SELECTED PRESS
Format: Article
Subject: Feature about Resonance Gathering
Tom Beedham, New Feeling, August 2023
Excerpt: "A transformative quality was at the fore of Oliveros’s mind in carrying out her practice, once declaring “I’m not particularly interested in preserving my work. I’m interested in the event we’re involved in now, and how it can change me”… Rather than suggesting her work could be complete or attempting to produce stable sonic art objects, Oliveros was concerned with producing new relationships. While these conditions somewhat complicate the occasion of the physical release of documenting the City Hall performance, the spirit of Oliveros’s work is beautifully honoured within..."
Format: Podcast
Subject: Interview about Resonance Gathering
The Seltzer Salon, August 2023
Excerpt: "On this episode of The Seltzer Salon I’m joined by Canadian composer, musician, and dramaturge, Christopher Willes. He recently spearheaded the Resonance Gathering project which has evolved over its lifespan, but began as a large-scale ensemble performance of Pauline Oliveros’s To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation (1970). It grew to become more than that, culminating in a double LP and book release that includes the performance (which happened in the Council Chambers at Toronto City Hall), a sound poetry piece from Oliveros’s partner, IONE, and a book documenting the work. It’s a stunning document of an incredible piece of work. Willes goes into detail about the origins of the idea, how it came to be, and all the various setbacks they had to overcome to make it a reality. A fascinating conversation about one of 2023’s most memorable releases."
Format: Article
Subject: Feature about Resonance Gathering
Bradford Bailey, Soundohm, August 2023
Excerpt: "Since her death in 2016, we’ve witnessed the appearance of numerous releases attending to the work of Pauline Oliveros... but the majority of these have been reissues and archival releases of recordings made by the composer herself. Few have addressed the complexities of evolution and interpretation. “Resonance Gathering”, does exactly this, elegantly embracing the composer’s spirit, while allowing her work to journey toward new unknowns [...] Unquestionably a stunning accomplishment that’s as beautiful a physical object as the sounds that it contains [...] We couldn’t possibly think of a better tribute to the work of Pauline Oliveros. It carries her work toward new futures with startling insight and beauty."
Format: Articles
Subject: Select Reviews of Resonance Gathering
The Wire Magazine, September 2023
Excerpt: “The work rings undeniably urgent."
Music Works Magazine, Fall 2023
Excerpt: “One of the year’s most powerful and expansive statements of music’s ability to send a message.”
The Capsule Garden Vol 2.26, Foxy Digitalis, August 2023
Excerpt: “The swelling waves become immersive echoes. It’s utterly enthralling. Repeated listens reveal so much depth and detail. It’s so, so rewarding. Highest recommendation."
Pauline Oliveros and Chamber Music, Boring Like A Drill, 2023
Excerpt: “an immense, vibrant wall of sound reminiscent of some of the Scratch Orchestra’s concerts-cum-public rallies or a particularly wild Fluxus gig."
Format: Article
Subject: Exhibition Journal about Sounds for Dancers
Maud Jacquin et Émilie Renard, UnTuning Together, Bétonsalon, 2023
Excerpt: “For Sound for Dancers Willes stands at the intersection of dance and experimental music (whose historical roots in North America are closely linked) to investigate various choreographic and somatic approaches to sound production and listening within a group setting.”
Format: Article
Subject: Research journal about MANUAL
Emmanuelle Jetté, Learning to read, again, Festival TransAmériques Respirations Notebook, 2022
Excerpt: “Transcending individual experience, MANUAL is about the intimacy shared between performer and spectator in the reading encounter. The book becomes a vector of interaction, instilling a level of presence that is essential to listening to others. Willes and Kinner have designed a manual for slowing down and relearning how to spend time together after two years of social distancing."
Format: Article
Subject: Feature about MANUAL in Montéal
Jenn Stephenson, Games with Ghosts, Dramaturgies of Participation, 2022.
Excerpt: “The show itself then perhaps is a manual to the manual, an experience in how-to library. This is how you search—first you walk. This is how you choose books—try pointing. This is how you look—really look. This is how you read—let’s read together. Concentrate. This is how you put the books back—notice how they wait so patiently. It is a complete lifetime of libraries in miniature. It sounds trite to say so, since this is true of the accumulation of all experience, but I will never library again without thinking of Christopher, ghost of the library.”
Format: Article
Subject: Review of MANUAL in Scotland
Elspeth Wilson, MANUAL: a sensorial experience with public space, Disability Arts Online, 2023.
Excerpt: “When I reopened my eyes at the start of the performance, it already felt like something had shifted, that I’d transitioned into a different way of being […] Using public spaces for interactive, unintrusive art projects can be transformative to how we experience life in a city. ”
Format: Article
Subject: Review of MANUAL in Vancouver
Annapoorna Shruthi, An immersive conversation in the public library, Vancouver Art Review, 2023.
Excerpt: “Using public spaces for interactive, unintrusive art projects can be transformative to how we experience life in a city. We need more such free events to embed a sense of collective existence in our psyche, given the constant bombardment of anxiety-provoking news cycles that reinforce cynicism, othering and dissonance from our human surroundings. After the event, I walked around the library, looking for the books that spoke to me. And they did not disappoint.”
Format: Article
Subject: Research article about Satellite
Xenia Benivolski, You Can’t Trust Music, e-flux, 2022
Excerpt: “Satellite invokes the moon, along with its phases, as the ultimate satellite and regulating instrument: Willes’s installation utilized sub-bass and infra-sonic sounds via a large subwoofer installed directly within the gallery wall that worked with the real-time phases of the moon’s orbit (a cycle of 29.5305882 days) as its form.”
Format: Podcast
Subject: Extended group interview about To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation
Rachel Elliot, Aestetics of Transparency, Sound It Out Podcast, 2019
Excerpt: “In the middle of February, Toronto-based artist collective Public Recordings staged a performance of Pauline Oliveros‘ score To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation at Toronto’s City Hall, in the Council Chambers. The performance concluded a week of public rehearsals in various locations around the city. Join us in this episode as we inquire into the process of group decision-making, and how artistic collaboration can illuminate what it means to act together in new formations of community.”
Format: Radio Show
Subject: Interview about a research residency at Toronto Public Library
Akash Bansal, automatic writing w/ Tender Buttons & Christopher Willes, n10as, 2019.
Excerpt: “Tune in for a special hour of automatic writing featuring the rare, lost and largely unheard selections from the 15,000 item vinyl collection at the Toronto Reference Library. This mix is part of a research residency on private press recordings that Christopher Willes and I have been conducting at the Toronto Public Library over the past 3 months. We will be a hosting a public listening session at 2pm on Saturday November 30th on the 5th floor of the Reference Library.”
Format: Article
Subject: Review of To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation
Jesse Locke, Toronto collective will play 1970’s score within City Hall’s council chambers, NOW Magazine, 2019.
Excerpt: “Is the collective process of music making – of listening – a political act? That’s the question Toronto art collective Public Recordings asks as they put on a performance within city hall’s council chambers this Sunday. Electronic composer Pauline Oliveros wrote her groundbreaking 1970 experimental score To Valerie Solanas And Marilyn Monroe In Recognition Of Their Desperation for musical groups of any size, instrument or skill level. To revisit that historic, hierarchy-dismantling work, Public Recordings have assembled 18 musicians and non-musicians from a variety of disciplines to learn the score in a series of open rehearsals that conclude with the city hall performance.”
Format: CBC Video Feature
Subject: Mini doc about To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation
Lise Hosein, A Toronto Collective Brings to Life a 1970’s Composition, CBC Arts, 2019.
Excerpt: “This experimental music performance takes over Toronto's City Hall to find new ways to organize"."
Format: Article
Subject: Review of Quiet Concerts
Wendalyn Bartley, Moving Forward, Two Curatorial Visions, Whole Note Magazine, 2019.
Excerpt: “Willes’ series is an examination of the experience and practice of listening and performing in public spaces; the unique aspect of these performances is that they explore the use of headphones as an aspect of listening in a quiet public space […] With each concert offering a very different approach to the overall concept of listening together in a more isolated way through the headphone experience, this series is essentially an experimentation and exploration of how togetherness can be experienced in new ways in a public space we associate with quiet and internal focus.”
Format: Article
Subject: Featured as an upcoming artist
Laura Stanley, Toronto Musicians To Watch in 2018, NOW Magazine, 2017.
Excerpt: “Blending experimental music with performance and visual arts, Willes’s thoughtful sonic installations restore a sense of place in a city that feels increasingly ephemeral. Last year he was artist-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library Scarborough Civic Centre branch, holding “quiet concerts” that encouraged audiences to experience the library’s delicate, hushed acoustics. Equally noteworthy was his collaboration with the performance collective Public Recordings for a reworking of Pauline Oliveros’s expansive and meditative deep listening piece To Valerie Solanas And Marilyn Monroe In Recognition Of Their Desperation. This year Willes will present the second re-staging of Oliveros’s piece, and develop a new work with teenage performers, which came out of his Toronto Public Library residency. ”
Format: Article
Subject: Review of the solo exhibition Every Sound is a Small Action and Broke World
Murray Whyte, At the galleries: Willes taps into our nervous tension, Toronto Star, 2016.
Excerpt: “Willes, a musician and artist whose compositions transgress into experimental sound collage, arrives on point with a show that taps into the nervous tension of a suddenly anxious era. In his work, Willes explores sonic influence on the physical, body and space both.”
Format: Article and Recording
Subject: Review about Listening Choir
Joe Strutt, Recording: Listening Choir, Mechanical Forest Sound, 2015.
Excerpt: “For a half-dozen sessions over three days during the SummerWorks Festival, Christopher Willes and Adam Kinner led small groups in the West Queen West neighbourhood around The Theatre Centre calling on participants to interact with their sonic environment — and above all, to listen. Armed with DIY recorder/speaker boxes, the walkers both added to the neighbourhood's sonic diversity and sampled it to play back in a floating zone of slightly-distorted loops.”
Format: Article
Subject: Interview about sound art and public space
Jane Perdue, Art and Audio, Ground Magazine, 2015
Excerpt: “Our panel explores the sound environment in a wide-ranging discussion of this often-neglected component of designed landscapes.”