European Dates!

Hello Internet.

How has your pandemic been? Good? Cool! Lots has happened in the last little while…

I composed music for two contemporary dance pieces: Two x 30 for choreographer Michael Caldwell, and Note the Weather for Choreographer Mairead Filgate.

I spent a lot of time in the studio producing and mixing music for people and I started teaching in the Music Scoring for stage and Screen program at Sheridan College.

I released a bunch of music with my friend Mikhail Laxton under the name Blackbird Valley

I went on tour with my good friend Donovan Woods and played some shows with my friend Rose Cousins

And now…

I’m crossing the pond to play a bunch of shows with the lovely Jill Barber in Austria, after which I head to Berlin to play a solo piano show.

If you or anyone you know is in Austria between Oct 27 and Nov 5th, or the Berlin area on Nov 6th, come say hi! Check out my tour dates for details.

Imprint

I created this music for a beautiful community dance piece created by the beautiful and talented choreographer Meredith Thompson. It premiered at Toronto’s Dusk Dances in Withrow Park in 2019. It has recently been re-imagined in an online format for the 2021 Guelph dance festival, and will premier online tomorrow Saturday June 5th, 2021, here.

The score for this music which was composed, recorded, and mixed by yours truly is now available for donwload/purchase on Bandcamp. Please stop by My Page and check it out.

You can also buy/download my Album of original solo piano music, Oma, there.

Stay safe and hang in there everyone. I feel like this pandemic is getting under control and we are nearing the finish line!

Live Streams

Thanks to the generous support of a number of organizations this month has brought a couple of live streams my way in order to keep bringing the music of Oma to you live.

My next live stream is happening this saturday April 18th at 3pm. It will be a live performance of the whole album (Oma) directly from Union Sound company, the studio where I recorded it, on the piano that it was recorded on. the studio has been empty for the past several weeks and I have been given access to it for this special streaming performance. This stream is being brought to you through the #CanadaPerforms program, by the folks at the National Arts Centre, Slaight Music, SiriusXM Canada, the RBC Foundation, and Facebook.

If you missed the first one, this past Friday (April 10) I did another live stream from my house through the support of the people at Music Together (musictogether.ca), Shopify, Slaight Music, Arts and Crafts, and Ontario Creates. You can still watch this performance here if you missed it.

This program is open to all Ontario based musicians and provides payment to the artist for a 20-30 minutes live streaming performance providing vital support in this strange time. If you are an artist living in Ontario, please go to the website and apply!

If you want to support me or other artists that you love Please buy their albums and other merch! You can get my record on bandcamp or Stay home and listen. Both of these options provide a way to buy merch directly from the artist so that all funds go straight to them.

If you have not already please follow me on instagram, twitter, and like my page on facebook to stay up to date with the latest announcements. There will be lots of music coming your way throughout this period… I mean, what else am I gonna do???

Stay safe and stay home. Lets flatten this curve!

Photo by: Jen Squires

Oma – Canadian Tour Dates Announced!

This march, I’m taking the show on the road!!!!

My good friend and wonderful composer Joshua Van Tassel will be joining me on the road to start off the night.

Check out the dates below and please come out to one of the shows in a town near you, and tell your friends if they live in any of these spots. It promises to be a beautiful night of music. Here are the tour dates with links to buy tickets. Hope to see you out there this march.

March 11, 2020 8pm

The Bassment, Saskatoon, SK

March 13, 2020 9pm

King Eddy, Calgary, AB

March 17, 2020 7pm

Central Library, Halifax, NS

Free Event

March 28, 2020 8:30pm

March 31, 2020 9pm

Café Resonance, Montreal, QC

April 2, 2020 8pm

Heliconian Hall, Toronto, ON

DoubleTooth: Volume 1

https://doubletooth.bandcamp.com/

Double Tooth’s Volume 1 is a sonic psychedelic journey inspired by the music of Nigeria in the 1960’s. After falling in love with the music made in this period and investigating the technical limitations they dealt with while still making amazing sounding recordings, the charm of working with what the tools you have became clear to us. Recordings were done with limited numbers of microphones, and limited recording equipment in general. So, with this in mind, we set out guidelines to make music that was honest, raw and in the spirit of the recordings made at that time. 

Volume 1 was made by 2 people in 1 room. All of the recordings were made in a small basement studio using one microphone, one preamp, one guitar amp, and whatever instruments we had in the room and could play at a reasonably competent level. Our goal was to shut out the inner critic and limitless technical possibilities modern recording offers us. Strip it down, take it back to playing and reacting and making some music that makes us feel good. 

Although the rhythm and feel of this record is heavily influenced by the Nigerian sound, we DID NOT set out to make an afro-beat record. This record is meant to be a collection of instrumental songs that were written, and recorded with a specific aesthetic and approach in mind. Thats all. We love the rhythms that we heard in those early recordings from Nigeria, and decided to use those feels as a launch pad for our writing. Team Double Tooth respects the fine line between taking influence and appropriation. 

Volume 1 is the first of what promises to be a long line of albums that Double Tooth produces. We plan to continue to make instrumental albums that follow a similar set of restrictive rules from volume to volume. Its hard to say what the next source of inspiration will be, but the main idea is that all of the records will be made following specific rules set by us (Robbie Grunwald and Joshua Van Tassel) that help us to be as musically creative as possible . We’re very excited about this project and hope that you’ll enjoy listening to it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it. Stay tuned for Volume 2… 

credits

released August 5, 2014 

Robbie Grunwald: Fender Rhodes, Micromoog, Roland Juno 6, Bass, Guitar, Glockenspiel, congas, hand claps 
Joshua Van Tassel: Drums, congas, shakers, misc percussion, glockenspiel, hand claps, psychedelics 
Dean Drouillard: Thrashy Guitar solo on Poisonous Cloud 
Devon Henderson: Whistling on Four Magnificent Miles 
All songs Composed, Produced, and Recorded by Robbie Grunwald and Joshua Van Tassel at the Verge Music Lab Underground 
Mixed by Joshua Van Tassel 
Mastered by Reuben Ghose at Mojito Mastering (www.mojitomastering.com
Logo and font design by Ryan Lake (www.ryanlake.com)