Montreal-based musician IDATONINATO has an ear for the unknown and a deep interest in sonic phenomenons. She explores and bonds with reverberant spaces, with which she creates most of her music. A solid contemporary music background and her own daring intuitions are the two pillars of her composition practice. After Strangeness is Gratitude, her debut full length record, she recorded We Become Giants at the Tank Center for Sonic Arts (Colorado) and released it on Dragon’s eye Recordings. Inspired by the 40 seconds reverb of this giant metal water tank and infused with electronic processing in studio, this album has been described as “a marvel of technique and emotion, of patience and careful post-production, combining long near-silences with beautiful and terrifying reverberant tones that multiply in fractal form, each detail as rich and intense as its source” [Exclaim].
When she is not scavenging underground places of sonic wonders, Toninato dwells in collaboration with some of the most brilliant creators from Montreal and above, cherishing a wide variety of artistic experiences.
As an artist-in-residence at Avatar centre with composer Pierre-Luc Lecours, she created and premiered for Mutek 2021 Inner Seas, an ambitious performance mixing live audiogenerated video, synthetizer, electric guitar and baritone saxophone.
Deeply involved in the improvised music community, she envisioned and premiered L'Atlas des films de Giotto, a full length show for 9 improvisers, 2 video artists, light design and 4 composers.
Thirsty for deep connection with her audience, Toninato opened in 2021 a new chapter in her artistic production by diving head first in the virtual reality technology. Along with producer Claude Bastien from Studio TREBUCHET, Toninato created Listening to the Walls, a 15 minutes VR experience taking the user in the belly of a disaffected bunker and inviting him/her to explore its acoustic, eventually meeting with the spirit of the sound living there.
In her work, the collaboration with audio artists and recording engineers is of extreme importance. Rich conversations emerge from the synergy of two pillars of the creative arc: one generates sound, one captures. Both listen and enrich each other visions. A sonic documentary, Le Rêve d'Ida, has been done on this creative tandem by Frédéric Dallaire, featuring audio artists Chantal Dumas and Ariel Harrod.
Ida Toninato performs with viola d’amore player and singer-songwriter Jennifer Thiessen with whom she recorded The Space Between Us, their JUNO-nominated album. Another of her collaboration involves laptop musician and spatialist Ana Dall’Ara-Majek. Together they form the duo Jane/KIN, mixing improvisation and full-dome spatialisation. Their A/V performance IisIIIIisIIIIIIIIII, using heartbeat sensors plugged to members of the audience, was premiered at the Society forTechnological Arts in Montreal and part of the first Dome World Tour.
She develops her work in residencies across the globe, from Brazil (Goethe Institut, Salvador de Bahia) to Germany (Hellerau center for the arts) and is, at the moment, focused on new compositions for electric guitar quartet and improvisers ensemble.
Crédit photo : Antoine Amnotte-Dupuis