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Six Turntables
Workshop and Performance

Six Turntables is a workshop and performance that invites students into collective practices of listening and sound making. Using improvisation and scores as shared methods, the group listens to and remixes audio recordings drawn from local archives of experimental music, working through a particular sonic history in each place the project is presented. Led by multidisciplinary artists Christopher Willes and Akash Bansal, the project has taken shape in different contexts across Canada since 2017. Each iteration culminates in a public performance and a publication.

The workshops combine sound making, somatic practice, writing, and dialogue. Each session begins with listening exercises that cultivate sonic and spatial awareness, followed by scores that invite participants to manipulate custom-cut vinyl records using turntables and amplifiers. Over the course of the workshop, the group develops an experimental form of collective DJing, transforming archival fragments into new compositions. Through the process, participants learn about historical avant-garde music and sound practices, and speculate together about new forms of musical experience. Records are approached not as commodities but as shared experiences, reactivated through embodied listening and creative reuse. The workshop concludes with a public concert, where participants share the soundscapes they have made together, and a publication documenting the process.

The audio recordings used in the workshops are specific to each new presentation context. For example, at the Toronto Public Library the project explored recordings of experimental music from Toronto in the 1970’s found in the TPL’s vinyl record collection. At the Music Gallery we worked with recordings from the Music Gallery Editions label. In 2025 the project remixed the Guelph Jazz Festival’s archive, and in 2026 the project explored audio recordings found in the archives of Western Front (Vancouver) focused on improvised music concerts during the first decade of the gallery’s history (70’s and 80’s).

Six Turntables has been shared in a variety of contexts in Canada since 2017. For more information you can read this call for workshop participants from a previous iteration at the Toronto Biennial of Art in 2024.

Presentation History:

Western Front, Vancouver, November 21 2026
Guelph Jazz Festival, Guelph Ontario, September 14, 2025
Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto, October 30 - November 7 2024
The Music Gallery, X Avant Festival, Toronto, October 3 - 11 2023
Toronto Public Library (Albion), Toronto, February 11- March 4 2023
Toronto Public Library (Cedarbrea), Toronto, October 1 - November 15 2019
Toronto Public Library (Scarborough Civic Centre), Toronto, October 12-29 2017

Credits

Project by Christopher Willes, created in collaboration with Akash Bansal (dramaturge). Workshop co-facilitated by Akash Bansal and Christopher Willes. Photo by Kendra Epik.

Past Participants/Performers
Guelph Jazz Festival (2025): Quinn Logue-Barei, Gaven Gulewitsch-Cleminson, Kali Gonsalves, Jupjeet Daroch, Rowan Dixon-McCoy, Gev Rimon, Jordan Lloyd, Maya Moreau, Max Friedberg, Julia Blakeney, Ariane Lachapelle-Poulin, and Sophie Lin. Toronto Biennial of Art (2024): Aliyah Aziz, Aileen Kim, Eejin Choi, Gail Angella Ledesma, Grace McHugh, Jada Flemming, Julianna Angheloni, Ky Gray, Nikki Gilani, Ximena Garcia Soto, and Yihang Xu. Music Gallery (2023): Aliyah Aziz, Jada Fleming, Julianna Angheloni, Ky Gray, Nikki Gilani and Will Carriere. Toronto Public Library (2017-2023): Gian Caracciolo, Gianluca Occhipinti, James Wells, Jason Li, Lucas McCarten, Maria Patricia Abuel, Nanthini Namasti, Taggart Quinn, and Ximuna Diego.

Special thanks to Jenn Goodwin, Roxanne Fernandes, James Baily, Gayle Young, Sanjeet Takhar, Matthew Fava, Max Halparin, Mitchell Akiyama, Seika Boye, Jim Lewis, Michelle Brownrigg, Emerald Ekong, Olang Cerda-Moesker, Joseph Glaser, Keith Stratton, Ellen Furey, Claire Harvie, Joe Strutt, Anne Bourne, Ishan Davé, Kendra Epik, Philip Nozuka, Erika Hennebury, Beau Levitt, Bill Vrantsidis, Radha Shilash, Liz Hysen, and Raymond Bai for helping us to develop this project through it’s various stages.

Photographs by Kendra Epik, Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias

Custom vinyl records cut by audiogeography.com and Jackson Darby (Personal Touch Vinyl).

Developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council - Artists in the Library Program (2017-23). Produced by Christopher Willes, in partnership with Public Recordings.