About M i M o

MiMo is a duo featuring multi-instrumentalists Matt Miller (laptop, guitars, synthesizers) and Samuel Morgenstein (drums, percussion, electronics). Their live performances combine their passion for world music, rhythmic intensity, and an interest in creating compelling new music that challenges the status quo. Their signature sound features stripped down compositions and skeletal arrangements to create wide-open soundscapes for improvisation. MiMo brings this exploratory sensibility to the studio where they produce innovative sample libraries for music producers and production music for the visual media industry. Some of MiMo's recent performances include appearances in the RED Festival Toronto and the New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) Sound Travels Festival. In early 2010, MiMo was the featured artist for two-month residency at Somewhere There - the performance space of the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto. MiMo recently won an Ontario Arts Council grant to create a locked groove vinyl album utilizing members of AIM Toronto. This album, released in October 2010, was designed for contemporary turntable musicians and DJ's and reinforces MiMo's mission to bring disparate musical genres together and to create new sounds for popular music idioms.

Samuel Morgenstein, a classically trained percussionist from New York, specializes in the new, the untried, and the experimental. He obtained his Masters of Music degree in Percussion from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and has lived in Toronto for 14 years. Samuel has performed with a wide variety of musical organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada including the Cincinnati Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Toronto Symphony. He has held the position of Principal Percussion with the Windsor Symphony, is currently Principal Timpanist with the Ontario Philharmonic, and freelances with multiple Ontario arts organizations including the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Hamilton Philharmonic, and the National Ballet Orchestra. Samuel has a passion for world music, jazz and creative improvisation of all types. He has explored the world of percussion having been a member of a Brazilian batucada ensemble, a salsa and meringue group, a steel pan ensemble, and has led his own jazz trio. With MiMo, he divides his time among multiple projects that encompass contemporary classical music, world music, electronica, and various popular music forms. In 2007, Samuel travelled throughout India to record street performers and musicians. In addition to an active performing schedule, Samuel focuses on electronic music composition with music software products Ableton Live and Battery.

Matt Miller is a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound designer whose compositions range from genre-bending, cross-cultural pop, to what might best be described as organized noise. His music has been heard on TV across the globe. An avid field recordist, Matt can almost always be found with a portable recording device close by. The sounds that he captures invariably end up as the raw material for new musical concepts. He has traveled extensively throughout Morocco to document the country's rich traditional music, and he maintains a website, moroccanmusic.com, which features some of the recordings he's made there. Most recently, Matt has performed with Fred Frith, Gino Robair and Rob's Collision and has contributed original works and improvisations for NAISA's (New Adventures In Sound Art) SOUNDPlay , as well as NAISA's 3-Sided Square, under the direction of Darren Copeland, as part of the Toronto (new music) Marathon at Yonge-Dundas Square. Matt's soundware company Millertone produces inspiring sample libraries for musicians and producers to usein their own compositions.