Rebecca Foon
Rebecca Foon is a Canadian cellist, vocalist, composer and visual artist. Foon currently records under her own name, as well as the alias Saltland, and is a member and co-founder of the modern chamber ensemble Esmerine. She also works with her sister Aliayta Foon-Dancoes.
Summary of career
Foon has been a member of several groups associated with the post-rock, experimental, and chamber music scenes of Montreal and New York City, including Set Fire to Flames, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Colin Stetson's Gorecki Symphony of Sorrow ensemble. Esmerine's Turkish folk-influenced album Dalmak, released in 2013, received the Juno Award for Instrumental Album of the Year in 2014, as did their 2022 album Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More.In 2013, Foon released her first Saltland album, which Exclaim.ca described as a "combination of genres from dream pop to chamber music to ambient and shoegaze". Her follow-up album, A Common Truth, was praised by The Skinny.
In 2020, Foon released Waxing Moon, her first album under her own name. She has also composed soundtracks for film and museum projects.
Early life
Rebecca Foon was born in 1978 in Canada, and raised in Vancouver. She is the daughter of art educator and producer Jane Howard Baker, and playwright, producer, screenwriter, and novelist Dennis Foon.Music career
Early years
In 1996, when she was 17, Foon moved to Montreal from Vancouver, and soon became involved in the city's DIY music scene. She has been a member of several groups associated with the post rock, experimental and chamber music scene of Montreal, including ongoing collaborations with musicians who are members of post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor as well as indie rock band Arcade Fire. Among her earliest projects, in 1995, Foon teamed up with Spencer Krug and Rachel Levine, forming the instrumental string/piano/accordion-based trio Fifths of Seven. Foon collaborated with choreographer Alyson Vishnovska to perform in the 1999 edition of the Edgy Women Festival.A Silver Mt. Zion
Soon after moving to Montreal, Foon began playing cello and composing with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, a band that formed in Montreal in 1999. Foon joined in 2000, when the band expanded from a trio into a sextet. Foon plays on the band's second album, Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward, released in 2001 on Constellation Records. The minimalist album was well received by music critics, including Allmusic and Pitchfork Media. The band toured in 2001 in Europe. That year Foon began playing in the associated band Set Fire to Flames as well.The next Silver Mt. Zion album, "This Is Our Punk-Rock," Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing, released in 2003, saw no change in the core line-up, excluding the inclusion of a makeshift choir. The album was essentially created as a requiem for open and abandoned spaces in Montreal, as well as for similar loss and decay around the world, due to either urban development or military action. Foon continued to perform live and recorded two more records with the band while she began working on other projects. Horses in the Sky was the band's first to include lyrics on every track, with Foon contributing to the vocals and also helping mix the recording. In 2008, Silver Mt. Zion toured Europe and North America. That summer, Foon and several other members resigned from the band.
Set Fire to Flames
In 2001, she became a member of the Montreal post-rock band Set Fire to Flames. The band released two albums before it split in 2003, and many of their tracks are minimalist in nature, filled with ambient noise and other non-musical sound effects, juxtaposed or combined with instrumental music. 2001 saw her contribute to the band's debut Sings Reign Rebuilder. The album was recorded in a century old house apparently bound for destruction. As such, several sounds usually edited out of the recording process, including creaking floors, paper shuffling and outside noises such as police sirens were left intact on the final album. The album met with positive reviews from Pitchfork Media, Allmusic, and Sputnikmusic.Two years later, in 2003, she again contributed to Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static by Set Fire to Flames. Recorded in a barn in Ontario, the release utilizes guitars, basses, strings, horns, glockenspiel, marimba, bass clarinet, saw, cymbalon, hurdy-gurdy, music boxes, modified electronics, and contact microphones. The album was even more experimental than the previous, and met with mixed reviews from magazines such as Sputnik.
Esmerine
In 2001, Foon co-founded the chamber rock group Esmerine with percussionist Bruce Cawdron. The two had met while recording Set Fire to Flames' debut album. However, instead of using the guitar-focused sound of their other projects, the duo initially focused on marimba and cello, drawing on minimalist classical music and chamber music. The band initially performed their original music in gigs around Montreal.Esmerine released their debut album, If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True, in 2003. Allmusic gave it 4/5 stars and called it "a sublime chamber rock album," stating "A French female name meaning quiet and sensitive, Esmerine is a fitting moniker for the overall sound." They released their second album Aurora in 2005. Afterwards, Foon dedicated more time to Thee Silver Mt. Zion, though she continued to periodically perform with Esmerine in Montreal, often bringing in guest artists or collaborating with other groups.
''La Lechuza'' and ''Dalmak''
As Esmerine, Foon and Bruce Cawdron began writing new music together in earnest in 2009, when their friend Lhasa de Sela invited them to open up for her as well as collaborate together. For their third album, La Lechuza, two new members joined the group: Sarah Pagé, a harp player, and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Barr. Released in 2011, La Lechuza was listed as one of the top ten underground records of the year in Mojo.La Lechuza is thus dedicated to Lhasa de Sela. The band collaborated with Patrick Watson on the album and released a song entitled "Snow Day for Lhasa", as well as created a site – – dedicated to Lhasa. Patrick Watson also contributed vocals on two songs and produced the album, with other guests contributing, including violinist Sarah Neufeld and saxophonist Colin Stetson.
After Barr and Page became occupied with their other projects, Esmerine added two new members to their touring lineup: percussionist Jamie Thomson and multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson. After a number of live performances, the quartet began writing new material in early 2012. After performing in Istanbul, the band was invited to return for an artist residency later that year. They decided to turn a rented loft into a makeshift recording studio, and recorded an album in the loft, collaborating with Turkish musicians they had met there; they later toured together. Among the guest musicians were Hakan Vreskala, Baran Aşık, Ali Kazim Akdağ, and James Hakan Dedeoğlu, who contributed instruments such as the bendir, darbuka, erbane, meh, barama, saz, and electric guitar. The album, Dalmak, was completed in the winter of 2012 and 2013 at Breakglass Studios in Montreal, with engineer Jace Lasek. The word "dalmak" means "immerse" in Turkish. It can also be interpreted as "to dive into," "to contemplate," and "to be absorbed in." The album, Dalmak, was released in 2013 and awarded Instrumental Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2014. The Line of Best Fit said the album featured "experimental noises that blur the line between post-rock, minimalist electronica and Turkish folk."