Wonderment Festival: 8th Edition: Beacon Hill Park

Wonderment returns for the BC Day Weekend in 2023 for its 8th edition of ambient and electro-acoustic music in Victoria area public parks.

Sunday, August 6th features a diverse line-up of ambient and ambient adjacent performances with influences drawing from folk, jazz, world music, krautrock and shoegaze.

LISA BELLA DONNA is an internationally acclaimed recording artist, composer, modular synthesist, sound designer, educator, and clinician. She has decades of experience as a multi-instrumentalist session musician, educator, as well as developing extensive techniques with musique concreté, modular synthesis, analog recording and mixing techniques, microtonal music, orchestration and film composition. Lisa has traveled all throughout the USA, Japan and Europe performing concerts and conducting workshops and clinics. She has been commissioned for many multichannel audio art installations in the USA and Europe.

YU SU is an electronic dance music producer and DJ. She was born in Kaifeng, China, and moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2013. She started to produce music the following year and after a tour of mainland China in 2019 from Qingdao to Xining, she set up the record label bié in order to release the music of the artists she had met. In 2020, she self-released her debut album Yellow River Blue, described by Pitchfork as a mixture of "ambient dub, synth pop, and left-field house".

MONSTER PLANET is a place that lies beyond the furthest reaches of our imaginations. Extensive research into this vast uncharted world is conducted by the mysterious SYNPROV CORP, a pulsating throb of musicians, producers, sound designers, visual artists, pixel bandits, and B-movie chuds, based in SEATTLE, WA, USA, Earth, Solar System. Audiences are immersed in surreal audio/visual performances that blend cutting-edge ambient, experimental electronica, obscure cinema, DIY visuals, and general WTFness.

DESERT BLOOM (Rachel Nam) is a Montréal-based musician who makes intricate and ethereal synth-based tracks that draw on her twin passions of classical piano and electronic music. Originally from BC, Nam moved to Montréal to pursue a degree in biology, in turn inspiring her moniker. Desert Bloom also features Austin Tufts of Braids on percussion.

HANNAH EPPERSON has been called a neo-classical composer and musician, indie folk/rocker and avant-garde pop artist. She's performed at jazz and electronica, folk, art, new music and rock festivals. With violin, loop pedal, voice and innovative rhythmic improvisations with proximate objects, she weaves uncanny connection with her audiences, taking listeners on exhilarating journeys. As a companion in musical experience, she is powerful yet playful and gentle, often exploring the essential cultural and political matters of our age without ever leaving the miracle of the commonplace or us behind.

ZUGELLOS will open the day with ambient music influenced by the deeper, more introspective sides of experiential and experimental music movements ranging from free jazz through kosmiche musik to shoegaze and electronic dub.

This is a free, outdoor event in a public park. Beacon Hill Park does not allow for concession so please plan your day accordingly (bring water, sunscreen etc) and "pack-it-in, pack-it-out". There are washrooms and a children's playground adjacent to the Cameron Bandshell area, and additional wheelchair parking will be available in the small traffic loop off Douglas street south of Avalon Road.

This is supported by the Government of Canada, Province of British Columbia, the Capital Regional District and the City of Victoria.

Wonderment takes place on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.