Montréal-based baritone saxophonist, vocalist and creative producer, Ida Toninato creates music that merges breath, resonance and immersion. Known for her powerful approach to reverberant spaces and for her instinctive connection to sound, she develops deep artistic relationships with the architectures she performs in and with the humans she plays with and for. Her work is driven by a desire to dissolve the boundary between instrument, voice, space and body, turning each performance into a ritual of deep listening, imagination and presence.
After years within contemporary and experimental music circles, Toninato embraced a path shaped by her own daring intuitions. Her debut album Strangeness is Gratitude (Kohlenstoff Records, 2016) established her as a singular voice on the underground experimental scene. Her follow-up We Become Giants, recorded in a former water cistern and released by Dragon’s Eye Recordings, received international attention for its unique marriage of space, electronic processing and timbre. A committed creative partner, she recorded the Juno and Opus-nominated The Space Between Us (with violist Jennifer Thiessen), before the two expanding their sonic palette into voices and electronics for Dream of Heat (2026), produced by Jason Sharp and recorded by Radwan Ghazi-Moumneh at Hotel2Tango.
Toninato is also a very frequent collaborator of musician and visual artist Pierre-Luc Lecours. Together, they develop hybrid A/V performances that merge electronic music, live instrumentation and audio-reactive visuals. Their work has toured internationally through the MUTEK Network, and in 2025 they opened the Biennale NEMO in Paris with Homeostasis, a critically acclaimed performance now available as a full-length album and vinyl edition.
Deeply involved in digital and immersive arts, Toninato extends her practice to narrative and XR formats, including the VR experience Listening to the Walls (NUMIX finalist, 2022), and is currently developing Lions on the Run, a new solo work merging baritone sax, voice and electronic processes.
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