photo by Kevin Jones.
Naomi McCarroll-Butler is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and instrument maker based in Montréal and Toronto. She is interested in the elegance of the overtone series, breathwork in the unique somatic journey of trans and gender-non-conforming people, and the creation of trance environments through drone, repetition and fluid tuning systems.
“In her musical practice, McCarroll-Butler has a penchant for using drones, for using repetitive rhythmic and melodic motives and for paying special attention to timbre. Her music has a way of inviting the listener to hear in a deep, nuanced way, as initial melodic statements repeat, shift and reconstitute themselves; just as one develops an expectation as to what will come next, that expectation is subverted in surprising, compelling ways.”
Colin Story, Wholenote, June 2022
“Naomi spreads her music throughout Toronto's field of creative music, expressing herself powerfully on multiple instruments. She pairs a commitment to blues-drenched jazz vocabularies with an experimentalist's ear for new timbres and textures, often incorporating electronics. Her solo music can delve equally into sequences of focussed repetition and dreamy melodic invention, whether on the alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet…”
Scott Thomson, Guelph Jazz Festival
An active collaborator, Naomi plays with Jeremy Dutcher, The Queer Songbook Orchestra, Pinksnail, Colin Fisher, Liberté-Anne Lymberiou, Germaine Liu, Juliet Palmer, Labyrinth Ensemble, Karen Ng and many others. Her work as a composer and improviser has been featured by the Canadian Music Centre, POP Montreal, Women From Space Festival, The Music Gallery and Guelph Jazz Festival. The Toronto Jazz Festival selected Naomi as the inaugural recipient of the Immersive Artist in Residence program in 2022, commissioning her to write and perform a piece for a 13-piece large ensemble.