Olivia Shortt (Nipissing First Nation) is a weirdo/storyteller in sound, performance and video art. The CBC named them as one of “6 Indigenous composers you need to know in 2024” and was described by Musicworks Magazine as a “glittering, rising star in the exploratory music firmament”. Iconic moments include appearing and playing saxophone on CBC Kids’ ‘Gary the Unicorn’, performing in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film ‘Guest of Honour’ and lending their voice off-screen in Stephen King’s film ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Season 3 of Syfy’s ‘Chucky’. Other fun highlights include performing music by Raven Chacon at The 2022 Whitney Biennial (NYC), The Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington), as well as being commissioned by the JACK Quartet as part of their 2019 JACK Studio. 
Shortt is the 2025-2026 Indigenous Artist-in-Residence at the Indigenous Creation Studio (University of Toronto, Mississauga), and previously was the 2023-2024 Jackman Humanities Institute Artist-in-Residence (University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies) and the 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University’s Music Department. Shortt is a graduate of Dartmouth College (USA). 

thingNY is a collective of composer-performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, text, song and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental works created by the core ensemble — alejandro t. acierto, Gelsey Bell, Isabel Castellvi, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Dave Ruder, and Jeffrey Young — and by adventurous composers such as Raven Chacon, Jennifer Walshe, Robert Ashley, Rick Burkhardt, Pauline Oliveros, Miguel Frasconi, Jerome Kitzke, John Cage, Julius Eastman, Jessie Marino, Andrea La Rose, and Pamela Z. The members of thingNY have collaboratively created concert-length operas including Mouthful, This Takes Place Close By, Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts (with Panoply Performance Lab), and ADDDDDDDDD (self-released as their first album, with accompanying comic book libretto). In 2020, they created subtracTTTTTTTTT and A Series of Landscapes, new pieces created for real time online audiences. They followed that in 2021 with Dear Nancine, a piece realized in nine installments through the US Mail. thingNY opened the Perelman Arts Center’s inaugural season with their co-commission of Raven Chacon’s Wave Upon Wave in 2023 and curated their first art show To tongue-tie at The Brick Aux in 2024. thingNY has released two albums on Gold Bolus Recordings, minis/Trajectories (2016) and Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: an Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young (2018), and will record and release Joseph White’s You Against Nature in 2026. thingny.com