Bio

Camille Kiku Belair is a composer, classical guitarist, and interdisciplinary artist. They are interested in working with field recordings, creating handmade artist books, and exploring connections between music and art making. 

A graduate of OCAD University’s Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design MFA program, they previously completed a BMus specialising in composition at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, and studied at California Institute of the Arts in both the Performer-Composer and Experimental Sound Practices MFA programs.

Camille’s 2024 MFA thesis exhibit, the object, the instrument, the book, the score: compositional tools and the sonic imagination, featured artworks including large abstract grid-based drawings (the Diptych series), combinatorial handmade book-objects, and textural monoprints. These projects associate looking and listening, situating the process of composition, both visual and sonic, in the imagination.  

Camille has exhibited artwork in two-person and group shows in the OCAD U Graduate Gallery, Ignite Gallery West, Open Space Gallery, and Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.

Previously, Book Piece (2021), a text score, premiered in Tokyo at the 2021 Keiko Yoneda International Composers’ Competition finals. It was performed again in 2022 in a second Tokyo concert by Style and Idea. Camille was the 2018 composer in residence for the University of Toronto’s Guitar Orchestra, during which Nebulosity was composed and premiered. 

They have been a participant in Toronto Creative Music Lab (2018) and Montreal Creative Music Lab (2022), as well as the Music Gallery’s Emergents series, featured in the fourth concert/exhibit. They have had three articles published in The WholeNote magazine, as well as a Generations/Conversations interview series with Gayle Young for the Canadian Music Centre. 

Current work involves developing handmade book objects that function as compositional tools, and exploring different types of graphic music notation. These projects aim to investigate the applications of unfixity in physical media, connecting these new paths to music composition, performance, and improvisation. Other forms of visual research into score-making as a drawing practice are ongoing. Additional ongoing projects include composing music for solo classical guitar and creating grid-based abstract drawings that generate patterns from melodies.

Camille is a member of the Next Generation Youth Council for the Greater Toronto Chapter of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, as well as part of the 2024 Powell Street Festival’s Japanese Canadian Youth Cohort.