photo by Kevin Jones.
Naomi McCarroll-Butler is a saxophonist, clarinetist, whistle player, and instrument maker based in Montreal. An active collaborator, she works in the cracks between improvised music, free jazz, drone, noise, new music, and experimental pop and folk. Her own work examines the elegance of the overtone series, the ecstasy and body horror of trans embodiment, 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
Naomi plays with Labyrinth Ensemble, Jeremy Dutcher, Pinksnail, Sun Milk (fka decoration day), The Queer Songbook Orchestra, Canadian Golha Orchestra, Colin Fisher, the projects of Liberté-Anne Lymberiou, Germaine Liu, Juliet Palmer, Karen Ng and many others. Her work as a composer and improviser has been featured by the Canadian Music Centre, Suoni per il Popolo, Pop Montreal, TONE Fest, Women From Space Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, The Music Gallery, Centre Phi, Open Ears Calgary and Guelph Jazz Festival. She will soon be releasing duo albums with jaw harpist Chik White and composer Jason Doell featuring her handmade instruments.
Naomi’s teachers include Jen Shyu, Pat Labarbera, Michael Stuart, Amir ElSaffar and Jacob Adler. She is a member of the 2023 cohort of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians, where she created an audio-visual piece with New York-based keyboardist Shoko Nagai.