Louise Campbell is a Montreal-based musician whose professional hats range from conductor to cultural mediator, community arts facilitator to musicians’ health therapist.
As a composer, performer and improviser, Louise seeks to interrogate and renew the ways in which we make music by creating new works with everyone, regardless of age, ability, level of prior experience, or training.
Her specializations include improvisation and creation with untrained (aka ‘amateur’) musicians, improvised conducting, cross-disciplinary creation, commissioned works, and public engagement. She has toured as a performer, guest artist, and lecturer of improvised and composed musics across Canada, the US, France, Germany, and Brazil.
Recent collaborations include:
- Stories of Care, a podcasting series with the C.A.R.E Centre, a recreational centre for adults with severe physical disabilities, 2020
- Fair Jenny Alone, for at home choir (2020)
- Premiere: Ariose, Conductor Jolaine Kerley, June 17, 2020
- Concordia Chamber Choir, Conductor Joy Berg, Nov. 4, 2020
- Dark Sky Preserve: a literary and musical inquiry, an album and score-book co-composed and co-written with spoken word artist, 2020
- Piece of Mind, Science-Art research collaboration on effects of music and dance on Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons, ongoing
- Message in a Bottle, intergenerational music-videos featuring visual arts and sound, 2020
- Collaborators: visual artists Jessica Houston & Paula Knowles, and musician Guillaume Jabbour
- Premiere: April 2020
- Iterations: May 2020, June 2020, August 2020
- Of the sea, a multidisciplinary collaboration in music, dance, poetry and video with Eryn Dace Trudell, forthcoming
Select past collaborations include:
- Camille Renarhd, choreographer/director and Benoit Dhennin, videographer: R, Agora de la danse, 2013
- Valerie Dean and Don Reider: collaborating on and performing music for New Circus, Hope for the Haunted, 2013
- Jeanette Pope, film director: writing and performing music for Dust, a sculptor’s journey, Festival du nouveau cinéma 2011; Berson Boys, Kodak Emerging Filmmaker Program at Cannes, 2009
- Annie Abrahams, writer and Rebecca Barnstaple, director: creating an installation involving projected text, dance and music, l’envoyer à mars pour y trouver la quiétude, 2008
Education and Professional Affiliations
Louise holds an MMus in Performance with a minor in Jazz from Indiana University, an MA in Music Education from McGill University, and a Certificate in Shiatsu Therapy from Institut Kinéconcept. Her primary influences include her grandmother, choral conductor Anne Campbell, clarinettist James Campbell (no relation), jazz pedagogue David Baker, artist coach Valerie Dean, and the One Yellow Rabbit Theatre Company. Louise is former Vice President of ELAN English Language Arts Network, and member of the Inclusion Committee for this same organisation, member of the Public Engagement Committee of the Canadian New Music Network, and member of Le Vivier, the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec, SOCAN and Natural Health Practitioners of Canada.
