"Allemande" from the Partita in a minor, BWV 1013
By J. S. Bach
Performed by Mark Takeshi McGregor

"Allemande" from the Partita in a minor by J.S. Bach

Jennifer Butler (b. 1976) is a composer and flutist living in Vancouver, BC.
Her music has been described as intimate, resonant, and sonorous. Silence, holding and releasing tension, and laying textures are important qualities in many of her compositions.

Commissioned and performed by outstanding artists such as Continuum Contemporary Music (Toronto), the Western Front (Vancouver), Redshift (Vancouver), the Microscore Project (Los Angeles), the Turning Point Ensemble (Vancouver), Standing Wave (Vancouver), Nu:BC (Vancouver), and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Jennifer’s music has been performed and broadcast across Canada and in the USA. 

In February 2011 the Victoria Symphony premiered her commissioned work And Birds Do Sing and December 2011 saw the premiere of Shadow Catch, a noh-inspired chamber opera in collaboration with composers Dorothy Chang, Benton Roark, Farshid Samandari. Upcoming projects include commissions from Vancouver's Onyx Trio and the stunning vocal ensemble Musica Intima.

Jennifer completed a DMA (2009) in composition at the University of British Columbia. Her principle composition teachers include: Glenn Buhr, Peter Hatch, Omar Daniel, Keith Hamel and Brent Lee.




His art is synthetic and shows synthesizing tendency which is built from the Netherlandish polyphone tradition.
He examined Gothic and late Renaissance music, traces of which show up in his later music along with elements of Transsylvanian, Indian, Khmer, Balinese and Japenese classical culture. 
He is researching the rhythm and tone systems outside Europe.
He turns towards exploring new forms and structures, filling them up with his characteristic take on melody which origins usually from non-tempered (just intonation) systems.
His music juxtaposes solid blocks of sound that keep reprising accumulatively – a method he branded ’layering technique’.
He has been experimenting with psychoacoustic ‘tricks’ for example morfing tremolos with different tempos, phenomenon of binaural beats, low frequencies impulses (ELF-WLF), sounds of pulsars, magnetars and other radio signals from space, different spectral distortions, paradox of tritone and octave, glissando-like effects, scale illusions and Doppler-effect.  

Apart from acoustic instruments he is interested in electronic instruments, electro-acoustic music, sound synthesis, percussions and instruments which differs from European ones for example shakuhachi, hichiriki, sho, bansuri, serpent, hurdy-gurdy, viola da gamba, etc. He is preparating piano, dulcimer, viola, flute with clarinet piccolo jet which has to be put into the head of the flute.
His music is influenced by the I-II World War Avant-garde, the American experimental, the early psychedelic music, many European and outside Europe folk music and former arts.
In his pieces, he shows a penchent for mathematical series, textures arranged after priciples of variation which are substantiated with polyrhythmic, polytempoed, polymetric patterns of melody and rhythm. 

Since the years 2000, he regularly publishes articles, recensions, and other musically themed publications in various music weeklies and magazines. In 2009, he brings to life - along with four partners – a workshop for the propagation of contemporary music by the name SZIMNIA (Szimmetrikus Zenei és Írásos Műveket Népszerűsítő és Ismertető Alapítvány - Foundation for Introducing and Popularising Symmetrical Works of Music and Literature), where he also carries the role of art director and program organizer. Since May 2009. he is the editor of contemporary music program Karnevál on Civil Radio.
Since Autumn of 2013 he performs noted and improvisational electro-acoustic music with Szabolcs Kerestes and Bálint Baráth named Tri(o)KeBaNa. His music is usually performed together with the Hungarian Sound Painting Orchestra. 
In 2015 he associates with Zsuzsanna Aba-Nagy and Robert Mandel in GENEAMUS Ensemble Historical and Contemporary Music Group.

Many of his pieces have been performed in Hungary-wide for example on café Budapest in CET, in Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle Budapest), Fészek Art Club, Budapest Music Center,  International Bartók Seminar and Festival Szombathely, Aurora Modularis, Újszínház (New Theartre ) Budapest, Budapest Spring Festival, MÜPA (Glass room), Fringe Festival, Thalia Theatre, Nádor Concert Hall, Műveszetek Völgye Fesztival (Valley of Arts Festival), Művészetek és Irodalom Háza Pécs, ICA-d Dunaújváros, etc. They have been also performed abroad for example in Germany, BKA Theater Berlin, in Italy, Greece, France, Sweden and USA.   

Described as a “mind-blowing” musician of “huge physical energy” (Times Colonist), flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of classical, contemporary, and experimental music. As a soloist, chamber musician, and interdisciplinary artist, Mark has performed extensively across five continents, including appearances at Vancouver New Music Society, Little Chamber Music Series That Could, Innovations en Concert (Montreal), GroundSwell (Winnipeg), Honolulu Festival, Internationale ADEvantgarde-Festival (Munich), the Melos-Ethos Festival (Bratislava), Núcleo Música Nova’s International Symposium of New Music (Curitiba, Brazil), and the 2017 ISCM World New Music Days (Vancouver). An outspoken advocate of new music, Mark is the principal flute of the Aventa Ensemble in Victoria, flutist of the Vancouver-based Tiresias Duo with pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, and flutist of the McGregor-Verdejo Duo with guitarist Adrian Verdejo. McGregor has given many local and world premieres, and considers the commissioning of new works by contemporary composers to be a cornerstone of his work as a musician.