Publik Secrets is a Vancouver-based arts organization dedicated to creative music projects and artist-led collaboration. Through participatory programs, gamelan ensembles, and concert series, we create spaces where sound becomes a way of thinking, gathering, and imagining together. For over ten years, our gamelan ensembles have been a platform for contemporary music, creative instrument making, and educational workshops. Within our projects we seek to assert music as always much more than a time-based medium of aesthetic interest, but as a material extension of our thinking and interaction with the world, and thus as a form of world-building that can bring new communities into existence.
we are located in unceded xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ territories, Vancouver
CONTACT: info [at] publiksecrets.com
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Contributors
George Rahi
George Rahi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. His practice spans installations, instrument making, performance, and projects for radio, theatre, and public space. His work has been recognized with awards such as the Canadian Music Centre’s Adaskin Prize, Lab30 Audience Award, Canada Council Guest of Honour (Frankfurt), and the R. Murray Schafer Soundscape Award. He has held residencies at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Toulouse Les Orgues, Bergen Centre for Electronic Art, and HCMA Architecture. As a performer and music educator, he facilitates the ensembles Gamelan Bike Bike and Kembang Telang, and curates concerts with Publik Secrets.
I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka
I Putu Swaryandana Ichi Oka, known as Ryan, is originally from Tabanan, and grew up in Ubud, Bali. He studies Balinese gamelan music, having earned a B.A. in 2019 and Master’s degree in 2022 at the Institute of the Arts (Denpasar). He is also a member of Cudamani, a well known performing arts group based in Pengosekan, Ubud. As a Balinese musician, teacher, and composer, he has taught and composed actively all over the island, and toured abroad several times. His last two compositions are “Legong Swatika” for Cudamani East Coast tour 2021 and “Anglelana Lamuk” for Bali Arts Festival 2022. He is the recipient of UBC’s 2022/2023 Andrew Fellowship in Creative and Performing Arts and is a guest composer in residence with Gamelan Bike Bike at the Hadden Park fieldhouse.
Adrian Avendaño
Adrian Avendaño is a sound artist, musician and recordist based in Vancouver / Surrey, Canada [unceded First Nation territories]. His work explores the connection between sound, space, and place through linear and non-linear time. Recent projects include Sonic Symbiotic with Roxanne Nesbitt, performing alongside the instruments of Harry Partch, Parallel 03 with experimental music duo ENDLINGS (Raven Chacon and John Dietriech of Deerhoof) and musicians of the Vancouver creative music community. He was a collaborator in the Rudiments for Hexadrome performance and installation project for the 2021 Vancouver International Jazz Festival. He returned to perform at the festival in 2022 playing with experimental music project LITTLES at the Ironworks. He was a recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts: Digital Originals for his project Port Parallels – Acoustic Meridians. He currently plays with Gamelan Bike Bike and studies traditional Korean drumming with Dr. Peter Joon Park.