Bio

Composer and vocalist Lieke van der Voort was born in The Netherlands and moved to Toronto in 2009. Her works focus heavily on improvisation and unconventional vocal use. Lieke’s roots lie in combining jazz, new music and all aspects of the human voice. Lieke frequently uses her own text in her pieces, confronting the emotional-psychological impact of ongoing social issues. Her work has been described as emotionally complex, raw and honest. Current pieces include “Mother’s Tongue” (Soundstreams ECW), “Endings” (Jumblies Theatre), “center, unrestrained” (PIVOT, Continuum Contemporary Music), work for solo percussion and electronics (Thin Edge New Music Collective) and flute and guitar duo (Émergences (f. pl.). Her voice can be heard in ensemble The Band Named Crow. She is also featured on Veryan Weston’s “Make”; Schafer’s “Apocalypsis”; soundtracks of movies “The VVitch”, “Clara” and “In the Tall Grass” and various Tanya Tagaq shows with Christine Duncan's Element Choir. Lieke also leads and vocalizes in Kontraband Kollektif, an art music collective, with its debut EP “Atropos” having been released in January 2018. 

Lieke was selected as a composer for Toronto Creative Music Lab 2017, Soundstreams Emerging Composer Workshop 2018 (under the mentorship of David Lang and James Rolfe), PIVOT 2018/19 (under the mentorship of Juliet Palmer) and participated at Banff’s International Workshop in Jazz and Creative music, where she studied under the guidance of Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey and Okkyung Lee. Her works have been supported by Canada Council of the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.