Gene Martynec

Eugene "Gene" Martynec (born 28 March 1947 in Germany) is a Canadian musician, composer and record producer.

Martynec first came to prominence as a guitarist in Toronto group Bobby Kris & The Imperials in August 1965. He left the group in May 1967 to form Kensington Market with singer/songwriter Keith McKie, bass player Alex Darou and drummer Jimmy Watson. He played acoustic guitar, bass and synthsizer on Lou Reed's 1973 album Berlin, along with providing the vocal arrangement on "The Bed".

As a record producer, he won the Juno Award for Producer of the Year in 1981 for his work on Bruce Cockburn's "Tokyo" and Rough Trade's "High School Confidential". His woek with Edward Bear was also recognized with a Juno in 1973.

Martynec has performed, composed or recorded with pop groups, pit orchestras, and created music for visual media and live theatre. He studied electronic music, composition and orchestration with Samuel Dolin at The Royal Conservatory of Music where he received two scholarships to study electronic music and composition (1970–1975).

He has been awarded Canada Council for the Arts and Toronto Arts Council grants for music composition. He taught signal processing, principals of digital audio, MIDI, studio production, synthesis, and studio orchestration at the Harris and Trebas institutes in Toronto.

His current interest is in improvised new music, performing and composing live interactive electro-acoustic music using alternate controllers and interactive music software. Recently he has added a video component to his improvisational performances.

In the fall of 1997 he released Silica, his first solo of composed and solo interactive electro-acoustic music. The Barcelona Duets was released in 2002. In 2004 he co-composed series of duets for a variety of instruments and interactive computer music called ‘Toronto Duets" which was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. From 2000 to 2004 he curated Eugene's Sunday Series an exploration of new music and other art forms at Artword Theatre.

Work abroad

In 2004 Martynec moved to Beijing for two years where he performed in Yunnan Province with Yan Jun, a sound artist,music critic, poet and organizer and in Beijing at several music/art festivals such as the Dashanzi International Arts Festival and at the Bookworm Beijing, a venue for performance.

Based in London, England from 2007-2010 he performed with the London Improvisers Orchestra and many small ensembles including string trio Barrel and Triptec. He played with the Royal Improvisers Orchestra (Amsterdam) and Wuppertal Improvisers Orchestra in 2009-10.

Back in Toronto in 2010, he organized the formation of the Toronto Improvisers Orchestra. Since then he has been involved with the Toronto improvising community playing at Somewhere There and with Glen Hall and Bruce Cassidy in So Nu and other Toronto music improvisers.

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