Jairus Sharif is a Canadian experimental jazz musician from Calgary, Alberta, whose debut full-length album Water & Tools was released in 2022. Francis A. Willey is a Canadian multi-expressive artist, 35mm film photographer, poet, and composer whose work has been Internationally presented and awarded.
Bandcamp:pyramidsofcompassion
Instagram: @pyramidsofcompassion
Jairus Sharif
Jairus Sharif is Polaris Prize nominated multi-instrumentalist, improvisor, and sound artist residing on Treaty 7 land, based in Calgary, AB. Since 2020, Sharif has been creating saxophone-centric worlds of dissonance, warmth, tender timbre, and a wondrous, searching nature for something beyond the immediately discernible. His sound evokes the ethereal, the earthly, and the ancient, harkening to traditions reclaimed and sounds reappropriated. It is a solitary sound, isolated in the strength of human universality.
Operating the studio as an instrument, his latest LP, Basis Of Unity forges connections between free improvisation, storytelling, hip-hop mysticism, drone and noise. Drawing from an ever-evolving collection of electronics, traditional instrumentation, and homemade tools, his live performances offer a glimpse into an ongoing hermetic journey.
q4db.org
Instagram: @jairussharif
Francis A. Willey
Francis A. Willey is a self-taught, multi-expressive artist whose practice spans traditional film photography, piano composition, drawing and songwriting. Known for his emotive and introspective work, Willey explores themes of memory, identity, loss, and resilience through a richly expressive, cross-disciplinary lens.
franciswilley.com
Instagram: @neopictorialist
Pyramids of Compassion is an offering of sonic reverence — a gesture of gratitude for the privilege of creating art on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani First Nations; the Tsuut’ina Nation; and the Iyarhe Nakoda, comprised of the Chiniki, Goodstoney, and Bearspaw First Nations. This land is also home to the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation of Alberta, within the Battle River Territory, encompassing the Calgary Nose Hill and Calgary Elbow Métis Districts 5 and 6.
Photo: Francis A. Willey