Stephen O’Shea

2024 Award Nominee

About The Artist

Located in New Westminster

Connection to Fraser Valley: Raised in Abbotsford, major contributor to the Downtown Abbotsford art-punk rock scene (1999-2008), Jam in Jubilee Artistic Director 2012-2014

Stephen Carl O’Shea is an award-winning minimal sound artist and songwriter from New Westminster, British Columbia. As a co-founding member of the new-wave band You Say Party, he has toured across three continents and played hundreds of shows in dive bars, all-ages spaces, and music festivals. His passion for the arts and community-building has led him to be the artistic director of Jam in Jubilee Music Festival (2012-2014), Executive Director of the Arts Council of New Westminster (2015-2022), and he currently works at New Media Gallery running programs from the Art + Technology LAB.

In 2015, he released the first in a series of collaborative projects, “Midnight Music” is a four-song EP created with New York-based artist Holy Hum.

Stephen released a split 12″ LP with The Sylvia Platters through 101.7 FM CIVL Radio in October 2018. “Shadow Steps” was nominated for three categories (Experimental, Electronic, Punk) at the 2018 Fraser Valley Music Awards and spent five weeks at #1 on the 101.7 FM CIVL Radio weekly EarShot charts. Shadow Steps was the most-played album on CIVL Radio in 2018.

In the Spring of 2019, Stephen released “EXPANSE”, an audio-visual composition created with Montreal-based artist Daniel Ross. EXPANSE was nominated for two categories (Electronic, Experimental) at the 2019 Fraser Valley Music Awards. EXPANSE was recognized in the Electronic category.

In January 2020, Stephen announced a new album entitled DECADE. For the next ten years, the album will release one minute of music via Bandcamp on the last day of each month, culminating in a 120-minute continuous composition. Now in its fourth year, DECADE unfolds and twists into something much more interesting than its initial departure point.