As a Musician and Composer...

(Playing the piano frame in the barn - too heavy to move anywhere!)

Daniel Heïkalo is a first-rate, internationally-recognized musician who has been enrapturing audiences at festivals and concert venues across Canada, Europe, and the United States.  His first CD, "Thoughts For My Father", released in 1993, was nominated for an East Coast Music Award.    Heïkalo plays acoustic, classical, bass, electric and prepared guitars, cittern, mandolin, banjo, recorders, hand drums, and other percussive instruments, as well as anything else he can find that will produce an interesting or unusual effect.  Electro-acoustic manipulations and "musique concrète" round out his repertoire.  His compositions and sound designs are inspired by his extensive knowledge of world, classical, folk, rock, jazz, and blues music, and by his large collection of hard-to-find recordings from around the world.    Heïkalo is a prolific artist whose creations demonstrate his enjoyment in exploring the unlimited possibilities of diverse styles and sounds.  An avid pursuer of bizarre soundscapes, Heikalo uses whatever instruments, official or otherwise, that he can manipulate.  Regardless of the medium, the outcome clearly reflects a man with an undying passion to explore the myriad possibilities of sound, with results that are profound and riveting.   Heïkalo has been the recipient of three creation grants for composition from the Nova Scotia Arts Council since 2000.

 

WHAT is a Bureauphone...?      A drawer-less dresser - cheap manufacture, but excellent acoustics!

 

Performances...    often include Heïkalo's trademark free-improvisational tangents, particularly noteworthy on percussion or recorder, where his ability to delve into stream-of-consciousness is especially apparent.  Skill is surpassed by the spontaneous, and, as if that were not enough, he introduces, to the delight and surprise of the audience, the unusual integration of the voice, in which he allows the voice and instrument to become automatic in an un-censored plane, frequently in the form of "glossolalia" or, "speaking in tongues".

---

                     What the PRESS have said about Daniel Heikalo's music...
 

"World class guitarist." -  Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin                        "Will leave you spellbound."  - College Radio Quarterly "One of the world's great guitarists."  - Tom Bingham, Option       "Powerful technician." - Frets Magazine   "Astonishing...musically speaking, he is completely multi-lingual... Heikalo's musical imagination is unique." -  Steve Pedersen,  Chronicle Herald       "If points are going out for originality, Heïkalo's got full marks." - The Coast, Halifax   "Heïkalo's music conjures infinite moods and images...Hauntingly beautiful." - SOCAN Magazine   "Listening to his music is like losing yourself in the wraiths and shapes dancing in and out of flames."  - Steve Pedersen quoting Al Chaddock,  Chronicle Herald

Back to top.

HOME