Amir Amiri was born in Tehran, Iran, where he spent much of his youth studying the santur, a 72-string hammer dulcimer that lies at the heart of Persian classical music. He also studied classical Indian music, and with some of Iran’s and India’s masters, including Ravi Shankar and NusratFateh Ali Khan. Amiri arrived in Canada in 1996. Since then, he has performed his music while in residence at The Banff Centre for the Arts, a haven of inspiration to which he has returned many times. Amiri continues to work extensively as a performer, composer, musical director and consultant for numerous Canadian dance and theatre companies, orchestras, concert series and television.

Website

Captivated by performing arts, Tanveer Alam started training in Kathak at a very young age. Currently, he is refining the art of Kathak with Sandhya Desai, a former student of the Kathak guru, Padmabhushan Kumudini Lakhia. Since 2009, he has been touring all across Canada. He has performed in various events including QuébéAsia, the Festival des Traditions du Monde de Sherbrooke and the Shenkman Arts Centre of Ottawa. This year, he joins QuébéAsia, an ad-hoc collective of Quebec-based artists who explore Asian-based art forms. Choreographers Manijeh Ali, Julio Hong, Sarah Dell’Ava, Nassim Lootij, and Taala and Ishwari, also participate in this fourth edition of the collective dance performance series.

Interstellaire II and Me Float is a sound and visual project of two artists involved on Jeunesse Cosmique label and they are also curators of their radio show at CISM. They organise the event called PITCH DOWN – MTL. They are currently working on a tribute to Sun Ra to be presented for Festival Suoni Per II Popolo.