The Grad Club Live Sessions: Presents ZOON

The Grad Club Live Sessions: Presents ZOON - live from The Grad Club . Presented by Team Ambrose - Royal LePage ProAlliance and Kingston Arts Council

The Grad Club Live Sessions brings some of our favourite artists back to the Grad Club for a set and a conversation with CFRC radio's Cyndy Gibson

Together with filmmaker Max Montalvo of Gabana Films, the Grad Club is adapting our cultural space to meet the online world. Since The Grad Club has always been a home for artists and creatives, we've decided the best way would be to do some filmed and produced Live Sessions.

In this session, we’re featuring ZOON who just recently a short listed Polaris Award Nominee. "Cue collaborating with Polaris Music Prize inaugural winner Owen Pallett to compose sweeping string arrangements, then performed by the FAMES Orchestra. Grammy nominated Michael Peter Olsen who is a regular in Zoon’s live band, played on the new record as did Zoon’s drummer Andrew McLeod/Sunnsetter who additionally sings on Bekka Ma’iingan’s premiere single, “A Language Disappears”.  Grammy Award winning Mark Lawson mixed the album, and in a burst of creative collaboration, after meeting in Montreal, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo played on album track “Niizh Manidoowig (2 Spirit) Zoon created Bleached Wavves  with extremely limited, often broken gear. They worked through frustrating, lengthy delays and yet managed to reverse engineer a masterpiece of a debut. With sophomore album,  Bekka Ma’iingan  (Bay-ka Mo-Een-Gan) a broad spectrum of possibilities, lush orchestration, resources, collaborators and friends all supported the process. Bleached Wavves provoked us to face many difficult questions and reckon with a deeply uncomfortable and painful history. Bekka Ma’iingan continues to explore their Indigenous and life experience, and while still clutching to the unresolved, it moves us more softly and sweepingly towards acceptance" Paper Bag Records

A huge thank you to Max Montvalvo, Cyndy Gibosn, Kingston Soundworks and (of course) ZOON for making this happen. If you’re a local artist, reach out to us about live sessions at [email protected].

The Grad Club Live Sessions are presented by Team Ambrose - Royal LePage ProAlliance and Kingston Arts Council. We're so thankful for their support so that we can ensure artists, editors, and producers are properly paid for their hard work on this project.