Vancouver-based guitarist/composer Ron Samworth is known on the Canadian improvised/contemporary music scene as an inventive textural improviser and a strong fluid melodicist informed and inspired by a variety of music traditions including jazz, rock, new music and folk music of many cultures. He is the founder and leads the internationally acclaimed improvisation ensemble, Talking Pictures.
He has appeared at all the major Jazz Festivals across Canada, the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, at New Yorks Knitting Factory, and the New York Improvisation Festival, New Music America, Viennas "Lets Cool One" Chamber Jazz Festival, Chicago and Berlin jazz festivals and other leading venues in Europe. His inter-disciplinary work includes composition, performance and sound design for theatre, spoken word, film, and dance. He has composed music for Talking Pictures, Standing Wave, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the NOW Orchestra and EDAM Dance Company. Samworth is also a longtime member and from 1992 to 2003 the artistic director of the New Orchestra Workshop (NOW), and a co-curator of a weekly concert series at Vancouvers grunt Gallery from 1987 to 1994.
Samworth's playing credits include John Zorn, Barry Guy, George Lewis, Wayne Horvitz, Rene Lussier, and the New Music operas The Gang and 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade. He has composed for the Hard Rubber Orchestra, Standing Wave, the NOW Orchestra, the Vancouver New Music Festival and various dance, film and theatre projects.
DarkBlueWorld is the collaborative effort of brilliant, critically acclaimed songwriters, musicians and composers; Ron Samworth, Tony Wilson (Tony Wilson Sextet), Elizabeth Fischer (Animal Slaves), featuring Skye Brooks (drums) and Pete Schmitt (bass).
A hauntingly dark Faustian world channeled through gorgeous, transcendent music. Akin to Diamanda Galas singing German Cabaret music as played by King Crimson. . . thoroughly engaging... Rated A The Vancouver Province
"... songs visceral and enraged and yet with tenderness and naked vulnerability". - The Georgia Straight DarkBlueWorld Website
