Grace Scheele – Ontario

interdisciplinary artist . composer . free improvisor . harpist

Winter. I feel like Winter describes me best! My music tends to lean into melancholy, tender ambiance, and sometimes some rather jarring noise (quite like waking up at 5am to a snowplow scraping loudly up the block). I love the snow cover we’ve had the past couple of years, and there’s nothing that makes me love living in Toronto more than donning my snowsuit on a Sunday afternoon to traipse through a very empty High Park to scale a ravine towards my end goal of Creme Brulee and a hot coffee at my favorite local spot Coffee & All That Jazz in Roncesvalle. – Grace

Albums

Walk the Darkness Down is a new album from composer Christopher Mayo featuring Grace Scheele (harp) and Andrew Noseworthy (guitar). It collects three works composed between 2019 and 2023 for various combinations of harp and guitar which push the instruments from gentle twang to overwhelming, clattering noise. Features new works for electric guitar and harp (A Sick, Sly Age) and solo harp (It Could Be You or You or You – “a gentle, distant, washed-out meditation on small changes to simple harmonies.”)
Landings is the debut EP from electroacoustic harpist and composer Grace Scheele. Known for her minimalistic textures within noise landscapes, she presents a sound that synches elements of ambient, experimental, noise, and classical music, her sound ranges from moody minimalism to melancholic glitchscapes. landings centres on the real and imagined experience of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon; wielding bowed harp, electronic fx, and sampling from speeches, newsreels, mission audio, and NASA’s own interviews with those present at the historic newscast. Ranging from the ethereally ambient to grinding, jarring industrial noise, the seven tracks across this debut EP represents an imagined journey into the darkness of space. Meant to be listened to from start to finish: recommended listening experience includes lying on the floor, turning off the lights, and staring at the ceiling for a bit. Heck, maybe even some fairy lights for sparkles. Originally premiered live during the Aga Khan Museum’s Moon Landing Festival.

Connections to Canada & Canadian Music

Recent album release, Walk the Darkness Down, performing and premiering music by Canadian Composer Christoper Mayo.
Grace has cemented herself in the Canadian experimental/contemporary classical/improvisation scenes with performances at The MusicGallery, Soundstreams, Women from Space Festival, Canadian Music Centre, Aga Khan Museum, and recent residencies at the Tranzac Club, Small World Music, and Across Oceans Arts.
Free Improvisation: improvised with renowned Juno-nominated Indigineous cellist and composer Cris Dirksen, Casey Sokol, Matt Brubeck among others.

Notable Mentors

I studied free improvisation with Dr. Ladano, a student herself of renowned clarinetist/improviser Lori Freedman, during my time at Wilfrid Laurier University. Continuing in the long tradition of Canadian free improvisation, Dr. Ladano’s lessons formed the foundation of my approach to composition and improvisation.

And…

I once performed a gig at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and had to bring my pedal harp and bags of cables and effects through various levels of metal detectors – much to the chagrin of airport security.. As I was carting my pedal harp towards the security line, a guard sees me and declares “How the hell am I supposed to scan THAT?!”. Luckily after many a transport cover removed, and the instrument explained properly, I was able to play my synth and harp arrangement of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports in Terminal 1 while children danced about and travellers hurried to their destinations.

jellygoo by Grace Scheele

About Grace

Grace Scheele’s music hones minimalistic textures within noise landscapes – creating a sound that is “a pliable, fluid, continuum…that’s as beautiful as it is unconventional” (Canadian Music Centre). She is a interdisciplinary performing artist, electroacoustic harpist, and composer working across a wide range of disciplines.

She masterfully interweaves harp rumblings, cinematic drones, textural extended technique and candid tape confessions into music that celebrates that liminal ‘in-between’; a place of question, blank existence, or wonder.

She made her Roy Thompson Hall debut in 2023 with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra; improvised alongside Juno-nominated Indigenous cellist Cris Derksen, vocalist Teiya Kasahara, and pianist Darren Creech in Olivia Shortt’s Fauxstalgia (Soundstreams, Toronto); premiered and performed short film scores during Toronto International Film Festival’s Next Wave, winning the Audience Choice Award for Best Score; and performed Suzanne Kite’s Iktómiwiŋ (A Vision of Standing Cloud) with Thin Edge New Music Collective (Toronto) in 2023.

Last April, she invited her audience to ponder joy and share their stories/thoughts in her fundamentally interactive cassette booth confessional interdisciplinary work i count it all joy, premiered during Din of Shadows VII with The Music Gallery. Additionally, her music/theatre/film/motion-captured avatar theatre show not yr angel bby harpist premiered to a sold-out audience at Catalyst137 during Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound in 2022.

Her interdisciplinary performance has been featured at The Music Gallery (Toronto), Canadian Music Centre (online/Toronto), Stretchmetal (Chicago), Soundstreams (Toronto), Numus Concers (Kitchener), Women from Space Festival (Toronto), Oh My Ears’ New Music Festival (Phoenix, USA), and Din of Shadows (Toronto).

Grace was a 2025 Artist-in-Residence alongside longtime collaborator violist and composer Arie Verheul van de Ven at the Tranzac Club (Toronto).

She has composed and premiered film scores during the Toronto International Film Festival’s Next Wave, winning Audience’s Choice for Best Score alongside her ensemble HARP+ in 2019. She recently scored the short film Notes on a Performance by writer/director Jennifer Law-Smith which was a finalist in the Vancouver Independent Film Festival and Toronto Independent Film Festival of CIFT in 2021.

Grace was awarded the 2019 Audience Choice Award for Best Film Score at TIFF Next Wave, and was the winner of the 2018 NUMUS Emerging Curator Competition.