Trading Places: Trueque: Un Échange 2027

From Mexico City: 

Carlos Allegre violin, composer

Renegade violinist, secret composer and Mexican improviser, Carlos Allegre has been active for over 25 years in the free improvisation scene in Mexico city. Incongruent with his European classical repertoire interpretation training, he is interested in the paths of popular music, sound experimentation and improvisation. His compositions are characterized by wandering structured forms that make way for spontaneity and extended techniques. 

Reona Sugimoto drums

Reona Sugimoto is a Japanese-born drummer and percussionist based in Mexico, known for her dynamic work across jazz, rock, funk, and experimental music. Born in Morioka, Japan in 1995, she began playing classical percussion at age nine and the drum kit at ten, later moving to Mexico in 2014 to further her musical studies and career.

From Montréal: 

Anne-F Jacques sound artist, instrument maker, improvisor

Artistic Approach: My practice—as both an artist and a scrap-metal worker—centers on the myriad possible encounters and interactions between materials. While sound is always a component of this practice—whether in my performances, installations, or publications—I view this dimension more as a perspective, a way of engaging with certain phenomena alongside other fleeting bodily perceptions: furtive or erratic movements, a flash of light caught in the periphery, the faint scent of a circuit heating up. My work seeks to devise systems for observing the active presence of forces at play around us: electricity, erosion, temperature fluctuations, air currents. I aim to make these forces tangible through improvised, capricious, and often slightly absurd systems; these are organized more like living organisms than machines, forming communities of autonomous cells free from central control. Fatigue, wear, and accidents are not concealed—rejecting the corporate fantasy of seamless, eternal operation—while the assemblages I surround myself with bear the traces of the objects' past lives, hinting at the potential of their future existences.  My work reveals a particular fondness for precarious balances, rough textures, intermittency, and periods of dormancy.

Naomi McCarrol-Butler saxophone, clarinet, instrument maker

Naomi McCarroll-Butler is a saxophonist, clarinettist, and instrument maker from Toronto and based in Montréal. Her music falls in the cracks of improvised music/free jazz, ‘new music’, drone music, and experimental pop and folk. Naomi’s work has always centred music as a spiritual expression; as a child she sang hymns and played folk guitar with her father before being drawn in by the ecstatic sound of the saxophone. She is interested the elegance of the overtone series, breathwork in the unique somatic journey of trans and gender-non-conforming people, and the creation of trance environments through drone, repetition, and fluid tuning systems.

From Vancouver: 

Jen Yakamovich drums, composer, sound artist

Jen Yakamovich is a Vancouver-based drummer, writer, educator, and improviser. Her work focuses on the relationship between sound, social ecologies, and embodiment. Raised in Halifax NS, she received her Master's in Environmental Studies from Dalhousie University in 2019. In 2022, Jen released her first solo EP, Heaven's Mini Mart, under the moniker Troll Dolly. She is currently the drummer for Wallgrin, Niloo, and the Sam Wilson Wintertides Trio. Bottom of Form

Johanna Hauser clarinet, bass clarinet

Johanna Hauser (Bass Clarinet) received her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College (honours), her master’s degree in performance from the Manhattan School of Music (Andrew Goodman Prize for excellence in clarinet), and a stipend for further studies at Yale at Norfolk. Johanna began her career in New York City performing with groups such as Dance Theater of Harlem, Bel Canto Opera, the Brooklyn Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra, The Group for Contemporary Music, The Queens Symphony and The Queens Symphony Woodwind Quintet. Johanna teaches at Place des Arts, and directs and performs with the Kits Classics & Worlds Beyond chamber music series at St. James Hall. She is a member of the Vancouver Inter-cultural Orchestra and has premiered pieces by many local composers. Johanna can be heard on the soundtrack of Trawna tuh Belvul (National Film Board of Canada) and on the CDs, L’ivresse de la vitesse (Diffusion/ Media) and The Last Arrow (Dream on Productions). She also plays solo music for group meditations and private functions.

HISTORY

Trading Places: Trueque: Un Échange is a vibrant multi-city residency program active since 2016 in Montréal and Vancouver and, starting in 2026, Mexico City, Montréal and Vancouver. This program brings together these foremost centers of improvised and experimental music, the NOW Society, Suoni Per Il Popolo, and CDMX Coordinators curating in collaboration, providing support for artistic practice and cultural exchange. Each year the resident artists are chosen to represent their communities in these residencies. The artists premiere new works, attend musical gatherings, perform in concerts, facilitate workshops, take part in improvised marathons and make recordings, forming new connections with local artists.