Saturday evening at the Claude-Champagne Hall of the University of Montreal, a concert was held to celebrate the anniversaries of two venerable Quebec musical institutions: the 60th of the Quebec Society of Contemporary Music (SMCQ) and the 75th of the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal (UdeM). Contemporary Confluences, the title of the concert, highlighted the many intersections between the two organizations. The program honoured the various musical directors of the SMCQ throughout history (Serge Garant, Gilles Tremblay, Walter Boudreau, Ana Sokolovic), who have all also been teachers at UdeM. As a bonus, a creation by a young composer, Maxime Daigneault, because we must not forget that the mission of both institutions is also to ensure the future of contemporary classical music. It was the SMCQ ensemble, led by Christian Gort, and the UdeM Contemporary Music Ensemble, led by Jean-Michaël Lavoie, who shared the stage and the pieces, sometimes in tandem.
READ THE INTERVIEW ABOUT THIS CONCERT
The program showed the depth of scholarly creation in Quebec music. Boudreau’s Coffre III(a) (Le Cercle Gnostique I {}) launched the evening with the composer’s usual mark, his stunning colours and sparkling energy. The trio of young students from UdM, composed of Jérémie Arsenault on clarinet, Alona Milner on piano, and Leîla Saurel on cello, was impressive in terms of technical quality, precision, and timbral beauty.
Following was Serge Garant’s Quintet for flutes, oboe/English horn, percussion, piano, and cello, a true marvel of arch construction, whose expressive beauty relies on an exceptional sense of colour and thematic metamorphosis. Ana Sokolovic’s Five Locomotives and Some Animals bears the mark of the Montreal composer’s efficient style. Descriptive episodes including rhythmic and stylistic motifs from Balkan folklore, interspersed with short interventions driven by exciting motor energy. Ironically, it was the work that seemed the most fragmented of the evening in terms of sonic coherence, whereas the others were rather seeking to create an integrated, morphic and organic whole despite their omnipresent pointillism. Nevertheless, Sokolovic’s writing remains irresistible.
Souffle (Champs II) by Gilles Tremblay reminded us of how the formal and intellectual complexity of the composer’s works is equally matched by a fascinating mastery of expression and discourse. The abundance of colours and the stunning poetry of this seductive abstraction never fail to move. Very great art, as Lavoie and the UdeM Ensemble reminded us.
I really enjoyed the last piece of the evening, Sensations: Lueurs du néant (Sensations and glimmers of nothingness) by Maxime Daigneault. This commission, performed by the largest number of musicians in the program, testified quite explicitly to the nature of contemporary language in 2025, compared to that of its predecessors, concentrated in the years 1978 to 1996. Daigneault’s music is organic, metamorphic in the sense of a moving fluid that almost never contains sound breaks. This fluidity is very representative of current music in scholarly creation, probably informed by post-minimalism and neo-romanticism. In the 21st century, we seek to fill the expressive field, to cover it entirely. It is very different from the atomism that dominated avant-garde and institutional musical thought in the second half of the 20th century.
Daigneault told me before the concert that the idea of this piece was to translate the compositional process that characterizes his own approach. At the moment of starting to write a work, there is nothing. A blank page, or rather a dark void. Then, through persistent searching, a few luminous threads appear, ideas, intuitions. He pulls on them, sees what he can do with them, ties them together, and eventually transforms the darkness into light. Sensations: Lueurs du néant is totalitarian music, in the sense of a total monopolization of the sound space, without breaks, or almost. It is also a very strongly expressive music, and one that has an almost physical impact on the listener. As far as I’m concerned, a great success. Why did it then seem to me that the applause was a bit too polite?
The musicians of both ensembles were at the forefront of the numerous demands of the scores. With perhaps the advantage going to that of the SMCQ, which is also the most experienced.
The celebration of the two anniversaries took place in a sober manner while highlighting the very essence of their missions: to promote the excellence and endurance of local musical genius.
