Day 2: Evening Concerts

Day 2 evening concerts will include a new film by Mario Rossi : Wild Track with music directed by Gerry Rossi, a new piece for GIO by Douglas T. Ewart : Concentric, a new piece newly developed for GIO by India's Surbhi Mittal (aka Pale Blue Dotter) and from ICE, Fay Victor's Flow to the Next.

Mario Rossi and Gerry Rossi

The celebrated artist Mario Rossi is originally from Glasgow and so this becomes a homecoming for him. He and our own Gerry Rossi collaborate on a brand new film/ art/music piece : Wild Track.

Painter and sculptor, born in Glasgow, where from 1975–9 he studied sculpture at the School of Art. From 1979–81 he did a postgraduate sculpture course at Royal College of Art. He was Gulbenkian Scholar at the British School in Rome in 1982–3. Rossi was artist-in-residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1988–9. Although trained as a sculptor Rossi became well known as a painter and draughtsman, his work juxtaposing images from classical antiquity with those of contemporary life and society.

His work ranges across media, with particular emphasis on painting in its broadest terms. His recent work examines the enduring potential of the painted image, the interplay between cinema and painting and disrupting structures of representation.

He presents a new film for GIOfest: Wild Track – a highly charged series of overlapping images and sequences relating to geopolitics, identity and migration.

His work is held in Arts Council Collection, England; V&A, London; The Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and the Saatchi Gallery, London. From 2000 to 2004 he co-curated a number of exhibitions under the title ‘strangers to ourselves’ that examined and brought into focus the geopolitics of migration. He is a senior lecturer and pathway leader in BA fine art at Central Saint Martins, UAL London.

Douglas T. Ewart

The polymath Douglas R. Ewart has been honoured for his work as a composer, musician, improvising multi-instrumentalist, conceptual artist, sculptor, mask and instrument designer, builder, philosopher and more. As an educator, Ewart bridges his kaleidoscopic activities with a vision that opposes today’s divided world by culture-fusing works that aim to restore the wholeness of communities and their members, and to emphasize the reality of the world’s interdependence. From Kingston Jamaica, Ewart immigrated to Chicago and connected with Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—he later served as chairman from 1979-1987 and into the millennium.

Surbhi Mittal, aka Pale Blue Dotter

Surbhi Mittal, aka Pale Blue Dotter, is a sound artist, musician, and deep listening practitioner based from Delhi, India. She was a participant in the 2022 Westben Virtual Residency for Performer-Composers, an online collaborative exchange with musicians from around the world, taking part in the development of a multimedia piece and webpage involving field recordings of birds in conjunction with electronic and acoustic instruments. A former member of FemWAV – a collective of female artists focused on creating initiatives that provide possibilities for women to channel their creativity through music –, Surbhi advocates for the representation of women in electronic music and intersectional commitment to social change.

Her stories explore themes of multispecies existence, human behaviour and ecological collapse through sound art and text. Gravitating towards an intuitive understanding of sound, she interweaves melody, spoken word & field recordings into durational immersions and speculative experiences. Her instruments include synthesisers, microphones & voice.

ICE / Fay Victor

Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a multidisciplinary collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to building and innovating collaborative environments in order to inspire audiences to reimagine how they experience contemporary music and sound.

The Ensemble creates a mosaic musical ecosystem as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), honouring the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, recording, and performing the works of living artists.

Co-founded in 2001 by flutist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Claire Chase, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works. The Ensemble has given performances at Warsaw Autumn, TIME:SPANS, Berliner Festspiele, HEAR NOW Los Angeles, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Ojai Music Festival, and Big Ears Festival as well as in venues such as the Dutch National Opera, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Japan Society, Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center, Fridman Gallery, Chelsea Factory, NYU Skirball and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Joining George Lewis, Douglas T. Ewart and our European guest artists, GIOfest welcomes four key members of the ICE from New York:

Fay Victor, voice
Jonathan Finalyson, trumpet
Clara Warnaar, percussion
Kyle Armbrust, viola

ICE’s Fay Victor, who will be presenting her piece, Flow to the Next.

Festival passes

Festival passes can be bought here.

Passes grant access to GIOFest's full programme, however you must still book a free ticket for each event you want to attend.