Surrey\u2019s Casse-Tete festival offers sonic smorgasbord<\/p>\n
Published 9:00 pm Monday, July 6, 2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all about \u201cexpanding the possibilities of delight.\u201d<\/p>\n
So says Jeremy Stewart, founder and artistic director of Casse-Tete: A Festival of Experimental Music which returns to South Surrey\u2019s Historic Stewart Farm (13723 Crescent Road) July 10 to 12.<\/p>\n
Three days of all-ages free programming will feature everything from extended improvisations and new music in the classical tradition, to unorthodox fusions of styles and instrumentation and often unheard idioms such as \u201cpost-rock\u201d and \u201cnoise.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the name of the festival roughly translates as \u201chead-breaker\u201d (actually a common French term for a puzzle) \u2013 nobody\u2019s out to actually break anybody\u2019s head with this music, Stewart noted during a recent conversation with Peace Arch News.<\/p>\n
Instead, the idea is to offer a kind of welcoming, playful sonic smorgasbord in which virtually any musical appreciator can find something that is accessible, as well as new and intriguing flavours adjacent to their previous experience.<\/p>\n
Headliners for this year\u2019s festival include (on Friday night) Seattle cellist Lori Goldston (who describes herself as \u201csemi feral\u201d\u2013 as a classically trained musician who has embraced experimental forms); Costa Rican composer and conductor Jose Delgado Guevara; bassist Olive Shakur, and highly regarded, highly versatile drummer Kevin Romain.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, an interactive afternoon program with drama teacher and experimental sound artists Slavko Bucifal is designed for children, while evening performers will include \u201csound collagist\u201d V. Vecker (also known as Keith Wecker) who builds his highly individual work by layering multiple loops; and fellow multi-instrumentalist (including flat-picking and pedal steel guitar) and media artist Raghu Lokanathan.<\/p>\n
Wrapping up the festival on Sunday afternoon will be ok vancouver ok, an avant garde art pop project by songwriter and visual artist Jeffrey Mark Johnson.<\/p>\n
Stewart, himself a musician of broad and eclectic tastes (guitarist of improvisational metallic noise project Christians, he is currently deeply involved with his wife Erin in a new songwriting-driven band, Voice Of Fire) started Casse Tete in 2013 in the former home city of Prince George and ran it successfully until 2017.<\/p>\n
After they moved to the Semiahmoo Peninsula, he restarted the festival in 2023, initially under the aegis of the White Rock Jazz and Blue Festival.<\/p>\n
In 2025 it became a stand-alone event again at Historic Stewart Farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was our first year there, and we\u2019re very grateful for that,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cThe City of Surrey is right there with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stewart Garage, where the festival takes place, is \u201ca cute little room,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can seat around 40 to 50 people there, and it worked great last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is music as art \u2013 but in a very come-as-you-are situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t really have kids asking what kind of instrument that is, in a traditional concert setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, he said, the festival is trying a new experiment \u2013 two evening performances highlighted by an extended improvisation piece that will bring together many of the featured artists of the festival, hopefully sparking new collaborations and explorations in the future.<\/p>\n
Prince George proved very open to such an adventurous culture and community-defining program, but the Semiahmoo Peninsula shows every indication of being ready for it at this point, Stewart said.<\/p>\n
In the North and in a lot of cities in Western Canada, he pointed out, \u201cthere is a culture of making your own forms of entertainment, of being independent, of not waiting for government institutions to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vancouver is \u201ca little less that way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Surrey and White Rock, for bedroom communities, demonstrate a great deal of potential to become a sophisticated, richly varied cultural hub, with events like Casse Tete leading the way, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have what it takes to be a city \u2013 we just need to do it,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me this festival is a way to discover the musical culture here, and be that culture. And all you have to do is show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information on the event and performance times, visit cassetetefestival.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surrey\u2019s Casse-Tete festival offers sonic smorgasbord Published 9:00 pm Monday, July 6, 2026 It\u2019s all about \u201cexpanding the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-785503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}