Featuring Ashley Au (the composer of the bingenTV soundtrack) and Amy Crankshaw
No booking is required
Ashley Au is a Winnipeg-based bassist, composer, sound artist, arranger, and queer creative. A multifaceted musician, Ashley specializes in the upright and electric basses—performing, touring and recording extensively. As a composer and sound artist, Ashley’s work can be found behind various theatre, opera and dance productions as well as Winnipeg’s ephemeral pop-up stages.
After completing a degree in Jazz Bass Performance (B. Mus) at Brandon University, under the direction of Michael Cain, Greg Gatien, Eric Platz, and Gilles Fournier, Ashley has become an active member of Winnipeg’s arts and cultural community as a performer, administrator and organizer.
As an administrator, Ashley has worked in literary publishing, visual arts, dance, and of course, music. Ashley is the artistic director of Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts Festival and the stage producer for the Pride Winnipeg Festival. She also co-ordinates a BIPOC poetry writing workshop series through Contemporary Verse 2, Canada’s oldest poetry journal.
On rare occasions, Ashley can be found moonlighting as a DJ under the alias, Chairman Au.
Current and past projects include work with Weakerthans frontman, John K. Samson; folk roots songstress, Carly Dow; internationally-acclaimed Americana tastemaker, Scott Nolan; composer/trumpeter Chuck Copanace; Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers; and Polaris Prize-nominated Canadian live hip-hop outfit, Super Duty Tough Work.
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Amy Crankshaw is a composer and orchestrator from South Africa, based in London. Her music has been described as having “a real feeling of ecstasy” (Planet Hugill); “carrying images and sensations“ (Ôlyrix); and as “an act of love” (Opera Now).
Amy's compositions are performed internationally, with commissions by Radio France, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, South African Music Rights Organisation, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Ensemble Matters, and performances at Barbican Hall, La Scala Paris, Centre in the Square, Silk Street Theatre, Vorarlberg Museum, Festival Présences, Aix en Juin, Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and Bloomsbury Festival.
She has held residencies with Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and the London City Orchestra, and is a 2023-2024 ‘Soundhub’ composer with the London Symphony Orchestra. She was awarded the Priaulx Rainier Composition Prize in 2015 and second prize in the South African Music Rights Organisation’s Overseas Scholarship Competition in 2014.
Amy studied composition at the South African College of Music, and is a current doctoral candidate (DMus) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, funded by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Guildhall School Trust.
photo of Ashley Au by Buio Assis