the main loves of my life, stemming from its exploration of complex emotions and situations. In particular, I adore musical theatre – I love how the combination of singing and acting which can bring together audiences of a wide variety of ages, tastes, and experiences. I believe that Edmonton’s theatre scene is incredibly advanced for the size of our city, and hope to contribute it through critical engagement of pieces that are performed in Edmonton, particularly those performed by Edmontonians.
Tom Merklinger was born in a farm house in Saskatchewan to German hermits and was subsequently raised by a single wild bison named Shamrock. Later on he became a student at the University of Alberta. He is there still, a student of music composition, film studies, and critical engagement with culture.
Tom is the son of two immigrant jazz saxophone-player botanists, and so he loves all music and the Galapagos Islands. Tom grew up in a paper shack under the musty docks of Port Hawkesbury, subsisting upon only gravel and mono Phil Spector singles. Recently Tom’s tastes have become focused on the Soul Jazz Studio One dub reissues his roommate bought, the Fela Kuti box-set, Talking Heads, Afro-Cuban music, and Animal Collective. Also, recently Tom has been watching a lot of terrible film noirs from the 50s.
Hey there, S+N readers! I’m entering my first year at the U of A (in General Arts, for now), and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be joining the Sound and Noise team. I’m an aspiring actress/writer, with about a dozen local credits to my name, as well as an award-winning original one act which I wrote and directed last year. I’m a terrible dancer, a slurpee addict and, oddly enough, a second-degree black belt in Taekwon-do. Look for me in upcoming productions at the University and the Citadel Theatre. And keep an eye out for my reviews/interviews/ramblings here at Sound and Noise!
Hi there! I am in my final year at the U of A as a psychology/sociology double major. I have been with Sound + Noise since February 2010 and, though I have covered some musical events, my main interest is theatre. I was part of a theatre program during my high school years and since then I have been passionate about live performances. I truly enjoy the level of involvement that can be achieved through theatre that I cannot get from other stories represented in books or movies (though I enjoy them both too). I like seeing the same plays over and over and analyze the differences between performances, as well as the dialogues in the scripts, how the story flows, the convincing or unconvincing acting and, above all, how much I can get involved in the play (for me, a good play is one that makes you forget that what you are watching is nothing but play pretend). I enjoy the unique position that the audience gets to experience as they watch the story unfold, almost like a God with no agency that often knows where the character’s fate will lead him, but unable to do anything about it.
Speechie-Chorister-Choir Girl Blogger
I’m an avid chorister within the local choral community and I sing with Pro Coro Canada. In addition to my contributions here on the Sound and Noise, I blog about my choral musings on The Choir Girl Blog. I’m often found geeking out over vowel formants and pitch harmonics on acoustic software, reading scientific journals on voice therapy, and monitoring my Twitter feed.
I’m a Sociology student at the University of Alberta and student editor at Sound and Noise. At school I specialize in gender studies and social inequality, and I always aim to bring that perspective to Sound + Noise. In my free time you can find me running, angrily deconstructing pop culture and/or secretly dancing to the Beatles and the Boss in the privacy of my home.
Hello! I am a composition graduate from the Grant MacEwan music program and a current U of A student of music. I love to listen to music, write about music, and make music. I have an odd fascination with glittery things. I am a yoga teacher, an Antonio Carlos Jobim enthusiast and a curl-up-on-the-couch-with-a-book-and-cup-of-tea kind of gal. I am a writer and tweeter for Sound + Noise.
Hey readers! I am a third year student studying anthropology at the University of Alberta. I am a contributor and act as event coordinator for Sound and Noise. As I lack talent or knowledge for theatre or dramatic productions, I like the reviewing and commentating aspect on music and culture more. I have an admiration and love for art and pop culture, ethnographic work as well as a broad taste in music — Seriously, I love everything from Peter Gabriel to George Strait to Jack Johnson to Death Cab and beyond! I hope to incorporate all of these elements together into one big whimsical package for Sound and Noise.
Mark Wilkinson
Mark Wilkinson is a performing artist, opera student, and vegan athlete–known to his friends and colleagues as a sociable introvert with a sharp wit, Jim Carrey-esque face, and polyglot tongue. Formerly one of the top junior tennis players in Ontario, he continues to find joy in athletics and outdoor adventures. He is dedicated to health promotion, fighting for human rights, and sharing his experiences as a proudly bilingual Canadian. Having won national awards for both his writing and his poetry, he contributes to Sound + Noise while managing the “Canada in Song” blog and the “UAlberta in Song” Facebook page. As an artist, his influences include: Stephen Varcoe, Gérard Souzay, Diana Krall, Jeffrey Buttle, Mat Kearney, Kenny Chesney, Judy Kuhn, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and anyone who dances for a living. His favourite song is “Just Breathe” by Pearl Jam; his favourite symphony is Mahler’s Fifth; his favourite band is The Tragically Hip; and his favourite musical is Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion.” He lives and breathes for his family, his friends, random acts of kindness, and making others smile.
I have recently become a University of Alberta Alumni, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Music and a minor in Sociology in 2011. Having one of my profs in my third year push me into writing for Sound + Noise has probably been one of the best things for my musical education. I’ve been a lover of music since the age of seven when I first heard No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, but I still feel like my musical education is beginning. Live music has become a passion of mine since my early years in high school, but in the last few years a couple of Canadian folk festivals have stolen my heart away, and I am enjoying it way too much.
Hey readers! My name is Olivia, but you can call me Liv. I am currently in my fourth year of studying German and Linguistics at the U of A. On my way through my degree, I’ve developed a deep love of languages, cultural studies, and discourse analysis, so you will most likely read the odd cultural studies article or social discourse commentary from me! I am also an avid lover of many types of music, with hip hop being my preference. You’ll hopefully see me around interviewing musical artists of many walks of life, writing album reviews, and attending the odd symphony or opera performance. This is my first year writing for Sound + Noise and I’m very excited to be here!
Join Us
Interested in joining Sound + Noise? Drop us a line at jenna.soundandnoise@gmail.com telling us about yourself!
