"Having known Nicole’s playing for over a decade, I’m always in awe of how she pushes the sound of the trumpet. I’ve been attuned to her immersive sound world since we began playing together in 2008. Whether it’s on her Bb trumpet, piccolo trumpet, or flugelhorn, Nicole’s playing is an individual voice. She has always had a unique way of expressing her instrument. Her choice ofsounds and the method in which she incorporates a rich palette of texture and timbre into herplaying takes the uncommon to a new place. I’ve been an ear witness to her progression from apurely acoustic improvisor who incorporates a variety of ‘found sounds’ (one of my favourites being when she attached a contact mic to her trumpet bell and used a mini-amp as a mute), to her current explorations with granular processing, micro-loop pedals and glitch delay, a perfectextension of her sound explorations.

To be clear, her playing is not about making the trumpet sound beautiful or melodic or particularly virtuosic in a traditional be-bop jazz or classical sense but is truly about sounding the instrument - this brass instrument with long curled tubes and short pipes. Her virtuosity can sometimes be tempered and understated because it’s not predictably flamboyant. Combining extended techniques and musical gestures into a unique expression and creatively ‘playing’ with whatever she wants to hear carries her music a long way. As somebody who performs with her I find it inviting, exciting and refreshing to improvise with Nicole. Embracing a wide spectrum of sound and being undaunted by preconceptions of perfection is something I love about the trio we have together called c_RL (pronounced curl) with Toronto percussion phenom Germaine Liu. All of us share an affinity for sound exploration and Nicole is a sound explorer who enjoys being playful with what she discovers.

Nicole’s use of noise and ‘found sounds’ goes hand in hand with her fascination with effects pedals and incorporating live signal processing into her performances. With these tools she opens up new worlds of texture for her compositions. Live manipulation of the dials on the pedals extends the possibilities of her expression making real time improvisation combined with real time composition an integral part of her solo performances. Part of her process is in choosing specific pedals which include different variations of micro-loopers and glitch delay. Each of these pedals create different degrees of unpredictability (i.e. you don’t know which part of your playing is going to be looped until the pedal spits it out). Nicole is drawn to this type of processing because she says: “it’s similar to ruminating in that you can get fixated on something and let it grow/expand into something else." - Allison Cameron