artist Sarah Peebles

NOTE: Co-composers, co-performers and CDs appearing on the tracks posted here are listed at sarahpeebles.net on the Recordings page.  

Sarah Peebles is a Toronto-based American composer, improviser and installation artist. Much of her practice focuses on digitally manipulated found sound projected via loudspeakers and/or physical objects, as well asdeveloping distinct approaches to acoustic and amplified improvisation on the shoh, theJapanese mouth-organ used in gagaku.

New ongoing work includes collaborations with artists and bee biologists, “Resonating Bodies”: a series of mixed media and integrated media installations, community outreach projects and web site which focuses on biodiversity of pollinators indigenous to the natural and urban ecosystems of the Greater Toronto Area (more below).

Groups she has been a regular member of have included “Smash and Teeny” with guitarist Nilan Perera (see their page also on CBC Radio3) and “Cinnamon Sphere” with Perera and visual artist Chung Gong. Her activities have included music for dance, multi-channel sound, radio, video/film, performance art, new media and improvised performance. Her activities in Japan (since 1986) have included performing gagaku (court music), kagura bayashi (Shinto dance-drama music), shishi mai (lion dance music) and other musics for Shinto festivals, weddings and other traditional functions throughout the Tokyo metropolitan region; concerts and collaborations with a wide variety of Japanese artists as an Uchida Fellowship (Japan Foundation) recipient; a tour with the Canadian trio Cinnamon Sphere; and, creation of the radiophonic work “108 - Walking through Tokyo” (SRC, L’espace du Son commission / Mario Gauthier, producer). 

Peebles'music is available on CD and on the net from Cycling ‘74, Spool, Post-Concrète, Innova, Sonus.ca and others. For more details and curent projects see sarahpeebles.net and Resonating Bodies (resonatingbodies.wordpress.com).