Tina Pearson is a Canadian composer, sound artist, media artist and facilitator. Her projects attempt nuanced sonic investigations of perception, presence and place, and connections that are minimized or forgotten. Her work references ecosystems, ancestries, spectral structures and long spans of time; usually incorporates attention states; and often occurs in contexts beyond concert or gallery, including outdoors, and within/through online platforms. As a performer (flute, voice, glass, accordion, objects, electronics), Pearson’s sound worlds reveal unusual textures and phenomena.

Pearson’s sensibilities were formed through her upbringing in the remote lands of Treaty 3 in Northwestern Ontario, and the juxtapositions between there and Toronto, where she studied, and then created and improvised, in the experimental music and dance worlds. Many of Pearson’s early compositions were a result of commissions for music and performance scores for dance works. In these and other projects, she explored spectral forms, stretched time, disintegrative processes, sonic meditation, and the experiences of composers, performers and audience. Saturn (for choreographers Grant Strate and Menaka Thakkar) referenced South Indian raga and rhythmic structures. RSVP for piano four hands (for choreography by Paula Ravitz) applied harmonic series structures to time, while Common Ground, also for Ravitz, juxtaposed extended reed and brass technique with traditional Eastern European melodic forms. Immersive concert length works In Vitro (with Paul Hodge) and Colliding – Ideas and Actions in Sound and Movement, electroacoustic music-dance collaboration with Paula Ravitz and Denise Fujiwara of Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise, dissolved the separation of dancers and musicians in performance practice and space.

Other concert-length or extended works made in Toronto include Oxygen Tonic – Breath Guided Music (for mixed ensemble, composed with David Mott); the solo flute-movement-projection work Moon of the Breaking Up Of The Ice; and outdoor soundwalk piece Measure for a Mayfly. Other Toronto dance commissions include the harmonic series based RSVP (piano four hands, for dance by Ravitz) and the raga-inspired Saturn, (treble instrument trio, for Grant Strate and Menaka Thakkar).

While in Toronto, Pearson composed and performed as a member of the Toronto New Music Co-operative. She was an early editor of Canada’s Musicworks Magazine, introducing its audio component in 1983, and she designed and taught a Sound Studies course at OCAD University‘s then Experimental Department. Pearson was influenced by a number of artists she interviewed at length for Musicworks, including Pauline Oliveros, Udo Kasemets, James Tenney, Inuit throatsingers Alasi Alasuak and Nellie Nungak, R Murray Schafer and Cree/Saulteau drummaker Albert Davis. She was also influenced by her studies with South Indian master drummer Trichy Sankaran, vocalist Jon Higgins, and her practice and studies of the movement form Contact Improvisation.

Pearson left Toronto in 1988. After working in community development in Northern BC and raising her daughter there, Pearson moved to the territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples on the Salish Sea (Vancouver Island) where she became active composing acoustic, electroacoustic and electronic works for music and dance performances, art installations and video works. Her training and professional practice as a facilitator and community development consultant informed her facilitated composition practice and the composition of interactive scores and installations. She co-founded and directed the music – sound art organization LASAM Music, initiating projects such as And Beethoven Heard Nothing (co-directed with Dylan Robinson), In a Large Open Space, and numerous ensemble projects from 2007 through 2012. Additionally through that time, she directed and composed for Open Space projects such as Quantal Strife Sound and Victoria Complaints Choir, and was its new music curator for a number of years.

Pearson’s interest in identity and communication technologies fuelled the creation of a number of telematic compositions, notably the networked virtual reality composition PwRHm, created for the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and performed internationally since 2008; the multi-continent virtual reality collaboration Rotating Brains / Beating Heart (2010-2012) with the Avatar Orchestra, Pauline Oliveros, and Australian performance artist Stelarc; mixed reality works In This Far Now and Techno Dream and Nightmare Choir, (2014) with Liz Solo; and the Skype investigation for hands, breath and voice, Hands Over Sky.

Pearson’s installation, multidisciplinary and audiovisual works since 2012 include Breathe Witness created for performance within Peter Morin’s large scale intervention A Button Blanket Dance, a projected River and a courthouse; the performative installation Music For Natural History composed with intermedia artist Paul Walde (Royal BC Museum 2012 and 2016); Blood In My Wires, Dust In My Breath for solo voice with video and electronics (Factory Theatre Toronto 2018); Absorb, a multi-channel video and audio installation for MediaNet; participatory audio installation This Is For You that incorporates listening scores for gallery visitors (Open Space and ohrenhoch Berlin), and her perpetual audio work Carried On Your Winds that includes an ongoing accumulation of breath sounds from participants from around the world for installation and web presentation (Intersection Toronto 2018).

In 2012, Pearson co-founded the Victoria BC-based Experimental Music Unit with collaborators George Tzanetakis and Paul Walde. EMU has developed a listening, creating and performance practice focused on themed land-based explorative collaborations. EMU’s projects have included Music For Mycologists, Songs for Glass Island (created with US/Norway artist Camille Normant), Dark Listening, and LAND SEA SKY (for Raj Sen), a composition by Pearson.

Pearson has completed a number of additional compositions with biospheric, site specific and ancestral themes, such as Hunt (3) Chanterelles for the Experimental Music Unit; Voicing the Widow Jane Mine for a group of solo voices activating underground dolomite limestone pillars; Migration of Their Materials, for toy piano and tabla; Tree Sing, for voice(s) and dancer(s) within a treed environment; Root, Blood, Fractal, Breath for the ContaQt ensemble in Toronto’s performance at Allen Gardens Conservatory; Root Bone Wood Stone, a facilitated composition with seven Saguenay artists for the Centre d’Expérimentation Musicale in Saguenay, Québec; Dawn In Glass, a tuned glass vessel soundscape for installation in a cultivated park; and Toward a Reciprocal Listening, a score commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art for World Listening Day 2020.

 List of compositions 

In addition to her work as a composer, Pearson is an active performer (flute, voice, accordion, glass instruments, amplified wood, objects, virtual instruments) and event programmer and producer. Her performance practice includes attention based improvisation, and a focus on place, presence, texture, and process. She presents workshops and mentors on listening, improvisation, biospheric art practice, and telematic collaboration, is a frequent guest lecturer and panelist, and is a certified Deep Listening® practitioner through Pauline Oliveros.

Pearson’s music appears on a number of audio releases. Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Network Music Festival (Birmingham UK); ohrenhoch Gallery and Klangwerkstatt Berlin Festival für Neue Musik (Berlin, Germany); Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver); Vektor Game and Art Convergence (Toronto); Newfoundland Sound Symposium; Vancouver International New Music Festival; Festival ECRÃ (Rio, Brazil); Firenze MultiMedia Festival (Italy); Sonic Arts Research Center (Belfast, Ireland); New Adventures in Sound Art Sound Play Festival; Factory Theatre; Intersection (Toronto); Women and Identity Festival (New York); NIME – New Interfaces for Musical Expression (Oslo); Manifestations 2020, Netherlands; Cluster Festival (Winnipeg); Electric Eclectics (Meaford Ontario); Digital Arts Resource Centre, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Open Space; MediaNet (Victoria, Canada), among others. Pearson and her work have also been presented at conferences such as Brown University’s Art + Environment Symposium (Providence, USA); Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts (Brunel, UK); Canadian New Music Network Forum (Vancouver); North American Conference on Video Game Music (virtual); Sounding Places / Listening Places , ArtEZ, Netherlands; International Society for Improvising Musicians (Denver); the Deep Listening Art and Science Conference (Troy, New York); and others.

Tina Pearson is a first generation Canadian of Nordic and Slavic descent, and is grateful to live and work within the territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, and to regularly return to the traditional lands of the Nigigoonsiminikaaning and Couchiching First Nations of Treaty 3.