These days she’s considered one of Montreal’s most successful jazz-and-blues vocalists, but back in the nineties, Susie Arioli was singing in the backrooms of the city’s many jazz clubs, trying to catch a break. That break came when Arioli met guitar player Jordan Officer. Together they formed The Susie Arioli Band, and in 1998, they were invited by the Montreal International Jazz Festival to open for Ray Charles. The performance was considered by many in attendance one of the brightest moments in the history of the festival, and it set The Susie Arioli Band on the way to greater opportunities. In 2000, the band released its debut album, It’s Wonderful. Arioli’s performance at that year’s Montreal Jazz Festival was a highly anticipated and sold-out event, evidence of Quebec’s growing love affair with her sultry vocal style. Now five albums in, Susie Arioli’s works have been both big sellers and critical favourites, garnering three Juno nominations and a devoted fanbase. (DN)

Gioconda Barbuto proves that success in dance can be sustained even into one’s fifties. Born in Toronto, she began her training in the 1960s and still works regularly as both a choreographer and performer. She made her name as a soloist with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal from 1980–96. While there, she performed with dozens of choreographers, including James Kudelka and Ginette Laurin. Before that, she danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Minnesota Dance Theater. Barbuto was recognized for her choreography in 1996 with the Clifford E. Lee Award. Two years later, she was among a group of dancers, all over the age of 40, invited to join Nederlands Dans Theater III. Gioconda spent eight years with NDT III and is featured in two of Jiri Kylian’s award-winning films, Birth-Day and Car Men. Barbuto has continued to choreograph and dance for independent projects, including the 2008 projects, LifeLines, and Margie Gillis’s M.Body.7. (PF)

Having studied theatre at John Abbott College and Concordia University, Tyrone Benskin started working right out of school in the Montreal theatre community, including The Centaur, the Saidye Bronfman and Black Theatre Workshop. In 2005 he took on the role of artistic director of BTW, where he premiered productions of Le Code Noir by George Boyd and Swan Song of Maria by Carol Cece Anderson. From the title role in the Phantom of the Opera to the 71-year-old former slave Nelson Johns in the award-winning Wade in the Water, Benskin has acted in over 150 film and television projects and well over 40 stage productions, performing on stages across Canada, including the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the National Arts Centre. He is recognized across the country as Mike Hayes in the Canadian soap opera Riverdale and Karl Lubinshy in the ground-breaking sci-fi series Charlie Jade. He is also featured in the mega-hit 300 and Oscar nominated I’m not There, playing guitar with the legendary Richie Havens. Benskin is also an accomplished musician and published songwriter. (PF)

Equally at home in the worlds of jazz, contemporary classical, and electro-acoustic composition, shape-shifting guitarist Tim Brady has blended many of Montreal’s musical antecedents into a richly complex and international career. In 1997, Guitar Player magazine named the Montreal-born Brady “one of the 30 most important guitarists for the future of the instrument,” and, looking back over his adventurous cultural contributions, it’s easy to see why. His first compositions emerged during a seven-year sojourn in Toronto in the 80s. Brady’s stylized orchestrations belie an eccentric understanding of chamber music that is modernist in tendencies and ambitious in scope, earning him comparison to stylistically unbound predecessors such as Elliot Carter. In 1987, Brady moved back to Montreal and since then, has released 16 albums. His work is regularly performed on some of the world’s most prestigious stages. When not composing chamber music, he works with his ensemble, Bradyworks, who have become a favourite draw among electro-acoustic audiences across North America. (DN)

www.timbrady.ca

Born in India and having lived in Pakistan, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada, painter Cheryl Braganza brings her global experiences to the message of optimism that shines through her artwork. A mainly self-taught and prolific artist, Braganza uses brilliant color and texture to characterize emotion and movement in her naïve and richly intuitive paintings, which often reflect her day-to-day life in Montreal and elsewhere.  An activist for human rights, she collaborates with charities to better the lives of people within her Montreal neighbourhood and globally.  Having first exhibited her work in 1964 at the Lord Mayor’s Exhibition in London, since showcasing her paintings at Expo 67 Braganza has made Montreal and its suburbs her creative home.  Of her art, the painter says, “I want my art to play a role in lifting people’s spirits, in challenging their assumptions, in provoking thought, thus promoting dialogue between peoples towards peace.” (DN)

Through her films, Karen Cho recounts untold histories and explores themes of immigration and social justice. The award-winning documentary, In the Shadow of Gold Mountain, explored the legacy of Canada’s Chinese head tax. Her feature-length documentary, Seeking Refuge, which follows five asylum seekers, earned a 2009 Gemini nomination and has been used by organizations such as the Canadian Council for Refugees. She directed four episodes of Global TV’s Past Lives, a documentary series about Canadians in search of their ancestral roots, and worked on Extraordinary Canadians, a biography series that explored the lives of eminent Canadians, where Cho directed episodes on Nellie McClung, Lester B. Pearson, and Norman Bethune. She is currently developing a documentary about the women’s movement for the National Film Board.  She is also working on an experimental documentary entitled Family Secrets, a collage piece that uses old family movies, found photos, and archival images. (PF)

From the age of 12, Tracey Deer wanted to be a filmmaker. After studying film at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, she now makes award-winning films that offer a glimpse into Aboriginal issues. In Club Native (2008), Deer looks deeply into the history and present-day reality of Mohawk identity. It earned two Gemini Awards, shared with producers Rezolution Pictures and the National Film Board. One More River (2004) is a documentary Deer co-directed with Neil Diamond. Engaging viewers in an account of a Cree Nation’s controversial decision to support a new hydroelectric dam, it won Best Documentary at the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. Her film, Mohawk Girls (2005), follows the lives of three teenagers growing up at Kahnawake and was honoured with the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the Imaginenative Film Festival. It was recently turned into a television pilot, which she directed and called “Mohawk Girls: the series.” She credits local filmmakers for getting her started, particularly Catherine Bainbridge of Rezolution Pictures. (PF) 

Blending elements of poetry, song, and spoken word, Ian Ferrier’s one-of-a-kind performance art delivers a medley of literariness and popular culture. Musically rooted in blues-driven inquiries into love, sex, and death, and poetically rooted in the cosmology of the Beats, Ferrier is also a founder of the spoken word label Wired on Words. He performs both as a solo artist and with the trance/improv music project Pharmakon MTL, mixing whispered and sung vocals, multiple guitars and drums into an absorbing voyage.  Ferrier has released a CD/book Exploding Head Man (2004) and two CDs, What Is This Place? (2007) and To Call Out in the Night (2010).  His poems have also been set on the page in anthologies from Montreal presses, such as Conundrum’s Impure-Reinventing the Word and Vehicule’s Poetry Nation.  An active contributor to Montreal’s literary community, he is a past president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. (DN)

Born in New York and raised variously in Israel, England, and Vancouver, for the last nine years multi-media artist Adad Hannah has lived in Montreal, where he has pushed open the borders between the body and installation art by fusing the two in thoroughly evocative ways. Hannah combines video, photography and performance into tableaux vivants.  A multi-faceted exchange between art and history, Hannah uses the space between the static body and the recorded motion to make statements on the tension of our bodies’ natural dichotomies.  Young and prolific, in any given year his installations can be found around the world, living in galleries as far and wide as Berlin, New York, Seoul, or Australia.  In 2003, he received an Honourable Mention at the 10th International Media Arts Biennale.  In 2009, he won the Canada Council’s prestigious Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding artistic achievement by a Canadian artist in mid-career. (DN)

Nelson Henricks brings his musings to the medium of experimental video. In the six-minute piece, Satellite, Henricks juxtaposes images derived from old educational films with absurd, aphoristic slogans. Presented in 2004 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and later in Calgary and Ottawa, it comments on our need to make sense of everything, at any cost. In 2000, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his work as part of the Video Viewpoints series. With Steve Reinke, Henricks co-edited an anthology of artist’s video scripts entitled By the Skin of Their Tongues. He has won the Telefilm Canada Prize at Toronto’s Images Festival and been the recipient of the Bell Canada Award in Video Art. He attended the Alberta College of Art and moved to Montreal in 1991, where he received a BFA from Concordia University and where he now teaches. (PF)