Dálava

Dálava is an ensemble that pays homage to traditional Moravian folk music, taking melodies transcribed over 100 years ago by singer Julia Ulehla’s great-grandfather, and reinventing them in extremely stirring, avant-garde and post-rock musical language. Following in her great-grandfather’s footsteps, Julia is an ethnomusicologist and former opera singer who has collaborated on diverse music and theatre projects (Darius Jones, The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards). The first Dálava record (2014) received critical acclaim and was dubbed “a masterpiece” (Acoustic Music), “a work of creativity and imagination par excellence” (Inner Magazine), and described as “combining the richness of the old with the freshness and boldness of the new like no one else has done before” (Something Else Reviews). Dálava’s second album The Book of Transfigurations (released April 2017) and the first featuring the sextet, delves into even deeper territory—conjuring ancestors, animating spirits, and crafting musical microcosms around the gem-like folk melodies. Though rooted in an avant, urban sonic language, this fractured village music channels the voices of a bygone era. Dálava is Julia Ulehla on vocals, Aram Bajakian on guitar, Peggy Lee on cello, Colin Cowan on bass, Tyson Naylor on piano and Dylan van der Schyff on drums. The musicians are some of the finest improvisers and interpreters of creative music in Canada. Each brings an incredible range of musical knowledge, education and practice from folk to classical, from jazz to rock.

Dálava’s October 2014 release occurred in Vancouver and was the first performance of the Canadian sextet. The sextet has organically grown since that time. In 2018, Dalava was a highlight of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and Colours of Ostrava among other national and international events.It has appeared in the high profile Vancouver-based series Music on Main (2017), the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival’s Innovation Series (2015, 2017), Voice Over Mind at the Western Front (2017), Winterruption (2015) and in a series of open educational workshop/performances called Encountering Life in Song, sponsored by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. In performance and on recording the sextet has received glowing critical acclaim.The Book of Transfigurationswas named the record that “shaped Vancouver” in 2017 in an article that named the 50 best records to come out of Vancouver in the last 50 years by the Georgia Straight. In his feature for UK publication fRoots, writer Bas Springer claimed, “Every now and then an album appears that is so overwhelming and so intense that it is hard to put into any category. Such is the case with The Book of Transfigurations, the second release by Dálava…Saying that TBOT is a masterpiece is not an exaggeration” (August 2017).