rod thomas squance

Raga Media Kit

Complete Bios and Photos

ROD THOMAS SQUANCE

Rod Thomas Squance is regarded as one of Canada’s most exciting musicians. Rod is very active as a soloist and freelance percussionist in chamber, orchestral, jazz and world music settings. His collaborations with renowned international figures are numerous. He has performed with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project, clarinettist Paquito de Rivera, Korean traditional percussionist Dong-Won Kim, shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, erhuist Yu Hongmei, and tabla players Prafulla Athalye, Sandeep Das and Abbas Janmohamed. Rod’s playing has been heard on national radio and television broadcasts. He appears in solo recitals regularly, including recitals for national CBC radio broadcasts, and has performed as a soloist with many other orchestras and ensembles. Rod holds a doctoral degree from the University of Miami, having received his formal training as a classical percussionist, but is equally comfortable playing jazz vibraphone. He is an experienced performer and scholar of Balinese gender wayang music, completing field research in Balinese music studying gender wayang with I Ketut Sukayana in Sukawati village, Bali. He is also an accomplished performer of Indian classical music, having performed Hindustani raga using a special marimba of his own design, accompanied by Mumbai based tabla player Shri Prafulla Athalye and touring with Canadian tabla player Zaheer-Abbas Janmohamed. Rod has studied percussion with Ney Rosauro and Glenn Price, Balinese gender wayang with Brita Heimarck, marimba with Leigh Howard Stevens and She-e Wu and for many years developed his musicianship with Canadian pedagogue and violinist, Thomas Rolston. He currently teaches ethnomusicology and percussion at the University of Calgary and has served on the faculty of the Banff Centre for the Arts.

ZAHEER-ABBAS JANMOHAMED

Zaheer-Abbas Janmohamed is a Canadian tabla player and a student of Ustad Allarakha’s senior disciple, Shri Prafulla Athalye. A two-time recipient of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Arts Fellowship Award, he studied in India in 2005-2006 and again in 2010-2011 intensively under Athalye. While in India, he also attended classes at the Ustad Allarakha Institute of Music, studying with Ustad Fazal Qureshi. Since returning to Canada, Zaheer-Abbas continues to receive regular guidance and mentorship from Athalye, and more recently from Ustad Shahbaz Hussain. True to his multicultural heritage, Zaheer-Abbas embraces innovative cross-cultural collaborations, but also places great emphasis on preserving the integrity and authenticity of the classical Indian tradition of his instrument. He brings the tradition of tabla to new contexts and audiences through musical collaborations, using the instrument’s sound and theory to explore rhythmic composition and electronic music production. He has performed across Canada in a variety of classical, semi-classical, and contemporary musical settings, including appearances such as Sonic Landscapes (Surbahar) with Ustad Irshad Khan, Sufi folk music of Mukhtiyar Ali, and numerous performances with Dr. Rod Thomas Squance. Zaheer-Abbas is credited as a contributor and musician in WhyNot Theatre’s staging of the play Mahabharata, which most recently toured to London, UK in 2023.