bios

 

 

Carla HALLETT, vocalist and French horn, studied at the School of Music, University of British Columbia. She participated in master classes with Phillip Myers (principal horn, New York Philharmonic) and toured China with the Port Angeles Symphony. Then, following a different muse, she became one of the founding members of the Robert Minden Ensemble, reaching beyond the French horn for investigations into voice and unconventional instruments.
“One morning I was carrying a load of fire wood into the studio, when a small log slipped from my arms and fell to the stony steps. It made a beautiful sound. And just as I realized this, another log slipped away. It was larger and sounded deeper. Intrigued, I slowly spilled my armful of logs onto the steps and listened to their delightful melody, like water running in a brook.”
As experimental musician-composer, Hallett joins her voice with the sounds of the carpenter’s saw, the theremin, found sound and invented instruments.  In 2000, as a recipient of a Canada Council sound recording grant and an artist at the Leighton Studios of The Banff Centre, she co-wrote and co-produced the CD, are you now. She formed the DUO with Robert Minden in 1997 and tours and records internationally.

 Robert MINDEN’s background in diverse disciplines inform his work as a storyteller, composer, photographer and teacher. After studying classical piano and composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto he went on to pursue a career in sociology. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the University of California at Berkeley. As a sociologist, he taught at several universities. In 1970 he accepted the position of visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University Of California at Santa Cruz. It was here where he crossed paths with an unforgettable street musican, saw player Thomas Jefferson Scribner.

Minden's interest in developing photography as a research method in sociology evolved into a career as a photographic artist. His photographs are in the permanent collection of The Canadian Museum Of Contemporary Photography, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona and other public and private collections. It has been published and exhibited internationally.

Investigations into acoustic sound and invented instruments together with a love of storytelling led to the creation of the Robert Minden Ensemble in 1986. The Ensemble toured internationally for ten years. His compositions have been featured on CBC Radio and National Public Radio's "John Schaefer's "New Sounds". His work for young audience, continues to be celebrated by educators for helping children discover their creativity. In 1997 he created the DUO with Carla Hallett embarking on a new musical adventure. A virtuoso on the musical saw he has performed under the baton of Kent Nagano, with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and as a thereminist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Bramwell Tovey.

 

  Nancy WALKER creates the art work and graphics for the on going endeavors of Robert Minden and Carla Hallett. She has been collaborating on artistic projects with Minden since 1981. Walker, not being a musician herself, also takes great pride in the fact that Minden and Hallett actually use some of her musical ideas. Go figure... because her background is entirely in visual arts. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr College of Art and Design, studied silver and metalsmithing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and at the New England School of Art in Boston, Massachusetts. Since she cannot play the musical saw, (it is not as easy as it looks), she glues tiny glass beads onto the entire surface of the blade of the saw. They are always included in her exhibitions. You can see a detail from her latest beaded saw. It is the cover art of the Duo’s latest CD are you now. She also works in clay and constantly has to hide her pieces from the Duo’s interminable sound explorations. Although a few, with just the right timbre, have found their way into the recordings and performances.