Bedford Trio presents IMMERSED 4.0 — Sound Worlds on November 15, an immersive arts experience that showcases the original music, visual art, dance, and lighting design by young Canadian artists.
The unique event features music compositions that stem from Bedford Trio’s ongoing collaborations with two educational institutions. Since 2018, the Trio has worked with the Claude Watson Arts Program in Earl Haig Secondary School, and since 2020, they have been Artists-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s Composition Department. At the UofT, Bedford Trio has worked with student composers to help them refine their compositions for piano trio.
Each year since 2022, the Trio has presented IMMERSED in order to share the voices of emerging artists with the larger community.
The theme this year is Sound Worlds, and it invited the composers to take their inspiration from the four elements — earth, air, fire, and water — or alternatively, from another philosophical, literary or visual arts source, or worlds of their own imagination. Those ideas can include the physical, emotional, and psychological experiences, reality, ides, culture, and conflict.
Each musical composition is paired with either an original animation or dance by visual arts and dance majors from the Claude Watson Arts Program, as well as by other young Canadian visual artists.
The Artists
Bedford Trio was founded in 2016 by Alessia Disimino (violin), Lucia Ticho (cello), and Jialiang Zhu (piano). They’ve been hosting and adjudicating the Piano Trio Composition Competition as part of the U of T New Music Festival since 2020. Alongside their educational efforts, the Trio has performed across North America and in Europe, with recent highlights that include performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Brampton Rose Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall (2024) as part of the Skyky Multicultural Learning Foundation’s Fundraising Concert for the SickKids Hospital. The Trio was a featured ensemble in the joint project “New Techniques in Global Collaboration in Musical Performance”, a project between U of T and the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2023, and a virtual season-opening gala concert of the Tartini Conservatory in Trieste, Italy in 2020 during the pandemic.
Choreographers
Elaine Zhang is a grade 12 dance major in the Claude Watson Dance Program at the Earl Haig Secondary School. She’s been dancing from the age of three, and has trained in a range of styles, including jazz, ballet, contemporary, tap, modern, and hip hop.
Natalia Montesano has been dancing for 13 years. The grade 12 student in the Claude Watson Dance Program at the Earl Haig Secondary School is dedicated to training in a variety of styles such as ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary, pointe, and modern dance styles.
Grade 11 student Elise Choi is 16 years old, and she has been dancing since she was six years old. She began studying dance in community centres and small studios, and began dancing with Bayview Ballet earlier this year. Trained in a variety of styles, she is currently largely focused on contemporary and ballet.
Devi Freedman began dancing at age two at Laura Beglin Dance Studio, and her training has focused on modern, contemporary, and jazz. The grade 11 student in the Earl Haig Claude Watson Dance Program has performed in a variety of community and school settings.
Grade 11 dance major Martin Liu is enrolled in the Claude Watson Dance Program at Earl Haig Secondary School. He has been training in Classical Chinese dance for four years, adding ballet, modern, contemporary, jazz, and other disciplines since joining the Claude Watson program.
Grade 11 student Helena Wrobel Pabst has been dancing since the age of three, and has studied dance across the world. Most recently, she studied the Vaganova method at the Russian Classical Ballet Academy. As a student in the Claude Watson Dance Program at Earl Haig Secondary School, she has added contemporary and modern dance to her repertoire.
Visual Artists
Korean-Canadian artist and 2D animator Elizabeth Lee is a graduate of the Honours Bachelor of Animation program at Sheridan College. With a strong and technical skills and understanding of industry standard techniques, her personal interests tend to the more flexible world of indie animation. She has worked with short film productions, multi-animator collaborations and CO-OP opportunities.
Helena Gu is a Visual Arts Major in the Claude Watson Art Program. The 17-year-old enjoys experimenting with different styles and genres, and creates works that are inspired by the world around her.
Interdisciplinary artist and designer Jorge Cruz Toro is based in Toronto, and currently pursuing an Honours Bachelor of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University. In his practice, he explores blending traditional and digital arts media in order to create visually striking work that often pushes the envelope towards unexpected narratives.
Visual artist Yukki Jiang is currently studying at Parsons School of Design in New York City. There, she creates interdisciplinary works that are often playful and witty. She collaborated with the Bedford Trio in IMMERSED 2.0 and is looking forward to rejoining them for IMMERSED 4.0.
Versatile artist Chloé Dionne (art name “Mediocre Creature”) is a native of Nova Scotia, now based in Toronto. She recently completed her Masters of Music at the University of Toronto, and has been drawing and painting alongside her music making since childhood. She currently works as a performer and teacher. In her painting and music, she enjoys exploring a variety of genres.
Composers: Haig Alumni
Michelle Lee is an alumna of the Claude Watson program and Claude Watson school for the arts, and has a lifelong passion for performance that dates back to her early childhood. She will be studying nursing at McMaster University while pursuing her music through any opportunities that present themselves.
Ethan Wang has been playing the violin since the age of seven, and completed his Level 10 RCM Violin Examination with Honours. He began composing in grade 9 in the Claude Watson program, and composed his final Grade 12 work titled Time Warp for the Bedford Trio. He’s currently studying Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo
Pianist, composer, and math student Jacob Lu began his musical journey at age eight with piano, and earned his ARCT diploma in grade 11, with a certificate of distinction in music theory and history. During his time at Earl Haig Secondaty, he performed and composed a variety of largely solo and chamber music. He is now studying Mathematics at the University of Waterloo while playing and writing music in his free time.
Composers: University of Toronto
Jeanne Tsui is a native of Hong Kong, and is currently a composition major at the University of Toronto. She began composing music in high school, and was a finalist in the Crossroads Composition Competition, organized by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her background includes handbell ringing, and she incorporates the traditional practice into contemporary music composition.
Canadian classical pianist and composer Bennett Luo is a native of Toronto, and an alumni of the Bachelor of Music composition program at the University of Toronto. His works have been performed at venues such as the Arts & Letters Club, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Holy Blossom Temple, and University of Toronto New Music Festival.
Iranian Canadian composer Pari Bahrami’s passion for music began at an early age, and progressed via studying the piano. She came to the University of Toronto to study composition. Her music explores diverse musical forms, and has been performed around the world.
Matthew Woolard is currently studying in his fourth year of the University of Toronto’s Bachelor of Music Program with a Major in Composition. He was awarded the Gwendolyn M. Grant Music Scholarship in 2025, both the Jean A. Chalmers Scholarship and the Sotherton Wadhams In-Course Scholarship in 2024, and both the Arthur Plettner Scholarship and the Joseph Alfred Whealy In-Course Scholarship in 2023.
Toronto-based composer Elienna Wang’s work includes music for concert, video game, and films. Her compositions have been performed by the Toronto Saxophone Collective, the Kupenta Singers, and the Spirit Singers. She was a composer at the University of Toronto’s 2025 New Music Festival, and the 2024 Imani Winds Chamber Festival hosted at the Juilliard School.
Second-year composition student Houtian Zhong is from Victoria, BC. He earned an RCM Associate Diploma in Piano Performance in 2021, and has won the Murray Adaskin Composition Competition, among other awards. His compositions have been performed by the Victoria Symphony, Westshore Chamber Music, and the Springdale Trio, among others.
Calvin Dvorsky creates music in a range of styles from modernist to experimental to pop and beyond. He works in Steinberg’s Cubase and Dorico, with sound libraries that include East West’s Symphonic Orchestra.
Canadian pianist and emerging composer William Quan Cheng is the winner of the 2024 University of Toronto Piano Trio Composition Competition in the composition program at U of T. As a contemporary composer, he works to create accessible music that is influenced by his interests in pop, jazz, and anime.
Videographer
Full-time engineer, a part-time artist, and any-time learner Yang Sui works in multiple fields that include photography, videography, pixel art, augmented reality (AR) experiences, and video game design. An amateur pianist, he is inspired by the work of Bedford Trio’s pianist Jialiang Zhu, his wife. He creates concert videos and other multimedia work for Bedford Trio.
Lighting Artist
Multimedia artist Adam Kaleta is based in Toronto. His lighting designs are inspired by elements of surrealism, minimalism, and contemporary art styles, blending soundscapes with sleek visuals. Adam is co-founder of Luxonus, an audiovisual art installation collective that has mounted installations in Canada and Spain. He also works as a percussionist, audio engineer, and sound designer for visual media.
IMMERSED 4.0
IMMERSED 4.0 takes place November 15 at St. George’s Grange Park.
- Find more event details and tickets [HERE].
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