Music
Albums
My work on these CDs made in collaboration with other performers uses a combination of new music improvisation and contemporary jazz to create (for me) fresh sounding music that is rich in vitality and interest.
Uncountable Spheres
Describes a journey from our earth’s core gravitational forces up through our troposphere where we live impacted by climate change, and rising further into our distressed stratosphere and beyond. Our experimental cello and piano free improvisations continue to imagine a passage through the wonderful ethereal nature of the different levels of our atmosphere’s protective mesosphere and thermosphere until we reach the very edge of the exosphere where atoms and molecules escape into space and satellites orbit the earth. As we encounter the weightlessness of space we begin our search for unexplored worlds.
Here on our fragile sphere for only a tiny fraction of the immense universe, our atmospheric cello and piano free improvisations are both a sliver and an eternity of hope; radiating through a moment in time.
Uncountable Spheres Reviews
Outside The Maze
This album is “Outside” – the wild spontaneous nature of our music, “The Maze” – the complex environment in which we all live. This music invites you to step ‘outside the maze’, and to hear music from a unique and fascinating perspective.
Outside The Maze Reviews
Light through dark
This EP is a collaboration between pianist Bill Gilliam, flutist Bill McBirnie, and electroacoustic artist Eugene Martynec who are performers / composers with different musical backgrounds of improvised new music, electroacoustic sound creation and jazz. This trio shares a strong, sympathetic commitment to free improvising, as well as a mutual fascination with the mystery of creating spontaneous compositions.
Light Through Dark is a spellbinding journey through shaded land and seascapes, illuminated by joyful and spontaneous sparks of improvisatory interplay.
Light Through Dark Reviews
Counterstasis refracted voices
This album is a spontaneously composed exploration of gestures and sonorities connected to new chamber music, free jazz, sound art, experimental, and other creative music traditions. Gilliam, Hall, and Sorbara draw on a wide variety of traditional and extended techniques and employ both conventional and bent approaches to melodicism, groove, and chromatic harmony. Their music is expanded by Hall’s real-time triggering and processing of his wind instruments using a
sound design workstation by Kyma as well as OMax
artificial intelligence improvising software and a CataRT Audio Mosaic Concatenative Synthesis program; both from the Paris-based research institute, IRCAM.
Refracted Voices Reviews
entangled pathways
Entangled Pathways (released Oct 2017) is a collection of original music performed by this acoustic trio with Bill Gilliam (piano, prepared piano), Kayla Milmine (soprano sax) and Ambrose Pottie (drum set) who met through the Toronto Improvisor’s Orchestra (TIO). Some pieces are composed using free floating melodies, jazz idioms and modal-chromatic tonalities while others are freely improvised creations. This music offers reflections on the rapidly changing and entangled terrains we live in and the many imagined pathways we could take.
Entangled Pathways Reviews
Ensorcell
These solo piano pieces are inspired by my desire to create complete compositions as spontaneously and freely as possible through new music and jazz improvisation using my intuition to guide and structure the gestures, themes, tonalities, rhythms and moods that come to me. I like to follow my sources and see where they lead me through images of nature’s elements and life forms moving through abstract landscapes of light and shade and texture. Ensorcell expresses how I am captivated and respond to these ideas through my impromptu creations which I hope you enjoy.
Ensorcell Reviews
Signposts
Signposts is the collaboration between composers Bill Gilliam & Charlie Ringas performing prepared piano and percussion with spoken word. These pieces are based on the poetry and writings of Ivor Cutler, Don Van Vliet, Alan Lightman and Rumi. We perform these evocative texts and poetry to signpost our sound explorations with musical improvisations.
Spirit Matter
This CD was recorded in 2000 and released in 2001. On this album, Bill continues to explore the musical possibilities between contemporary jazz and new music with compositions that are inspired by a desire to reconcile the irrational with the inevitable. This CD features a heavy hitting line-up of hot Toronto jazz talent with composer/pianist Bill Gilliam, Ernie Tollar (sax), Kevin Turcotte (trumpet), Duncan Hopkins (bass), Toronto-based Ben Riley (drums) and guest percussionist Mark Duggan. “Spirit Matter” was co-produced, mixed and mastered by two time Juno award winner recording engineer of the year (1992, 2001) Jeff Wolpert.
Urban Undercurrents
The rich and eclectic music of this ensemble evolved from Bill’s unique piano playing and writing style that combines contemporary jazz with nuances of new music performed by some of Toronto’s hottest jazz players. Ernie Tollar’s lyrical sax improvisations on these bitter sweet melodies with Lina Allemano on trumpet and Bill’s compelling piano style, are underscored on this album by Howard Gaul on drums and Dave Young on bass engaged in a masterful interplay of driving grooves and sensitive accompaniment.