Home » Jazz Musicians » Nick Storring

Nick Storring

Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, musician, writer, and curator. His varied and idiosyncratic body of musical work spans chamber compositions to meticulously constructed recordings consisting solely of Storring’s own overdubbed instrumental performances. This output reflects his eclecticism as a listener — juxtaposing the familiar and the abstract to conjure moments of hallucinatory reminiscence.

He has worked with a number of leading artists and organizations in contemporary music including Montréal’s AKOUSMA Festival, Oxford UK’s Audiograft Festival, Késia Decoté, the Esprit Orchestra, Arraymusic, Soundstreams, Eve Egoyan, Sophia Subbayya Vastek, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Quatuor Bozzini, and Vancouver New Music. Winner of the Canadian Music Centre’s 2011 Toronto Emerging Composer Award, he also placed first in the 2008 Jeux De Temps competition for electroacoustic composition. His recorded output has also been released on celebrated experimental music imprints such as Orange Milk Records, mappa editions, Scissor Tail, Notice Recordings and Entr’acte.

An avid collaborator, Storring has composed for feature films by Terrance Odette, Ingrid Veninger and, in collaboration with Dafydd Hughes, for the National Film Board’s award-winning interactive web documentary High Rise : Universe Within, directed by Katerina Cizek. His music for ‘ambient gaming environment’ Tentacle traveled with the work to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2011.

Since 2014, composing for dance has also become a key aspect of his practice. He has worked extensively with celebrated Toronto choreographer Yvonne Ng, while also having worked with movement artists such as Deepti Gupta, Marie-Josée Chartier, and Brandy Leary.

Storring’s sixth studio album My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell was released by Orange Milk Records in March 2020 to considerable acclaim, garnering praise in major outlets such as the Wire, Exclaim!, PopMatters, and Vice China and elsewhere. Its 2021 follow-up Newfoundout (mappa editions) employed names of Ontario ghost-towns for its titles, and achieved a similar critical regard. Kate Molleson of the BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show remarked of it on air that “there are absolutely no clichés at play,” and applauded it for “picking up on the sonic potential around notions of space, notions of repurposed objects, notions of tapping memory and suggestion.”

Music From Wéi 成为, his eighth full-length, was released on August 19th, 2022 from Orange Milk Records. It features his 50-minute score for Yvonne Ng’s piece Wéi 成为 which consists exclusively of multi-layered piano.

Awards

Toronto Emerging Composer Award (2011)

Jeux De Temps/ Times Play Electroacoustic Music Competition (First Place, 2008)


Tags

7
Album Review

Nick Storring: My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell

Read "My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell" reviewed by Chris May


Now here is a strange one. My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell was conceived and composed by Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring as a homage to Roberta Flack. But it contains none of her tunes, not even snatches of them. Instead Storring, a sonic sorcerer who is also a fully paid-up Flack connoisseur, has taken phrases from her lyrics and used them as the titles for six deeply evocative, multi-multi-multi-layered instrumentals, which on occasion summon up emotions which have nothing ...

Read more articles

"Music from Wéi 成为 is an affirmation of Nick Storring’s status as one of the most creative and exciting experimental artists working today." — Chris Ingalls, PopMatters

"Nick Storring pours himself into his music. In the literal sense, his compositions are realized by layering his own playing of a plethora of instruments; figuratively, his music is imbued by a sense of introspection and intimacy. His work is deeply personal, and this inwardness is reflected onto the listener as they enjoy Storring's carefully crafted works. One gets lost in these sounds." — Bryon Hayes, Exclaim!

Read more

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Music from W​é​i...

Orange Milk Records
2022

buy

Newfoundout

mappa editions
2021

buy

My Magic Dreams Have...

Orange Milk Records
2020

buy

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.