Acclaimed ambient, experimental musicians Julianna Barwick and loscil share the stage for the first time to immerse audiences in their ethereal soundscapes and hypnotic new live AV performances.
Los Angeles–based composer, vocalist, and producer Julianna Barwick creates ethereal reflective sounds rooted in the human voice. Her largely wordless soundscapes, built from layered vocal loops, are hypnotic and transportive. Barwick returns to Vancouver with a new live AV show drawing on music from her brilliant 2020 album, Healing is a Miracle, which was praised by The Guardian as a “ravishing … balm for the soul”. By stretching, looping and layering her voice into interweaving harmonies, Barwick creates ethereal sound worlds “that feel totally her own” (Loud and Quiet).
Vancouver ambient legend loscil rarely performs live but, when he does, it is a singular opportunity to become immersed in the swirling depths of his signature sound. loscil is the alias of Vancouver musician Scott Morgan and, for more than two decades, he has remained at the forefront of ambient and electroacoustic music.
Now more than 20 albums deep into his solo music career, Morgan has expanded into the worlds of scoring film and television projects ranging from The Corporation, Scared Sacred, Damnation, Enlighten Us, and Abandoned, to The Marshall Projects’s award-winning series We Are Witnesses.
For this special VIFF Live performance, loscil offers a new live AV set comprising music and visual work drawn from his moving, meditative 2025 album, Lake Fire, inspired in part by bearing witness to a season of BC’s raging wildfires and hailed as a “profoundly dense and beautiful, contemplative work that offers both solace and insight in turbulent times” (Igloo Magazine).
Don’t miss this unforgettable journey into sight and sound.
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Guests
Julianna Barwick
Julianna Barwick is a Los Angeles-based composer, vocalist, and producer who makes deep, reflective compositions rooted in the human voice. Over the years she has made six critically acclaimed records, including her self-released debut Sanguine in 2007, followed by Florine in 2009, and The Magic Place in 2011. In 2013, she released Nepenthe, which marked Barwick’s first steps into collaborating, working with producer and film composer Alex Somers in Reykjavík. She expanded her parameters further on Will, her 2016 album, enlisting more collaborators in Mas Ysa’s Thomas Arsenault, Dutch cellist Maarten Vos, and Chairlift percussionist Jamie Ingalls. In July 2020 she released Healing Is A Miracle, which featured Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Mary Lattimore, and Nosaj Thing, and earned Pitchfork’s coveted “Best New Music” for 2020.
Julianna has played shows with Yoko Ono, The Flaming Lips, Philip Glass, Tim Hecker, Grouper, Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius, and more. Her many collaborations include, among others, the NYC dance company balletcollective, Ecstatic Music Festival, and an EP with Rafael Anton Isarri on the super-limited Thesis label. She released the Circumstance Synthesis EP, on RVNG Intl. sub-label Commend There, which included excerpts from a lobby score in partnership with Microsoft A.I., responding to the environment in the downtown sky from New York’s Sister City Hotel in 2019.
Julianna took a natural step into the world of composing for film when she co-scored the short film I Remember Nothing. She has since gone on to score a number of short films and documentaries and is now more actively pursuing this area of her career, taking on more scoring opportunities alongside her artist work.
Photo by Clara Marshall
loscil
loscil is the electronic music project of Canadian composer and multimedia artist Scott Morgan. For over 20 years, Morgan has built a robust catalogue of work under the loscil moniker, loosely spanning the genres of ambient, classical, and electroacoustic music. Since 2001, the vast majority of Loscil albums, including the 2021 LP Clara have been released on the esteemed American imprint, Kranky. Alongside keystone editions for Kranky such as Plume, Endless Falls, Sea Island and Monument Builders, Morgan has produced numerous special projects, books, remixes, and collaborations with other labels such as Ghostly International and Glacial Movements and artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Murcof/Vanessa Wagner, bvdub, Sarah Neufeld, Daniel Bejar, Rachel Grimes, and Lawrence English. After meeting at the Banff Centre in 2014, Morgan started the duo High Plains with Madison-based cellist Mark Bridges, releasing their debut album, Cinderland, on Kranky in 2017.
Morgan has composed for film and television and licensed music to bold documentaries, including The Corporation, Scared Sacred, Damnation, Enlighten Us, Abandoned and The Marshall Projects’s award-winning series We Are Witnesses. Morgan’s bespoke music and video can be found supporting contemporary dance productions, including works by choreographers Damien Jalet from Belgium and Vanessa Goodman from Vancouver. The 2022 self-released double album The Sails features nearly two hours of work from over eight years of collaborations with dancers and choreographers. Applying his 10 years of experience in game audio, Morgan has also created music for games and interactive multimedia projects including Hundreds, Osmos, Lifelike, and his own generative music application ADRIFT released in 2015.
As a touring entity, Morgan has brought his live audio-visual performances to festivals worldwide including Mutek, Le Guess Who, LEV, Gamma Fest, Sled Island, Today’s Art, WOS, Open Frame, and Big Ears.
Morgan is based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlí̓lwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
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