Monique Barry

One of the great pioneers of the independent music scene, singer-songwriter Monique Barry is an intriguing creative contradiction: she has been hailed for her “delicious sounds and shadows” (Queens Journal) that place her in her own category yet she has been praised as being ‘so many artists rolled into one” (Yummy Mummy). She writes and performs without imitation, striking musical and emotional notes from the past, present, and future while staying defiantly in the now–which makes her essentially unsolvable, and all the better for it. Classically trained in voice and piano, and keenly interested in the power of pop songwriting, Monique has forged a style that marries the everyday to the otherworldly, resulting in musical dreamscapes teeming with innovations, oddities, emotional echoes, and the many stops and starts along the human journey. Her aesthetic range is captured on a quartet of CD’s: the supernaturally minimalist campus favorite moody (1998); Tripping (2003), which brings together an ambitious mix of folk, lounge, rock, classical, ambient soundscaping, and techno pop; the haunting Carbon (2009), which saw Monique hitting new levels of musical expression; and Wake (2013), a bewitchingly vivid musical mosaic. A well-recognized figure on Toronto’s club scene, she has performed at the Fresh Wednesdays at Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto Jazz Festival, the Gabriola Island Dancing Man Folk Festival, Winterfolk, May Works, and at numerous Ontario and Quebec dates with Indigo Books. She was the founder, impresario, and host of The Songwriters Expo, a regular performance event celebrating the talents of Canadian songwriters for ten years. Always broadening her horizons, Monique recently scored Jonah Greisman’s film Recital (2016). She also collaborated with Alex Mine in scoring the Colin Carter documentary Fight for the Planet (2009) and was a guest producer on the Arlene Bishop CD Twenty Four is Twelve Twice or Twenty Four (2011). She teaches music as well, and has her own line of skin care products, Aunt Bird’s All-Natural Skin Care.