The Storyville Mosquito - Kid Koala

Biographies

Kid Koala

Kid Koala is a Montreal-based scratch DJ, film composer, theatre producer and visual artist. He has released 5 solo albums, and worked on multiple collaborations and soundtracks. He has toured with Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Beastie Boys and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has collaborated with Gorillaz, Deltron 3030 and produced the Music To Draw To album series featuring vocalists Emiliana Torrini and Trixie Whitley.

He has composed music for The National Film Board of Canada, Cartoon Network, Sesame Street, Adult Swim, The Winter Olympic Games, and contributed to musical scores of several films including The Great Gatsby, Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and Looper. He has created music for several video games, including the complete soundtrack to the award-winning multi platform video game Floor Kids.

He has written and illustrated the award-winning graphic novels, Nufonia Must Fall and Space Cadet.

Kid Koala’s unforgettable live shows range from touring turntable carnivals like Vinyl Vaudeville to immersive multimedia shows like Nufonia Must Fall, Satellite Turntable Orchestra and his most recent “live film” production The Storyville Mosquito; each of which expresses his unique form of storytelling with music, live animation, film and interactive entertainment.

Corinne Merrell

Corinne creates work as a production designer for film, stop motion animation and theater. Her handcrafted sets create environments and spaces for storytelling. She was head stop motion art director on the animated feature The Little Prince, directed by Mark Osborne. She was also production designer on the National Film Board’s The Fruit Hunters by award winning director Yung Chang. Her collaborations with director Kara Blake continue to explore the use of miniatures in film, and ‘Illusions,’ a 2015 commission for the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal and Gryphon Trio brought their film work to the stage. She worked on Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights and Mary Stewart Masterson’s The Cake Eaters. Theatre credits include Broadway Design for Stage and Film from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is a faculty member in the Department of Theater at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Patrick Martel

Patrick Martel
Patrick Martel is a puppeteer, puppet designer, set designer and theatre director. He designed many theatre productions and television series, most of them involving different styles of puppetry. He has collaborated with a number of companies, including the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Monlove and 4Darts (Lemieux/Pilon). He enjoyed a 25 year long collaboration with Théâtre de l’Avant-Pays, where he designed over a dozen productions, many of which he also performed in. With this company, he recently directed and designed sets and puppets for Mémoire de Lou. In 2004, The Arlyn Award Society awarded him a commendation for his puppet design work on À nous deux!, another production from this same company.

Recent engagements as both puppet designer and puppet coach include: the opera production of Die Zauberflöte for the Glyndebourne Festival, Nezha the Pirate Child, with Cirque Éloize, and Toruk – The First Flight, with Cirque du Soleil. Since 2000, he teaches at Université du Québec à Montréal, to BA students and for the post-graduate diploma in contemporary puppet theatre. His first collaboration with Kid Koala was as puppet designer, puppet technical designer and puppeteer for Nufonia Must Fall.

AJ Korkidakis

AJ is a Montreal based digital media artist who finds himself constantly jumping between filmmaking, photography, animation, design and any other medium a project might call for. This multi-tasking style keeps his work fresh and gives him access to a wide range of techniques to create rich visual worlds within other words, he prefers to dream up images first and figure out how to create them after. His films have played international festivals including TIFF and Just for Laughs, have won him awards at the Youngcuts Film festival, and have been broadcast across North America. He is an oft collaborator of many noted Montreal musicians on video and animation projects. His design work ranges from poster design to creating organizations’ entire visual identities, and has led to him illustrating a cover for the New Internationalist. He has begun creating work with a focus on interaction, whether it be through physical installations, or digital applications. He loves to explore the blurring lines between traditional and new media. He is truly in his element when working in multidisciplinary environments that challenge him to learn new skills to complete a project.

Vid Cousins

Vid Cousins has had the privilege of composing, arranging, producing and recording for some astounding ensembles over the years, notably Afiara Quartet (Young Canadians Musicians Award winners), Kronos Quartet (Grammy Award winners), Bell Orchestre (Juno Award winners), and the ever evolving Sevens Project Ensemble including members of Arcade Fire, Stars, and The Patrick Watson Band. The acclaim has been broad for the works with which Vid has been involved. These include a GAMIQ award for Best Electronic Album with Kid Koala’s “12 bit Blues”; an IPPY Gold Medal for “Space Cadet” and; an Oscar- with Kid Koala’s “12 bit Blues”; an IPPY Gold Medal for “Space Cadet” and; an Oscar- shortlisting for the film “Requiem For Romance” by Jonathan Ng. Vid utilizes his Monkey Puzzle Studio facility for his various composition, recording and mix projects. This has also proven to be a great environment to produce cinematic remixes for a diverse range of artists, including Grammy nominated Beast, Trixie Whitley and Bell Orchestre.

Ryhna Thompson

Ryhna Thompson has been a Founder, President, Producer and Artist Manager in the cultural and creative industries for the last 2 decades. Under the banner of her company Envision Management & Production, she has worked with internationally recognized, boundary breaking artists rooted in music, such as Kid Koala, Bell Orchestre and Amon Tobin amongst many others. Her artists have opened tours for Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Jack Johnson and performed in venues such as Madison Square Gardens and Hollywood Bowl. She has assembled and managed tours on 5 continents and overseen dozens of record releases.

Always thinking outside the box, Ryhna has frequently worked with artists to conceive, produce and manage projects in the realm where music intersects with film, animation, theatre, literature and interactivity. Projects have been brought to life with Mass MoCA, Luminato Festival and the National Film Board of Canada to name a few great organizations. Always keen to contribute to her communities, Ryhna served for many years as President of the Music Managers Forum Canada. Nufonia Must Fall Live is her latest work as a multi-disciplinary Producer, working alongside longtime collaborator, Kid Koala.