Additional Information
Flux is still a young festival, now in its third year. Flux embraces the aesthetics of contemporary jazz, avant-garde rock, noise, drone, electroacoustic music, and indigenous creative music—in short, all the cutting-edge genres that fascinate the most adventurous music lovers. Peter Burton serves as artistic and general director; he is a great connoisseur of music, an experienced promoter, and remains passionate about his field—having previously been deeply involved with Suoni Per Il Popolo, La Casa, and La Sala. This new phase of his career is marked by organizational independence and greater responsibilities in that role. Here, Peter explains the programs from the 2nd week of Flux, which runs from October 5 to 11.
Monday October 5th.
Bill Cole / Ras Burnett / Althea SullyCole / Taylor Ho Bynum + Bob Stewart at Chapelle Saint-Louis
Peter Burton : So the 5th features a quartet led by Bill Cole, who played in the Firespitters, which was Jane Cortez’s band. It was kind of a spoken word project where she’d be singing and reciting texts and so on. It was kind of a little bit no wave and very much a lot of hard melodics. Ornette Coleman influenced the backing band, so he was a big part of that for a lot of years. But he also played with a lot of players in New York, like Ornette Coleman. He’s known as being kind of in parallel with Don Cherry, an improviser on non-Western instruments. So he was doing his PhD and developed a strong interest in Korean instruments and kind of went from there as instruments to improvise on in the free jazz tradition. So he’s very much part of that. He’s also an author, he wrote a book on John Coltrane, another one on Miles Davis, so he was kind of an early scholar of jazz and so on. So an interesting guy.
Raz Burnett is a saxophone and flute player from New York City, quite well known on the scene. Taylor Ho Bynum played with Anthony Braxton for a long time. And he was a prof at Princeton, I think he still is. So he plays the pocket trumpet. And then the other musician in that band is Althea Sully Cole, who is Bill Cole’s daughter. She is a kora player and she teaches at McGill in Musicology. And she’s obviously been playing free improv with her dad since forever.
And there’s also the duet with Bob Stewart on tuba and John Hollenbeck will be joining him. And there’s going to be surprise guests too. We’ll sit in and play with Bob in a duo format. And he is working on that currently, so we’ll be able to introduce that on the night of the show. And so yeah, and that’s Bob Stewart. So it’s pretty good. A lot of jazz history here with Bill Cole and Bob Stewart in the lineup.
Tuesday October 6th
Peter Burton: The next night is the Mardi Spaghetti, and Bob Stewart wanted another gig. He is good friends with the Montreal tuba players Julie Richard and Julie Houle, so they’re going to be doing a tuba project that night.
And also Bill Cole will do a jam session with Jahson from Kalmunity and some other guest artists, I think Althea Suli-Cole will sit in, and her partner Samba Lobi Traore, who’s a bass player from West Africa. And then there’s Malqa, which is a French-Palestinian improvising trio that Eric Normand from Rimouski was organizing a tour for. So we added them to the bill at the Casa on Tuesday.
Wednesday October 7th,
We have Kim Zombik’s Origin Stories. So Kim is biracial, black father, white mother, born in Boston, Massachusetts. And she’s composing this music-slash-theater piece about her xperiences, which obviously I think were difficult at times, but I haven’t seen the work yet, but based on what she’s been saying. And so Kim just turned 60, so I think this is a statement piece for her, and this is a work I think that she’s going to be developing. So this is a first draft of this work, but she plans to continue developing it as time goes on. Origin Stories is backed up by the Silvervest Quartet: Kim Zombik on vocals and text, Nicolas Caloya on upright bass, David Ryshpan on keyboards and Jahsun on drums.
There will be also the participation of Christelle Saint-Julien, journalist and author, and Deanna Smith, poet and teacher who works on the themes of cultural heritage, love, family, open mindness.
Thursday October 8th
Museond Fund for Creativity: Mer Agatha + Z + Drag King Valentino at Chapelle des Hospitalières
Peter Burton: Museond Incubator provides trans and non binary creators with seed funding and a platform through interdisciplinary art forms can take shape. There’s this guy, John Fairbrother, who set up the Museond Fund. He’s a former veterinarian professor on the South Shore. And so he’s been supporting Innovation en Concert, and created this fund for trans and non-binary artists. And so Innovation en Concert and Arts on the Margins is programming and presenting this night with Liz Lima, who’s adopting this character of Drag King Valentino.
And then there’s Mer Agatha, which is an interesting project; Naomi McCarroll-Butler, up-and-coming very good saxophonist from the McGill scene; guitar player Sam Shalabi’s also in the band; violonist Helios Paradis is a young emerging artist; Christelle Saint-Julien is the harpist and singer; Lucas Huang plays drums. So very much a local project.
And then the other artist is Z, who is Portuguese non binary artist, and they’re going to be working on a drone piece, which should sound pretty good in the chapel. Z got funding from Muzeond Fund for Creativity’s Trans and Non-Binary Creators Incubator.
Friday October 9th
Peter Burton : 3Phaz is from Cairo, and we’ve organized a Canadian tour for him. He’s going to Montreal, Winnipeg, and Ottawa. He’s an electronic music producer, he creates club music that adds in Egyptian mahraganat/shaabi sound, also local club sounds and other local influences. 3Phaz travels into the international and european club music circuit.
Liberté Anne & FROTAE ft. Stella Adjokê + Mubone Collective at Chapelle des Hospitalières
Peter Burton: FROTAE is an ensemble of five saxophonist-improvisers whose work combines microtonal composition, collective listening practices, spatialized sound, and improvisation. Founded and led by Montreal-based composer Liberté Anne, the members of FROTAE have been working as a core unit since 2023, when they began to develop a deeply collaborative musical language rooted in long-term experimentation and collective listening. Geneviève Gauthier (alto sax), René Zeledon (tenor sax), Allison (baritone sax), Philippe Lauzier (alto & soprano sax), Naomi McCaroll-Butler (tenor sax & Glissotar).
Also Stella Adjokê is a friend of Liberté Anne’s and a spoken word artist who is essentially being added on to this kind of drone with slight jazz influence ensemble Frotae So essentially it’s Frotae with the guest artist and with
Then Kalun Leung, who he is a trombone player, super impressive. A Grammy laureate for his work with the Experiential Orchestra and recipient of the 2025 Kranichstein Music Prize at the Darmstadt Summer Course, he has collaborated with artists including Anthony Braxton, Meredith Monk, George Lewis and Sarah Davachi, as well as the Martha Graham Dance Company. So Kalun Leung will be performing on trombone, which I haven’t heard the project yet, but he has created an electronic device with a collaborator who’s part of the project and some kind of spatialization piece where this device affects the sound. So it’s like electro-acoustic kind of concept.
October 10th
Ava Mendoza + Soledad Coyoli + Acrostiche at Toscadura
We have the guitar player Ava Mendoza, a Brooklyn-based guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer – originally from a Colombian family and raised on the West Coast. Best known for her solo guitar and vocal performances, and as the leader of the experimental rock band Unnatural Ways. Also Soledad Coyoli who’s a Mexican artist based here in Montreal, draws inspiration from the tradition of Mexican – Latin American song and explores different languages, cultures, and technologies.
Using synthesizers, electronic devices, quirky objects, and machines that are more or less well-behaved, the duo Acrostiche (Belinda Campbell and Raphaël Foisy-Couture) crafts music built on repetition, collisions, and tensions. Belinda Campbell, who I highly recommend, she’s primarily a keyboardist, and she does a really good version of Cecil Taylor.
October 11th
Peter Burton : That’s an event in collaboration with the Immigrant Workers Center, so it is artists from Park X, who are from India, who are Punjabi, speaking Punjabi. So there’s a Punjabi play and a Punjabi folk music big band that’s led by professional artists who are in the community and who have moved here slightly before the pandemic and the artists are trying to establish themselves here and also develop art around the experiences of the community, which are not widely understood or known, I would say, in Quebec or Canada, but they’re living a very challenging existence in terms of immigration experience, housing, and workplace.
