BEAMS AGM will be on July 11th at 11am 2026.
If you want to take part email info@beams.ca.
We are looking for board members and volunteers.
-- Abram (Secretary)
BEAMS AGM will be on July 11th at 11am 2026.
If you want to take part email info@beams.ca.
We are looking for board members and volunteers.
-- Abram (Secretary)

Drone Day 2026 May 30th
FREE Communal Drone 1PM to 5PM + bleeding heart artists Mika Haykowsky. Bring your own gear and come drone with us in 3 different drone jam rooms!
Samosas from 5pm to 7pm ($)
BEAMS Drone Performances $20 PWYC 7PM to 10PM featuring
Usable Parts then Dichotomos. Followed by,
Raylene Campbell and Dr. Nico. Followed by
Gozu Mezu and ATTOSECOND
All at St. Mary's Anglican Church
11203 68st.
Free Event (1-5pm) and $20 PWYC (7pm to 10pm)
All Ages
Sponsored and supported by Bleeding Heart Art Space, BEAMS, and AMAAS.
Poster by Parker Theissen!
BEAMS presents…
Art’s Birthday
Date: Saturday, January 17, 2026
Time: 8:00 pm MST
Where: Collins Studio Gallery (11741 – 94 Street)
One of the world’s most unusual celebrations of art is slated to take centre stage in the Alberta capital. Art’s Birthday Edmonton 2026, facilitated by the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society, holds court Saturday, Jan. 17 at 8 p.m. at Collins Studio Gallery (11741-94 Street).
The show will feature a wide range of Edmonton and out of town sound artists and experimental musicians, many of whom have garnered international reputations for their work. Featured on this year’s program is: XiME, Paula Kirman, Telepeasants, SkruntSkrunt, Wayne DeFehr, Bill Richards and Jacob Audrey Taves!
BEAMS has hosted this annual event in Edmonton since 2010, as part of a global tribute to art, an idea conceived by French surrealist Robert Filliou in 1963. He believed that a million years ago, art did not exist until a sponge was dropped into a pail of water, and picked his own birthday, Jan. 17, to celebrate the occasion. Charmed by the absurdity of the notion, artists, predominantly in Europe, have been celebrating Art’s Birthday ever since. A comprehensive background of the event and international listings are available on artsbirthday.net.
Admission to Art’s Birthday Edmonton 2025 is $10 for BEAMS members and $20 for non-members, although a BEAMS membership is included in the latter price.
The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) is a non-profit society dedicated to the promotion and production of sound art, experimental music and new media. Its membership consists of professional musicians, composers and performance artists from diverse backgrounds driven to create a voice for sound orientated art in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
This event is sponsored by the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS). BEAMS thanks them for their support!
Media Contact:
Shawn Pinchbeck
Facebook:
https://fb.me/e/8FC6ImSeI
BEAMS Art’s Birthday 2026
Call for live performances!
Submission Deadline: January 5, 2026!
We are seeking submissions of live performances for the BEAMS Art’s Birthday celebration happening at 8 pm on Saturday, January 17 at the Collins Studio Gallery (11741-94 St), Edmonton.
Performances should be no longer than 20 min and represent the genres of electroacoustic music, experimental music, electronic music, sound art, noise, improvisation, sound experimentation or soundy performance art.
Send your proposals by January 5th with the subject line “Art’s Bday 2026” to:
beams-submission@googlegroups.com
Art’s Birthday originated in 1963 when French surreal artist Robert Filliou declared that art didn’t exist until a million years ago when someone dropped a dry sponge into a pail of water. Choosing his own birthday of Jan. 17 to celebrate the event, Filliou proposed a public holiday, which has since been adopted by arts organizations and collectives in more than 20 nations worldwide. BEAMS has been hosting it yearly since 2010.
The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) is a non-profit society dedicated to the promotion and production of sound art, experimental music and new media. Its membership consists of professional musicians, composers and performance artists from diverse backgrounds driven to create a voice for sound orientated art in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
This event is sponsored by the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS). BEAMS thanks them for their continued support!
Contact:
info@beams.ca
www.beams.ca
BEAMS presents
Together Apart VI…an evening of audio wonderments
Call for live performances and videomusic works! Deadline November 8, 2025!
We are seeking submissions for live performances and videomusic works from sound and electroacoustic music artists of all kinds, up to 20 minutes in length. This year, we will have an 8 channel sound system available for multichannel works! A modest artist fee will be paid for the accepted submissions.
Together Apart is an evening of sound and electroacoustic music artists from around the world to be presented by the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) on November 29, 2025 at 8 pm at St. Mary’s Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and on our streaming channel: https://www.twitch.tv/beamsdotca
The previous five years’ events were very diverse with artists from Canada, UK, USA, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The performance and video works explored various facets of improvisation, modular synths, found sound objects, and location specific works. Their accompanying videos featured computer generated images, analogue video synthesizers, manipulated video, documentary style footage, 16 mm experimental film and documentation of the performance itself. We are again looking for diverse “audio wonderments” to share with our audience this year in a live setting!
Send your submissions by November 8th with the subject line “Together Apart VI” to:
beams-submission@googlegroups.com
Here’s a link to our 2024 event:
https://youtu.be/R1Pqfod9h_w?si=6RdrspARhMYsJaTH
The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) is a non-profit society dedicated to the promotion and production of sound art, experimental music and new media. Its membership consists of professional musicians, composers and performance artists from diverse backgrounds driven to create a voice for sound orientated art in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
This event is sponsored by the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS). BEAMS thanks them for their continued support!
Contact:
Shawn Pinchbeck
shawn@beams.ca
www.beams.ca
DroneDay 2025 in Edmonton on Saturday May 24th 2025 from 2pm to 10:30pm. We'll be in person at the the Collins Studio Gallery 11741 94 St NW, Edmonton, AB T5G 1J1, just off 118 Ave surrounded by restaurants, galleries, grocery stores, and convenience stores.
$5 PWYC for BEAMS MEMBERS
$10 for BEAMS MEMBERSHIP
$10 for membership + $5 PWYC for non members.
Here's the schedule for May 24th, 2025:
| Time of Day | Artist | Set | ||
| 2:00pm | paula eve kirman (all lowercase because i am cool) | 30 Minutes | ||
| 3:00pm | Wayne Defehr | 30 Minutes | ||
| 4:00pm | Jared Epp | 30 Minutes | ||
| 5:00pm | James Parrott | 45 Minutes | ||
| 6:00pm | Bibby Fibb | 30 Minutes | ||
| 7:00pm | Nathaniel Sutton | 45 Minutes | ||
| 8:00pm | Garlands | 45 Minutes | ||
| 9:00pm | Attasecond | 30 Minutes | ||
| 10:00pm | Gray Hartley and lunar blue | 30 Minutes |
https://forms.gle/KXjncMnAtyvUpyqM8
BEAMS Art’s Birthday 2025
Call for live performances!
Submission Deadline: January 6, 2025!
We are seeking submissions of live performances for the BEAMS Art’s Birthday celebration happening on January 17, 2025 at the Collins Studio Gallery at 11741-94 St, Edmonton.
Performances should be no longer than 20 min and represent the genres of electroacoustic music, experimental music, electronic music, sound art, noise, improvisation, sound experimentation or soundy performance art.
Send your proposals by January 6th with the subject line “Art’s Bday 2025” to:
beams-submission@googlegroups.com
Art’s Birthday originated in 1963 when French surreal artist Robert Filliou declared that art didn’t exist until a million years ago when someone dropped a dry sponge into a pail of water. Choosing his own birthday of Jan. 17 to celebrate the event, Filliou proposed a public holiday, which has since been adopted by arts organizations and collectives in more than 20 nations worldwide. BEAMS has been hosting it yearly since 2010.
The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) is a non-profit society dedicated to the promotion and production of sound art, experimental music and new media. Its membership consists of professional musicians, composers and performance artists from diverse backgrounds driven to create a voice for sound orientated art in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
This event is sponsored by the Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society (AMAAS). BEAMS thanks them for their continued support!
Contact:
info@beams.ca
What: OSPAC Openhouse!
When: Sept 27,28,29 but BEAMS is on Sept 29, 2024 at 1pm
Where: 8426 Gateway Blvd NW, Edmonton
AGM June 24 Monday at 12 noon.
Come to this page just before noon to see a zoom or a jitsi.com link for the video conference AGM.
https://meet.jit.si/moderated/4afbb495020bcc1f1ccaa38b1e3ec7dd87b13464a0e7b649861d1e53e9cc7fb1
On August 17th 2024 Edmonton noisefest will happen again at the Aviary!
Checkout https://noisefest.ca/ for more details.
Saturday May 25th, 2024, Idylwylde Community League, 3pm to midnight.
$10 for BEAMS members, and $10 for BEAMS memberships. Free for Idylwylde Community League members.
| Time On | Project Name | Duration | Performance Description |
| 15:00 | m.o.a.i.n. | 30 minutes | I will use some free software and Ableton live to improvise a live mixing variety of drones together for a complex dynamic of drone sound. |
| 15:30 | Brick Road | 45 minutes | I will drone using pure drone and other continuous sounds with electronic and acoustic instruments. |
| 16:15 | Microenvironment | 30 minutes | "Lost to time" An evolving layer of tension that slowly builds into a satisfying release. |
| 16:45 | Wayne Defehr | 45 minutes | This piece weaves drone tones drawn from the sounds of the environment, such as my field recordings of the wind at the UA farm, and the North Saskatchewan R., along with the sounds of the weather sensors on the roof of the UA department of Geography, recorded with a JSON script and the API from a Weather Canada site. |
| 17:30 | Dinosaur Dragondrone | 45 minutes | Building and maintaining an 'organic' feedback loop. Organic being not directly feeding the source signal back to itself...but relying on acoustic resonance and standing waves within the room to carry the sound. |
| 18:15 | Jared Epp | 30 minutes | I plan to perform a new composition, that will be part structured and part improvised. It will be electronic based and may include some loops of found sound recordings. |
| 18:45 | James Parrott | 1 hour | I plan to do a mix of improvised performance, plus a mix of field recordings and previous works. |
| 19:45 | Ghost Cars | 1 hour | A longform piece made with guitar, keyboard, and samples. |
| 20:45 | Matt McKenzie | 1 hour | Two or three compositions that explore ostinatos as a means of producing drones. Various synthesis techniques will be used including granular/sample-based. |
| 21:45 | Gary James Joynes / Clinker | 1 hour | Modular Synthesizer Drone Set |
| 22:45 | Gray Hartley | 30 minutes | Subject to change in the next 2 months but mainly just improvised guitar drones visually accompanied by the animated childhood trauma classic Watership Down |
| 23:15 | K.M. Toepfer | 45 minutes | I plan to perform an improvised piece of sustained tones and shifting, reverberating drone-scapes created with feedback from home stereo equipment as the source material. |
For immediate release
April 28, 2024
BEAMS celebrates a decade of drone
EDMONTON—The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society will commemorate National Drone Day, taking place Saturday, May 25, with an extensive live concert at Idylwylde Community Hall (8631-81 St.) starting at 3 pm. The event is expected to run until midnight.
Twelve artists from Edmonton and the surrounding region will perform sets varying in length from 30 minutes to an hour, performing drone music, often described as the taking the form of sustained sounds with a minimalist delivery. The repertoire of the acts playing that day (Brick Road, Wayne DeFehr, Dinosaur Dragondrone, Jared Epp, Ghost Cars, Gray Hartley, Gary James Joynes, Matt McKenzie, Microenvironment, m.o.a.i.n., James Parrott, and K.M. Toepfer) are slated to play a wide range of sounds from melodic tones to found-sound noise, which all fall under the requisites of what is considered drone.
The show takes place 10 years to the month of the first National Drone Day festivities, which first took place May 10, 2014. The event, first dreamed up by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, co-founder of alternative music distributor Weird Canada, has become a national and annual occurrence ever since.
“Drone Day is a reclamation of the idea of a holiday, of a community celebration with no purpose beyond a shared interest in drone music, a community and a marked moment in time,” said LeBlanc Flanagan to Grid City Magazine in 2015.
Tickets to the Edmonton festivities of National Drone Day are $20, $10 for BEAMS members. The show is free to members of the Idylwylde Community League.
Media Contact:
Abram Hindle
info@beams.ca