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Susanna Hood – voice & dance
Tania Gill – piano
Kayla Milmine – soprano saxophone
Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal-based bandleader and vocalist-dancer, Susanna Hood, along with the superb Tkaronto/Toronto-based musicians, Tania Gill (piano) and Kayla Milmine (soprano saxophone) have been working together since 2022 to develop a growing repertoire of songs by the great American jazz composer and soprano saxophonist, Steve Lacy.
Their first performance and recording project, unPacked brought poet, Judith Malina and composer, Steve Lacy’s 1995 “Packet” suite to life through sound and movement. These audacious new arrangements blur the lines between what is heard and what is seen. At the heart of the suite, a provocation: the emotional, embodied, unfettered female voice. Heart-felt, yet unsentimental, these eight songs hold no punches as they bring voice to a woman’s later life, grappling with imperfection, sexism, paradox, grit, beauty, regret, invisibility, death and love.
unPacked has been presented at the Suonil per il Popolo Festival, Montreal; the Something Else! Festival, Hamilton; and the Guelph Jazz Festival. In the fall of 2025, supported by Productions SuperMusique, the trio played unPacked in a small tour to three Maisons de la Culture on the island of Montréal as part of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal’s CAM en Tournée program.
In March 2024 the trio released their first album: unPacked – words by Judith Malina, music by Steve Lacy on the Quebec label Ambiances Magnétique.
Currently the trio is working up Lacy’s suite Rushes – 10 Songs from Russia (1990) setting poetry by Russian poets Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Marina Tsvetayeva. Like Packet, the suite was originally written with/for Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone, Frederic Rzewski on piano, and vocals from Irene Aebi.
What people have to say about unPacked:
“[…] absolutely stunning and warrants the deepest of dives.” — The WholeNote, Canada
“The resulting songs embrace a broad but intense emotional range, inspiring the compelling inventiveness with which this trio develops its own visions.” — Musicworks, Canada
“[…] aussi vitale qu’essentielle […]” – Le Devoir, Canada
“Remarkably, Susanna Hood proves to be impeccable when it comes to interpreting Steve Lacy’s repertoire of magnificent songs. Her voice, expressive and sumptuous […]”
– Montreal drummer, Michel F Côté
“Susanna […] is the best interpreter of Lacy’s vocal music, bar none. unPacked goes further. The performances are astonishing. Those who have not heard the original 1995 Lacy recording, Packet (with Irene Aebi and Frederic Rzewski, New Albion Records), will marvel at the material, the pinnacle of Lacy’s art-song legacy to my ears. Those who know Lacy, however, will notice numerous details and alterations –– some arranged and some improvised –– that make these interpretations distinct and brilliant.
Tania Gill, like Rzewski or –– closer to her approach –– Paul Bley, possesses a signature touch that is endlessly inviting. Her focus on the piano’s middle register lets her animate Lacy’s contrapuntal material with understatedly gorgeous invention and spirit. Kayla Milmine meets the unenviable task of playing Lacy’s music on soprano saxophone, maintaining its intervallic purity with the plummy timbres that mark the soprano specialist, but without mimicking the master’s inimitable style.
[…]
The music on this record is complete and fully formed, a monument of dedication and love. However, it cannot contain the art-digging impulse that, when the trio plays live, impels Susanna Hood to follow her appetite into the rhythmically charged dance improvisations that give the band such astounding dimension. As I wrote in the 2023 Guelph Jazz Festival brochure: ‘What makes [the trio] special are Hood’s riveting dance improvisations; as an improviser across dance and music, she is without peer.’ “
– Scott Thomson, trombonist, composer, Artistic Director of the Festival International de Music Actuelle à Victoriaville
Excerpt from liner notes to the trio’s début album unPacked, Words by Judith Malina, Music by Steve Lacy AM 278
Photo at top of page by Pierre Langlois of Tania Gill and Susanna Hood
Biographies
Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal-based performer, maker and teacher in both dance and music, Susanna Hood has devoted her career to synthesizing voice and movement, creating intimate, sensual and dynamic performances both in dance-theatre and improvised music contexts. Founder of her interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart (2000-2013) her work has been marked by significant collaborations with musical artists Nilan Perera (She’s Gone Away, Shudder), John Oswald (Spinvolver), and Scott Thomson (The Rent – Musique de Steve Lacy, The Muted Note– songs and dances setting the poetry of P.K. Page).
Recent creations (Music Is, 2016, and Impossibly Happy, 2019) have been driven by her own musical compositions arranging voices, instruments and movement. Other collaborations of note include Tortues Vapeur, a duo with Montreal turntablist, Martin Tétreault, mixing turntables, electronics, synthesizers, vocals and objects. (DAME’s Mikroclimat label, 2019); a duo with Belgian bassist, Peter Jacquemyn; and performances with the French trio Rrève Sélavy (Frédéric BBriet, double bass; Nicolas Pointard, drums; and Christophe Rocher, clarinettes). Unpacked, the first project with her trio with Toronto/Tkaronto musicians Tania Gill (piano) and Kayla Milmine (soprano saxophone), is a new arrangement and interpretation of the Packet suite by late American poet, Judith Malina and late American jazz composer, Steve Lacy. unPacked was released as a recording in early 2024 on Quebec’s DAME label. Awards include the 1998 K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Award in Dance, 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the 2008 Canada Council Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Dance.
http://susannahood.ca , https://humdansoundart.wordpress.com/company/ https://mikroclimat.bandcamp.com/album/tortues-vapeur
Kayla Milmine loves the new and under-explored sonic possibilities that only the soprano saxophone can offer. Her unique approach has the edginess and brashness of Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell yet also a warmth and thoughtfulness reminiscent of Steve Lacy. In 2019, Milmine released a solo album called ‘Straight Horn Magick; a mixture of field recordings and solo soprano saxophone improvisations. She plays regularly in trio form with pianist Bill Gilliam and percussionist Ambrose Pottie, and in duo form with guitarist/composer Brian Abbott in their band FASTER. In February 2019, she was invited to record with celebrated bassist, William Parker in a chamber-improv sextet in NY, where she often travels to study with mentor/collaborator, Sam Newsome. She is presently composing for her new project, the ‘Kayla Milmine Quartet’ with aforementioned Sam Newsome, and drummers Mark Ferber and Rachel Housle. She is co-founder of the Women From Space Festival in Toronto. https://moodsofyellow.bandcamp.com/album/moods-of-yellow
Toronto-based pianist and composer Tania Gill has spent over twenty years cultivating a singular but polymorphous musical approach. She has developed a distinctive improvisational language in jazz and improvised music, playing in ensembles such as the Brodie West Quintet, Chris Banks Trio, The Titillators, See Through Trio and Rebecca Hennessy’s Makeshift Island. Her own group, the Tania Gill Quartet, comprises leading Canadian musicians Lina Allemano (trumpet), Rob Clutton (bass), and Nico Dann (drums). Their acclaimed disc Bolger Station (2010, Barnyard Records), was nominated for best debut album in the Village Voice jazz critics’ poll and was included among the Globe and Mail’s top ten albums of the year. The follow-up, Disappearing Curiosities, launched in 2022 and was included on best-of-2022 lists in the Wire. Gill’s unconventional versatility keeps her engaged in an eclectic array of styles. She was a member of Deep Dark United and the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, and is a regular collaborator to vocalist Fides Krucker, and singer-songwriter Kyp Harness. She has also shared the stage with Steve Reich, Man Forever, Gord Downie, Mary Margaret O’Hara, the Weather Station, Margaret Atwood, and Charles Spearin’s Happiness Project, and she has performed with dancers including Peggy Baker, Andrea Nann, Heidi Strauss and Laurence Lemieux. Tania is a supportive and dedicated educator and currently teaches at Humber College and the University of Toronto.
https://www.taniagill.ca/ , https://taniagill.bandcamp.com/