Patrick O'Reilly

Massive thanks to the @tapirlab.uoft who gave me space a few weeks ago through their BPMC residency program to workshop and document my ongoing project Carded, which is a card based game piece, but also an attempt to create the world’s largest graphic score through community composition and creativity. Being given space and time for focused work on this is a huge privilege that I am grateful for 💜 Carded started 8 years ago in the living room at @tranzac292 and I’m more excited about it every day! Extra thanks to all those who joined me for this! Especially @noisyjoe who spent an entire day workshopping the “Sorbara Deck” with me. @cfladager11 whom I discovered a new duo with that I hope to explore much more, and @mikeromaniak for creative/technical advice and inspiration

join us for another Somonadic Improv featuring Patrick O'Reilly & Sonomadic Saxophone Quartet premiering 'for a people to come', a transcultural diagram of sonic nomadism

The last thing I’ll share about my time in Paris isn’t really about Paris. I’m away a lot, but living there was the longest I’ve ever been away from my cat Vulnavia (you can call her Navy). I missed her. So getting home was pretty nice too

When I arrived in Paris I had a lot of trouble sleeping. Right before I left Toronto a friend had given me some books to pass along to my students. There was an old copy of the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I liked how the aged paper looked so I brought it with me thinking I’d read through it a bit. Paris is the birthplace of surrealism, and I spent many of my days in galleries looking at surrealist works and reading about the techniques they developed in order to express their unconscious mind. Paris was also home to the Beat Hotel where William Burroughs used the cut-up technique to create the Word Hoard, which was about 1000 pages of text that formed the basis of four novels. So I bought an Exacto knife and started to cut the Omnibook. I’ve made a lot of cut-up pieces before but for this I was only using cut-outs. Trying to take away material to reveal something new. Processing the entire Omnibook this way to create a “Note Hoard” from which to generate future works became my creative focus. I’m not sure it helped my insomnia. The last photo is of a band I had in 2017 called Chalk Repairer that played pieces I wrote by processing Charlie Parker’s music in various ways. Justin Haynes took the photo and talked to me a lot about the music. Any project I do like this owes a particular debt to Justin, who at my first composition lesson made me take a Messiaen book he had cut-up. If you haven’t heard his album Birder, it’s worth your time. And as Justin says in the liner notes to that album “Charlie Parker is still a miracle.”

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved the circus! Paris is home to so many, and there are always a bunch travelling through. I spent a lot of nights at the circus drinking coffee. Usually a few times a week. Many different types of circus in many different spaces. Mostly under big tops at the edge of the city, but also in black box theatres, in a shopping mall after closing (that was wild), at the famous Cirque d’Hiver building. I only have a handful of photos because the lighting wasn’t usually ideal for my instant camera. The last photo is from a book I have here at home. It’s Alexander Calder with his Cirque Calder that he made out of, amongst other things, wire. He built it in his apartment in Paris beginning in 1926. This year is the 100th anniversary. I first saw his circus at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2009 while it was on tour. I haven’t stopped thinking of it since then. My trio Wire Circus played our first gig the next year.

Around this time last year I was getting ready to come home from Paris. I had the immense privilege of receiving a grant to spend a large chunk of the fall/winter living there creating and experiencing the culture. I haven’t really shared much from that time with people (online or in real life) so I decided to post some stuff over the next few days. I spent a lot of time getting to know the city on foot. In fact, apart from getting to and from the airport, I only travelled on foot. That was a rule I set for myself. These are some of the photos I took wandering around. The last one is the view from the little room I stayed in. I took it on December 31st 2024 getting ready to start the new year.

This is Richard Serra’s Verb List. I first encountered it about three years ago when @nickfraserthedrummer read it aloud to a group of us at the University of Toronto. Shortly thereafter I started an ongoing practice of writing a piece for each entry on the list. I like composing “books” of music. The books of music created by John Zorn (Masada 1-3, The Book of Heads, The Bagatelles), Thelonious Monk, @kategdrums & Matt Mitchell’s Snark Horse, Béla Bartók (Mikrokosmos) and of course Bach, are works I check in with, in some way, more days than not. I’ve recorded a number of the verb list pieces in the last few years, but this last week saw the first release of one “to pair”. @stef.in69 included it on his new album Nightmares. It means a lot to have it included on this album, and recording it and then playing it on tour this month with him, @luanphung , @imnotchrispruden , @anh.t.phung , & Robyn Gray was such a treat! Massive thanks to Ky Brooks for the awesome recording session in Montreal, @jeanmartinbarnyard for working his magic in the mix/mastering, and @tinylittlehammers for the incredible album art

Al Qahwa (Maryem Hassan Tollar, Ernie Tollar, Naghmeh Farahmand Music, Waleed Kush Afro-Jazz)- is preparing some funky music for our show THIS FRIDAY - October 24 - 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. at DROM Drom Taberna - with special guests Jaash Singh on percussion, Patrick O’Reilly on guitar and Omneya Tollar on b.up vocals - PWYC Let’s dance and groove together my friends! @qahwa4 @maryemhassantollar @omneya___ @jaash.singh @wire.circus @waleedkushafrojazz @naghmehfarahmand_ @ernietollar @dromtaberna

Saturday 7:30-9:30 Tranzac Set 1: solo Set 2 I’ll be joined by: @annie_elgie @finny.bear @georgia_bear @noisyjoe 📷 @robertdiack

Patrick O’Reilly is a guitarist, composer, and a community-driven fixture in the Toronto creative music scene. His open approach embraces the lyrical and chaotic, the composed and the spontaneous. For this solo performance, he presents a program of music by guitarist and composer Ken Aldcroft (1969–2016). A towering figure in Canadian creative music, Aldcroft’s influence on a generation of musicians was profound. This set will pay tribute to Aldcroft’s singular legacy through the voice of O’Reilly’s solo guitar. #GJF2025 #guelphfestivals #guelpharts #guelph

torn apart and recalibrated (in the best way) coming out of banff I love these magic people dearly!

co-presented by Big John Leacock realtor @bigjohnnyguelph WAPAMA is a high-energy Toronto-based trio blending Afro-jazz, global rhythms, and joyful improvisation. Formed by bassist/vocalist Waleed Abdulhamid, guitarist Patrick O’Reilly, and drummer Max Senitt, the group emerged from years of collaboration supporting artists across Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. During the 2020 lockdown, they developed their own trio voice through outdoor concerts and a weekly residency at The Oud & The Fuzz. Drawing on diverse traditions and decades of performance experience, WAPAMA creates expansive, groove-rich music that is both emotionally resonant and rhythmically infectious. Their debut album is currently in the works. #GJF2025 #guelphfestivals #guelpharts #guelph