Since their inception in 2001, Toca Loca has been furiously branding the cattle of the new music world, and has long been held up as the best argument against intelligent design. Sworn enemies of actuaries and slow-growth fund managers the world over, percussionist Aiyun Huang and pianists Simon Docking and Gregory Oh have introduced North American audiences to new works of Chris Paul Harman, Andrew Staniland, Hywel Davies, Inouk Demers, Heinz Holliger, Sofia Gubaidulina, Philippe Leroux, Toshio Hosokawa, Georges Aperghis and Valerio Sannicandro.
Frequent contributors to the CBC's Two New Hours and ensemble-in-residence at Toronto's Music Gallery, they have recently been spotted at the Sound Symposium in St. John's, in Los Angeles as Provost Distinguished Visitors at USC and at the Chapelle historique du Bon Pasteur in Montreal. They will appear in March on the CBC's OnStage series at the Glenn Studio, and also in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax, presenting The P*P Project. Other upcoming appearances include the Cool Drummings festival in May 2008, The Aperghis Project and Music for 6008 Spokes in June 2008, and a run of XXX Live Nude Girls, an opera for Barbie dolls by Jennifer Walshe.
Their shadowy doppelgangers have also played the underground in Toronto via the Wavelength Indie Music Series and the X-Avant Festival, and in NYC on the Wordless Music Series at the Lincoln Centre. During the last SoundaXis festival, they were offered twenty dollars by a merchant's personal assistant to stop playing on the trendy corner of Queen and John in Toronto. They accepted.
Australian-born pianist Simon Docking has performed both as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Europe. He studied piano in Australia with Ransford Elsley, and holds a doctorate in piano performance from SUNY Stony Brook, where he worked with Gilbert Kalish, and upon graduation was awarded New York State's Thayer Fellowship for the Arts.
For the past six years he has lived in Halifax, where he is the curator of Kumquat, a new music series co-presented by the Scotia Festival's Music Room Chamber Music Society, St Cecilia Concert Society, and Dalhousie University's music department. Simon has worked with some of Canada's finest musicians, including Mark Fewer, Scott St John, James Somerville, Terence Tam, Denise Djokic, Jamie Parker, Beverley Johnston, Max Christie, and the percussion ensemble NEXUS.
Praised by the Globe and Mail for his "effortless virtuosity" in contemporary music, Simon has premiered dozens of new pieces, and worked with many composers from around the world. He has been a founding member of several chamber groups, including the Toronto-based ensemble Toca Loca, with pianist Gregory Oh and percussionist Aiyun Huang.
Simon has also appeared as a soloist for Australia's Aurora Festival, the new music group Stroma in New Zealand, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the MATA Festival in New York. Upcoming projects include Messiaen's complete "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" for Scotia Festival of Music in 2008 and Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with the Toronto Philharmonia in 2009. Simon has often been heard on CBC Radio Two's Two New Hours and The Signal, as well as on ABC Classic FM (Australia), Swedish Radio, and Radio NZ.
Canadian pianist and conductor Gregory Oh has always had commitment issues, and believes firmly in keeping his options open. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto, where he completed his studies with Marietta Orlov as the top graduating pianist, and the University of Michigan, where he worked with Martin Katz.
As a soloist, he has garnered praise for his "crystal clear tone, musical structure-conscious thinking, highly sensitive art of touch" (Graz Neue Zeit - Austria) and was described as an "exceptional performer...mesmerizing...intelligence and insight...a visceral sense of tempo, excellent voicing, a wonderful pianistic palette, and a warm, honest sound." (National Post - Canada)
He has appeared with the UTSO, the Graz Hochschule Orchestra, the Prince George Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra London, the Brott Festival Orchestra and the Festival Players, and has given recitals throughout North America and Europe. As a chamber musician, he has shared the stage with musicians like Shauna Rolston, Patrick Gallois, Alain Trudel, Jens Lindemann, James Thompson, John Marcellus, Lorand Fenyves, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Mark Fewer, Michael Colvin, Allyson McHardy, Lori Freedman, NEXUS, Beverley Johnston, Noreen Burgess and Jean MacPhail.
He has served as music director of the San Diego Opera Ensemble, and has also worked with Florida State Opera, the University of Michigan Opera Program, Michigan Opera Works and Lyric Opera San Diego. He has held faculty positions at the Banff Centre for the Arts, both in Music and Sound, and Theatre Arts, where he worked with the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program. He recently joined the music staff of the Canadian Opera Company.
He is the artistic director of the highly acclaimed new music group Toca Loca with Simon Docking and Aiyun Huang, and "is clearly on his way, through performances, commissioning and programming, to making a lasting contribution to new music in this country." (National Post – Canada) Toca Loca has been relentlessly branding the cattle of the new music world, and has been Provost Distinguished Visitors at USC and Ensemble-in-Residence at the Music Gallery. Dubbed "vibrant" by Alex Ross in the New Yorker magazine, the Globe and Mail's Robert Everett-Green raved that they "clearly believe that contemporary music should grab the listener as much as any other kind...they put on a passionate, disciplined performance that at times rocked harder than many shows I've heard in clubs."
He is the conductor of Continuum Contemporary Music and has also directed CONTACT, the McGill Percussion Ensemble, the CBC Kieser Gala and Companion Star in Sweden. No stranger to the popular scene, he has worked with Kurt Swinghammer, Andrew Downing, Andrew Craig, Quinsin Nachoff, John Gzowski and the Redemption Steel Orchestra, and as the keyboardist in uberband The Lollipop People has played Pop Montreal, NXNE, Wavelength, Galapagos, the Guelph Folk Festival and the Brampton Indie Arts Festival. He performs regularly with cabaret performer Patricia O'Callaghan all over North America, and has also performed in the Festival of the Sound, Sound Symposium, the Colours of Music Festival, soundaXis, the Wordless Music Series at the Lincoln Center, Toronto's Nuit Blanche Festival, Music Around Us, Two New Hours, the Music Gallery and with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Brave New Works, Esprit Orchestra, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, la Chapelle historique de Bonpasteur, Tapestry New Opera, Soundstreams, Arraymusic, Ergo and the Soulpepper Theatre Company. His performances are often heard on CBC Radio One and Radio Two, and seen on CBC Television, TV Ontario, BravoFACT and Bravo's Live at the Rehearsal Hall.
Upcoming engagements include appearances at the Festival Internationale de Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, Suoni per il popolo, Cool Drummings, soundaXis and the X-Avant Festival. With Akemi and Rachel Mercer, he has been invited to perform the entire cycle of Haydn's Piano Trios for the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society. As a board member and the music committee co-chair of the Toronto Arts Council, he is committed to supporting the arts through civic action and engagement. He teaches at the University of Toronto, is on the faculty of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and is the contemporary music curator at Toronto's Music Gallery. He spends his spare time trying to fix his bike and watching bad television.
Taiwanese-Canadian percussionist, AIYUN HUANG was winner of the First Prize as well as the Audience Award at the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition; the first prize in percussion has been awarded only three times in the competition's 57-year history.
Her appearances include Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra's Green Umbrella Series, LACMA Concert Series, Holland Festival, Victoria Hall in Geneva, Agora Festival in Paris (IRCAM), rESOund Resound Festival, Banff Arts Festival, Vancouver New Music Festival, CBC Radio, La Jolla Summerfest, Musik 3, The Old Globe Theater (San Diego), Centro Nacional Di Las Artes in Mexico City, and National Concert Hall and Theater in Taipei. She performs regularly with the percussion group Red Fish Blue Fish under the direction of Steven Schick, as well as The Nonsense Company, a quartet dedicated to expanding the possibilities of contemporary music.
Ms. Huang is devoted to the creation of new works for percussion. She has commissioned new works from numerous composers including: Canadian Composers Gary Kulesha, Linda Bouchard, David Jaeger, Inouk Demers, Heather Schmidt, Chris Paul Harman, Rose Bolton and Alice Ho; American composers Rick Burkhardt, Sean Griffin, Derek Keller, Chris Mercer and Erik Ulman; Taiwanese composers Kuei-Ju Lin and Chia-Lin Pan.
Born in Taiwan, Ms. Huang immigrated to Canada when she was seventeen where she pursued her studies in percussion with members of Nexus. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the University of Toronto, a Premier Prix from Conservatoire Nationale de Region de Rueil-Malmaison in France. and a Doctor of the Music Arts degree from the University of California at San Diego. She is an assistant professor and Chair of the Percussion area at McGill University.