Since playing her first CBC radio recording gig at the age of 20, Alison Melville's career has taken her across Canada from Whitehorse to St. John's, and to the USA, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand and Europe. As a player of historical flutes and recorder, her extensive performing experience includes hundreds of concerts of solo, chamber and orchestral 'art' music; sessions for radio, television, film and recordings; and spans repertoire from the 13th to 21st centuries. Besides playing venues like Tokyo's Bunkamura Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall and Montreal's Salle Pierre Mercure, there have been many gigs in prisons, school gymnasiums, gardens, parks, barns, hospitals, ferries...Some of Alison's more recent preoccupations involve Scandinavian traditional music, improvisation with prepared sound, and music's connection with the natural world (see myspace.com/thebirdproject).
A member of Toronto Consort and a frequent player with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, she has appeared with many other ensembles and festivals across North America including the Boston Early Music Festival, la Nouvele Sinfonie, Early Music Vancouver, Opera Atelier, Canadian Opera Company, Festival of the Sound, Aradia Ensemble, I Furiosi, Festival Vancouver, etc. As a concerto soloist she has performed with Tafelmusik, the Toronto Symphony, Orchestra London, Aradia, the Niagara and Mississauga Symphonies; and as a performer of 20th- and 21st-century music she has appeared with Soundstreams, New Music Concerts, ArrayMusic and others.
Her television, film and radio performance credits include CBC/Radio-Canada, BBC, Radio New Zealand, NPR, Iceland State Broadcast Service and others, and soundtracks for films by Atom Egoyan, Amnon Buchbinder and Ang Lee; the TV series The Tudors; and CBC-TV’s beloved The Friendly Giant. She can be heard on over 45 CDs, including four critically-acclaimed solo recordings. The most recent of these are Archipelago, and She's Sweetest when she's Naked on early-music.com.
Alison is also a member of the Arctic fusion band Ensemble Polaris, in which she also plays the Norwegian seljefløyte (willow flute)(see www.myspace.com/ensemblepolaris). As a creator of original music her work has been heard with Ensemble Polaris and in 999 Years of Music (dir. Peter Hannan), the Post-Medieval Syndrome project, Amherst Early Music in Connecticut and Vermont, and at the Oberlin Conservatory (OH).
Alison has been a professor at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music since 1999 and also teaches for the University of Toronto. She trained at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis for several years as the winner of numerous awards from the Canada Council, and was the first recorder player to receive an M.Mus.Perf. on full fellowship from the University of Toronto.
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Archipelago is available at
http://cdbaby.com/cd/melville (CD)
and digitally at
http://payplay.fm/melville