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Gillian Stone

Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Gillian Stone shares new single and video "Bridges"

Gillian Stone is a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist who aims to reconcile tenderness and dark emotion in her work.

Her music is an exploration of inner and outer landscapes, turbulent feelings, recovery, and the juxtaposition of femininity and imperfection. She uses vulnerability to create a safe space to explore the dichotomy of beauty and discomfort.


Her new track "Bridges," follows a journey of dysregulated emotions exacerbated by alcohol abuse.

The e-cello movement is meant to evoke the feeling of losing one's mind. This is a post-rock night song that ends with a promise of the sun. "Bridges" is the soundscape of recovery.


"I wrote this song in 2009 after a summer of self-imposed turbulence. I don't remember exactly when or how I wrote it, but it stayed with me and became predictive.


For over a decade, I've returned to it as a space to safely express shame. Now it's morphing into a reminder, a call for self-temperance. I'm still discovering what it means."

Director Emily Harrison calls the video for this song a psychedelic dream inspired by a French New Wave film. Soundscape was key to the creation of this track, which I produced with Michael Peter Olsen during a cold winter in his home studio, in Uncomfortable Silence.


Stone’s vocals and playing have been featured on projects by Alli Sunshine (FORCES), The Fern Tips (members of Beams), Völur (Blood Ceremony), and Althea Thauberger.

Her background in jazz and ethnomusicology has heavily influenced her work. She has studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan, performed with Russell Hartenberger and NEXUS, and performed with Brazilian cavaquinho virtuoso Henrique Cazes.


Fascinated by her Icelandic heritage, Stone explored the popular music of Iceland and the diaspora in Canada as part of her graduate work in ethnomusicology. Her upbringing on Vancouver Island also led her to Coast Salish hip hop and the soundscape and scene of the Cascadian bioregion.

Stone uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore disparate genres in order to produce a singular sonic environment.


Gillian Stone - Bridges (single)

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