Artist Spotlight

Pianist Minna Re Shin presents a new album “Sonate Tableaux”

In collaboration with ombú productions and the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation, Gallery Gora of Montreal welcomes on June 15th the Canadian pianist Minna Re Shin who will publicly present her most recent multidisciplinary project based on the four-movement work for piano solo by Canadian composer Alain Payette, Sonate Tableaux, which serves as the inspiration for the recording of a digital album and video.

Indulge in the live performance of this dynamic pianist and feel the intense passion and musical poetry that will come to life under her deft fingers. Enjoy the public presentation of the music video which has recently garnered recognition, honours, and distinctions on the international scene, including the Best Classical Music Video Award at the 5th Music Film Festival (Buenos Aires), the Jury Diamond Award for Best Short Music Video at the March 2022 edition of the Europe Film Festival U.K., and the Judge’s Choice Award for Music Video at the 2022 Winter session of the World Premiere Film Awards (Los Angeles). Marvel at the multidisciplinary collaboration among the Canadian female artists who have join forces for the first time in this creative interpretation coloured by the interplay of different art forms (music, painting, dance, and theatre).

With your presence, you will support the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation in its continuous role in raising awareness and funding for cutting-edge research, groundbreaking innovation, and patient-support programs, and offering hope to breast cancer fighters, survivors, caregivers, and communities.

To purchase tickets for the benefit launch concert event on June 15th, please visit https://pianist-minna-re-shin-launch-concert-june-2022.eventbrite.ca.

The digital album will be available online via CD Baby; please visit www.minnareshin.com/discography/ for updates and direct links to CD Baby for purchase.

Women: Source of Inspiration for the Project

Sonate Tableaux, featuring the musical performance by Minna Re Shin, embraces the theme of beauty, the dynamics of the female body and its movement quality, the empowerment of women, and their role in the art world. Through the prism of her solo piano performance, painter Natalija Jeremic, ballet dancer Catherine Toupin, and mime artist Laurence Castonguay Emery present their interpretations of the Canadian pianist’s rendition of the composer’s work, permitting other women’s voices to be heard through the different art forms featured in the original and multifaceted presentation. The visual musical rendition of the neo-romantic composition interweaves with the imaginative interplay of cinematic applications inspired by the music and the artwork associated with the four movements or “tableaux” of Payette’s piano œuvre.

Minna Re Shin: Pianist and Performing Artist

Winner of numerous prizes in national and international competitions, the Montreal-born pianist of Asian heritage Minna Re Shin has graced the classical music stage with her virtuoso technique, mature artistry, stage personality, and rare sensitivity. This versatile artist has won enthusiasm for her performances of diverse repertoire, including new, lesser familiar works by lesser-known composers who are under-represented on the Canadian and world stage. Here at home and overseas, critics and audiences alike have raved about her performances as “intense,” “inspiring,” and “powerful.” In the words of the legendary Russian pianist Lazar Berman, “Minna Re Shin and her great talent.”

Since her solo début at the age of ten with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, this dynamic artist has performed in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia and has received high praise as recitalist, as chamber pianist, and as soloist in concerts with major orchestras, such as the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, and the chamber orchestra I Musici de Montréal, and with distinguished conductors like Charles Dutoit, Marc David, and Jacques Lacombe. She has played in many concert series and festivals, including the prestigious International Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt where she made her Austrian début.

Minna Re Shin has also been lauded as a recording artist. Her début CD devoted to Haydn piano sonatas on the ombú productions label has been released to great critical acclaim. Le Journal de Montréal hailed her as a “great performer with great sensitivity and intelligence.” Following the success of this recording, Shin has embarked on a multi-recording project with ombú. Her second solo album, Images & Ballades, which features works by the Canadian composers Alain Payette and Jean Coulthard, was applauded by Paroles et Musique: “the pianist’s interpretation is impeccable; it was as if these two composers had lent her their pen.” Her most recent music album Sonate Tableaux celebrates the world premiere performance of this unknown work, and the complementary performance video marks her début as producer.

For a preview of the video Sonate Tableaux, please visit
www.minnareshin.com/video

To listen to the album Sonate Tableaux, please visit
www.minnareshin.com/media/sonate-tableaux

www.minnareshin.com

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Album Review

Cognitive Constellation Corps blurs humanity and technology on “Thank You for Your Feedback (I)” album

In a world of notifications and automated responses, algorithms, and feedback requests, Cognitive Constellation Corps finds something unexpectedly human inside the machinery. “Thank You for Your Feedback (I)” is an alt-pop exploration of connection, isolation, communication, and the increasingly complicated relationship between people and technology, transforming familiar procedural language into something else.

Created by Brooke Tamsin Clevenger, a Belfast-based artist, the project’s principal composer, lyricist, producer, and conceptual director, the album is deliberately constructed around what happens to human emotion when our lives are increasingly structured by systems that process information rather than necessarily understand feelings. The album opens with “Opening Loop (i),” which introduces that world through the idea of repetition, linking software loops to the habits we humans learn in modern life.

Followed by “Signal Received (i),” the track becomes more fragile, a mix of bubbling electronic movement and the promise of waiting for a response. It picks up the strange emotional weight that can be behind something as simple as a digital signal. “Thank You For Your Feedback (i)” examines the pressure to be constantly evaluated, and “Echo Chamber (i)” reflects on how digital interaction creates intimacy and amplifies alienation. “The Curve of Clarity (i)” is a road toward understanding where data and human realization begin to converge.

Artist Spotlight

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Shawn Brown’s new single, “What a Way to Go,” is a guitar-heavy rock-pop anthem that makes doomed young love, instability, and survival something ferociously cathartic. The single, produced by celebrated musician and producer Grecco Buratto, fully embraces the scope of its story. Brown doesn’t turn heartbreak into a quiet, inward experience, but he energizes it, giving it drive and urgency.

“What a Way to Go” is a relationship against impossible odds, and the emotional tension is the clash between a world that feels like it’s falling apart and the stubbornness of two people who won’t let go of each other. That tension is what makes the song dramatic, but it also allows Brown to aim for a bigger, more explosive sound.

Recorded at The Trench in Portland with engineer Gregg Williams and the full Shawn Brown Band and trusted creative team, including Ben Landsverk, Jeff Langston, Ned Failing, Tiago Becker, and Juan Garcia Petri. Their combined presence adds to the muscular, expansive character of the single that one would expect from an anthem of this magnitude.

Brown handles the emotional commitment with confidence, true to its survivalist spirit, and pairs the guitars with a performance that feels immediate rather than remote. “What a Way to Go” is one of Shawn Brown’s most electrifying releases, blending raw rock power with the emotional openness of a love story that won’t go quietly. It’s raw, loud, passionate, and unapologetically alive.

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