Biography
Since the 1970s guitarist Arthur Bull has appeared only intermittently within Canada’s free improvisation circles. Like his fellow countryman pianist Al Neil or British guitarist Roger Smith, he has cultivated minimal visibility and suffered from a persistent lack of documentation. His approach draws from Derek Bailey’s improvisational lexicon while occasionally revealing traces of folk or American roots phrasing. Bull has also issued three volumes of poetry in Canada and works as a translator between Chinese and English. In the early 2000s he supported himself by designing local resource-management schemes for fishing communities in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Bull launched his musical activities in Toronto at the moment when American free jazz and European Free Improvisation first attracted Canadian players. He participated actively in the scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, performing with the CCMC, Michael Snow, the Bill Smith Ensemble, the Paul Cram Ensemble, David Prentice, John Oswald, and Paul Dutton. He sometimes supported the spoken-word and sound-poetry quartet the Four Horsemen (Dutton, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Steve McCaffery, and BP Nichol) and appeared alongside visiting figures such as Derek Bailey and Roscoe Mitchell.
In 1990 Bull relocated to Sandy Cove, a modest fishing village in Nova Scotia. Temporarily disengaged from music, he concentrated on writing and released the collections Hawthorn and Key to the Highway. In 1996 he began collaborating with Daniel Heïkalo, an experimental guitarist originally from Montreal who had settled in the Maritime province ten years earlier and resided nearby. The duo has performed together regularly since 1999. Their first recording, the CD Dérapages à Cordes issued by Ambiances Magnétiques in 2000, signaled Bull’s return to public performance. A solo album, Guitar Solo, appeared the following year on Heïkalo’s own Heïkalo Sound Productions label. In May of that year the pair played at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. In 2002 they appeared at the Guelph Jazz Festival and Guitarévolution in Montréal.
Bull launched his musical activities in Toronto at the moment when American free jazz and European Free Improvisation first attracted Canadian players. He participated actively in the scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, performing with the CCMC, Michael Snow, the Bill Smith Ensemble, the Paul Cram Ensemble, David Prentice, John Oswald, and Paul Dutton. He sometimes supported the spoken-word and sound-poetry quartet the Four Horsemen (Dutton, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Steve McCaffery, and BP Nichol) and appeared alongside visiting figures such as Derek Bailey and Roscoe Mitchell.
In 1990 Bull relocated to Sandy Cove, a modest fishing village in Nova Scotia. Temporarily disengaged from music, he concentrated on writing and released the collections Hawthorn and Key to the Highway. In 1996 he began collaborating with Daniel Heïkalo, an experimental guitarist originally from Montreal who had settled in the Maritime province ten years earlier and resided nearby. The duo has performed together regularly since 1999. Their first recording, the CD Dérapages à Cordes issued by Ambiances Magnétiques in 2000, signaled Bull’s return to public performance. A solo album, Guitar Solo, appeared the following year on Heïkalo’s own Heïkalo Sound Productions label. In May of that year the pair played at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. In 2002 they appeared at the Guelph Jazz Festival and Guitarévolution in Montréal.
Albums
