About

Musique Royale welcomes listeners of all ages to hear “Yarrow”, a trio of musicians featured at our Cookie Concert on January 6 at 2 PM, at the Lunenburg School of the Arts (6 Prince St). Yarrow is a collaboration between Samantha Wilson (guitar), Gabriella Ciurcovich (bass, vocals) and Nicola Miller (saxophone). The group focuses on lush, warm textures and melodies, while occasionally dipping their toes into more experimental sounds, with each musician contributing their unique musical identity within the ensemble. Yarrow perform original music that ventures into varying forms of improvisation, as well as some of the more obscure jazz repertoire, folk music, Brecht and more.

About the Artists

Sam Wilson is a guitarist whose practice as a performer-composer is centered around creating instrumental music for improvisers. She blends her early love of fingerstyle guitar with her love of jazz into her playing. Her albums ‘Into a Heart Pt. II’ and ‘New Doors’ both won Music Nova Scotia’s ‘Jazz Recording of the year’ in 2022 and 2023. In 2021 Sam won the Paul Cram Creation award and composed her first piece for orchestra, ‘Recover-we’, which was performed by Symphony Nova Scotia at the 2023 Open Waters Festival.

Gabriella Ciurcovich is a bassist, singer and composer based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. Gabriella is active in Halifax’s improvised music community and loves improvisation as a practice of collaboration, self-investigation and being in the present moment. She also writes and records for her own songwriting project, Popuri, and has performed across Canada and Europe in other jazz, folk and rock/pop projects. She holds a BMusic in Jazz Performance from the University of Toronto.

Nicola Miller is an experimental saxophone player and composer based on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Her strange tender playing stretches toward the avant-garde while maintaining a foot in the lyrical and the mysterious. She has studied with saxophonist/composer Frank Gratkowski (a mainstay of the European improvised music scene) New York based experimental composer Kirk Nurock and Grammy Nominated composer and drummer John Hollenbeck. She holds a master’s degree from UdK’s Jazz Institüt Berlin and has performed in the Berlin improvised music and jazz communities. Her upcoming album ‘Living Things’ explores collected sounds, reflections, and interpretations from the natural world featuring Gratkowski, Doug Tielli, Nick D’Amato and Nick Fraser.