ENSEMBLE POLARIS was founded to explore and develop a creative and distinct Canadian voice for the music of the north: Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, Scotland, and Canada, and to bring this to as many audiences as possible in Canada and around the world. Comprised of Canadian musicians from a rich array of traditions and backgrounds, the band blends various techniques of improvisation and arrangement to treat traditional music from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Scotland and Canada in innovative, categorization-defying ways. Polaris also creates completely original repertoire, sometimes using northern musical forms as their inspiration and point of departure. With influences ranging from Baroque to Hot Club of Paris, Klezmer to Balkan and many more, the group's unique style has won them wide-ranging popular and critical acclaim, from a Classic CD (UK) magazine's 'Disc of the Month' award to an enthusiastic amazon.com reviewer's “I dare you not to love this music." 

The members of ENSEMBLE POLARIS are Marco Cera, guitars; Kirk Elliott, violin, folk harp, mandolin, accordion, Swedish bagpipe, etc.; Margaret Gay, 'cello; Ben Grossman, hurdy gurdy;  Katherine Hill, voice, nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle); Alison Melville, baroque flute, recorders, seljefløyte (Norwegian willow flute); Colin Savage, clarinet, bass clarinet, recorders; and Debashis Sinha, percussion.
 
POLARIS first performed at Toronto’s Northern Encounters Festival in June of 1997, and subsequent concerts in Ontario and Québec have been heard across Canada in numerous broadcasts on CBC-Radio 2 and Radio-Canada.  Since 2006 Polaris has established itself as a fixture on the Toronto music scene by presenting two concerts each season at a variety of venues such as the Gladstone Hotel, Edward Day Gallery and Music Gallery. In August 2009 band gave seven concerts to enthusiastic crowds across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, under the auspices of Musique Royale and the Indian River Festival and supported by the Canada Council Touring Office. Upcoming bookings include concerts in Sharon, Barrie, St Catharines, Toronto and elsewhere; a tour of Alberta and British Columbia in March 2011; and a projected return to the Maritime provinces in August 2011. Groundwork is also being laid for future peformances in Europe, China and the United States.
  
POLARIS has released three CDs, which have received international rave reviews and are heard on radio in Canada, the USA, Australia and Europe. Their first CD 'Midnight Sun' earned a ‘Disc of the Month’ rating from Classic CD (UK) magazine. Their third CD, 'Vikings on Vacation,' released in August 2009, was supported in part by the Ontario Arts Council's Sound Recording Program and included original compositions by Polaris members, collective arrangements of Scandinavian tunes, and music by other Canadian and international musicians including Andrew Downing, Andrea Cera, Nino Rota and others. The sessions for that project also resulted in some material for a fourth CD, slated for completion and release later this year. 
The group's CDs are soon to be distributed across North America (hard copy) and digitally world-wide by Naxos of America; hard copy sales outside the US and Canada will be available on CDBaby. Tunes from these discs continue to be heard on CBC, NPR and other North American broadcasters as well as in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Polaris has also collaborated with other groups and artists including choreographer Carol Anderson and the Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, Viva! Choir and others.
 

For more information on the band:
www.ensemblepolaris.com
www.myspace.com/ensemblepolaris