Louise Campbell is a composer-performer, improviser, conductor, participatory arts facilitator, and musicians’ health consultant. As a composer-performer, Campbell seeks to interrogate and renew the traditional concert format while fostering the creation of new works. Her specializations include creation with untrained musicians (aka amateurs) cross-disciplinary creation, works in situ, and outreach and audience development. A clarinettist, Campbell augments her instrument using guitar pedals and vocal processors. She has toured as a performer, guest artist and lecturer of improvised and composed musics across Canada, US, France, Germany and Brazil.

As a Participatory Arts facilitator, Campbell guides the creative process through experiential learning so that participants create and understand through doing. She specializes in music creation with untrained musicians (aka amateurs) of all ages and abilities, including with elementary and secondary school students as an Artist in Schools (Culture in Schools, Bradyworks), disadvantaged youth (OSM, Culture pour tous), young adults with disabilities (Innovation en concert) and with adult and older adult amateurs with little to no experience in music making (Vanier College, Mount Royal University, seniors and community centres across Canada). In addition, Campbell leads teacher-training workshops in Improvisation and Creativity in the Classroom (Quebec Band Association, FAMEQ, McGill School of Music, McGill Faculty of Education, University of Waterloo Music Therapy).
Campbell specializes in movement for musicians to facilitate the creative process and health and injury prevention. Her interest in movement as a creative process developed through training with clown Valerie Dean in Laban-Bartenieff Movement Fundamentals, contemporary dancer Eryn Dace Trudell in Skinner Releasing Technique and physical theatre artist Denise Clarke in the One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre Summer Lab Intensive and her certification as a Shiatsu massage therapist. She integrates this experience in her work with leading the creative process and as an artist coach for health and injury prevention.

Career highlights include on-going collaborations with spoken word artist Ian Ferrier and her ensemble In Extensio, opening for Suzanne Ciani with a set of original works solo clarinet and loop station (Intersection Festival, 2018), sound design for Trina Davies’ play Waxworks (CUE Productions, 2017), composing and recording music for parent and baby/toddler dance for Eryn Dace Trudell (Mama Dances, 2015), co-composition of cross-disciplinary music, movement and video work with In Extensio, director Camille Renarhd and videographer Benoît Dhennin (Agora de la danse, 2013), performing in New Circus show by Valerie Dean and Don Reider (Hope for the Haunted, 2013), composing and recording music for film director Jeanette Pope (Dust, a sculptor’s journey, Festival du nouveau cinéma 2011; Berson Boys, Kodak Emerging Filmmaker Program at Cannes 2009); installing and performing Emily Doolittle’s reeds, a site-specific work based on birdsong (Sound Symposium, 2010); and collaborating with writer Annie Abrahams and director Rebecca Barnstaple in the creation of l’envoyer à mars pour y trouver la quiétude (2008), an installation involving projected text, dance and music.

Campbell holds an MMus in Clarinet Performance with a minor in Jazz from Indiana University, MA in Music Education from McGill University, and a Certificate in Shiatsu Therapy from Institut Kinéconcept. She has been a recipient of a number of artist residencies (The Banff Centre, Matralab), grants (Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, Alberta Foundation for the Arts) and scholarships (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds de Recherche Société Culture du Québec).