Listings

Classical / Pop

Gregory Charles, Alexandre Da Costa and symphonic improvisation

by François Vallières

The Longueuil Symphony Orchestra has an eclectic concert in store, one that holds its share of surprises for the audience in attendance. In this program, entitled Symphonic Improvisation, the orchestra’s titular leader, Alexandre Da Costa, will first conduct excerpts from film music by composer Miklos Rozsa. The music of this naturalized Hungarian-American, who composed for both concert halls and the seventh art, is inventive, original and has influenced many composers since. Da Costa then swaps the baton for the violin and performs three movements taken from the famous score John Williams composed for the film Schindler’s List. The event concludes with a special guest, the versatile musician Gregory Charles, who will present his Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra.

PROGRAMME:

Longueuil Symphony Orchestra

Alexandre Da Costa: violin and conductor

Gregory Charles: piano

John Williams : excerpts from Schindler’s List

Grégory Charles : Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra

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Musical Theatre

« Please Thrill Me »

by Michel Rondeau

Photo credit: Chris Filippini

Edmonton-born but based in Montreal, Sean Nicholas Savage is a singer-songwriter who has been active on the indie scene for a dozen years and has made as many records. His songs for Please Thrill Me are the culmination of his exploration of major pop-music genres over the course of his albums. The narrative: two punks, Jazz (Savage) and Pop (Adam Byczkowski), meet while boarding a freight train. One is looking for himself, the other wants to go home to a big city by the sea. There they meet a series of characters, including the Artist (Jane Penny) and Rocky (Lulu Hugues), driven by all sorts of desires and ideals.

For this ambitious production, Savage has enlisted the services of actress and director Sophie Cadieux and the Pantomime Opera Ballet collective, which specializes in multidisciplinary shows.

In English, with French surtitles for certain performances.

Other performances of this show at Théâtre La Chapelle:
• Tuesday, February 18, 8 p.m.
• Thursday, February 20, 8 p.m.
• Friday, February 21, 8 p.m.
• Saturday, February 22, 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• Monday, February 24, 7 p.m.
• Thursday, February 25, 8 p.m.
• Wednesday, February 26, 8 p.m.
• Friday, February 28, 8 p.m.
• Saturday, February 29, 9 p.m.
• Sunday, March 1st, 4 p.m.

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Baroque / Classical

Forestare Guitar Ensemble

by Michel Rondeau

Crédit photo: Jean-Charles Labarre

The Montreal-based Forestare Guitar Ensemble – 12 classical guitarists and a double bass player – invites you to a modern reinterpretation of pieces from the baroque repertoire, by Vivaldi, Lully and Johann Sebastian Bach. During this concert, not only will the ensemble recount the story of the Baroque period’s composers with humour, but it will also draw a parallel with the history of New France, at the same time. You will even learn what kind of relationship the early settlers had with the First Nations. Music as an excuse to go back to our roots.

Other performances of this show:
• Wednesday, February 19, 7 :30 p.m. at Quai 5160 – Maison de la culture de Verdun
• Sunday, March 29, 2 p.m. at Centre culturel de Pierrefonds
• Friday, April 17, 8 p.m. at Église Saint-Joachim de Pointe-Claire

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R&B / Soul / Soul/R&B

Soul Secret Agency

by Alain Brunet

Soul Secret Agency takes an in-depth look at classic soul/R&B, totally dominated by Motown and Stax Records during the ’60s. The Montreal collective draws on retro soul to tinker with songs “about love, desire and self-discovery”, according to the band’s Bandcamp profile for their eponymous album released in May 2019. Produced by Danny Trudeau, this opus was recorded by Howard Bilerman at the famous Hotel 2 Tango studio. Soul Secret Agency is made up of director, composer, arranger and bassist Danny Trudeau and singer Abigail Galwey, joined by guitarists Eric Lemelin and Francis Veillette, keyboardist Willis Pride, drummer Pascal Lepage and percussionist Elli Miller Maboungou. Of note, singer Dominique Fils-Aimé is featured on this recording… Will she be appearing on stage for this show under the Soul Secret Agency banner?  

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Classical

Quatuor Molinari: « Musique d’épouvante »

by Michel Rondeau

Anyone who has seen Alfred Hitchcock’s famous Psycho, with its key moments enhanced by Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary soundtrack of strident, dissonant violins, knows how bowed string instruments have a palette of disturbing sounds. With this concert entitled Musique d’épouvante (“music of dread”), the Quatuor Molinari invites us to explore them.

Three strong works on the programme here. Shaking up tradition at the time of its creation in 1962, the 1st quartet of the Polish composer Krzyszstof Penderecki’s “ String Quartet No. 1” takes us into a noisy universe, at the time called “sonorism”. Created in 1981, Canadian R. Murray Schafer’s “String Quartet No. 3” is a work that moves in every sense of the word since, in addition to its dramatic power, its karate shrieks and its various onomatopoeias, it includes scenic shifts that contribute to its sonic spacialization. Finally, from 1970, the quasi-mythical Black Angels by American composer George Crumb presents 13 tableaux in which good and evil confront each other in a bitter battle, during which tam-tams, glass harmonicas, maracas, and glass sticks lend a hand to the strings.

Other performances of this show:
• Thursday, February 20, 7 h 30 p.m. at Maison de la culture Frontenac
• Sunday, February 23, 3 p.m. at Maison de la culture du Plateau Mont-Royal

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ZoHZiYL5g
Experimental / Contemporary / Pop

U.S. Girls + Lune très belle = sold out

by Alain Brunet

Photo: Julio Henriquez

Meghan Remy, an American transplant based in Toronto, is the pilot of U.S. Girls, whose eighth album, Heavy Light, will be released on March 6. If an early taste is what you want, too late, her show at Le Ministère is already sold out. It’s not unreasonable to presume that the band will be back soon enough to meet the demand. So while awaiting the release of her opus and her next Montreal stopover, we can share a few clues: on the Royal Mountain (Canada) and 4AD (international) labels, Heavy Light is a composite album: disco-funk, indie chamber pop, rock, lounge jazz, chanson d’auteur… Meg Remy and her ace team have put together some very ambitious arrangements with sensitive, subtle and often self-deprecating lyrics. Read more here on 6 March!

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Electronic

DJ Guy Laliberté

by Alain Brunet

In his post-Cirque du Soleil life, Quebec billionaire Guy Laliberté has artistic ambitions, which we have been observing since he launched PY1, his pyramid disco that has been the talk of the town in 2019. It seems he also likes to DJ, in addition to sticking his nose (not that of the space shuttle) into the artistic direction of his new operations. His ambition is to get the Stereo night owls dancing on a Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Have you ever heard him mix? What does it sound like in front of a real electro audience? What is the real artistic value beyond glamor ? What will his next performance deliver? You be the judge of that, provided of course that you enjoy jet-set nights.

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Classical / Contemporary / Jazz

Instruments of Happiness

by Michel Rondeau

“Slow, quiet music in search of electric happiness.” That’s a remarkable program! The wording’s less surprising when you consider that it’s about Montrealer Tim Brady’s Instruments of Happiness electric guitar quartet. The wonderful acoustics and rich natural reverberation of the Gesù church will be put to good use during this resolutely meditative concert. Presented back to back, four pieces for digitally treated electric guitars, created by Canadian composers Louise Campbell, Rose Bolton, Andrew Noseworthy and Andrew Staniland. To add a little movement to the show – and to our happiness – dancers Roger Sinha and Marie-Ève Lafontaine, from Sinha Danse, will also be on the stage.

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Acid-Techno / Electronic / Techno / trance

HUMIDEX at Dômesicle #6

by Alain Brunet

Lined up for the sixth Dômesicle party, the pseudonymous Softcoresoft, Absurde, Simon Chioni, Félix Félix Gourd Gourd, Render.Tex make up the Humidex collective. Music director at Never Apart, Montrealer Leticia Trandafir is also a DJ, producer and composer under the Softcoresoft pseudonym. Her art links acid techno, hypnotic techno, trance and breakbeat. Her first EP was released in October 2019 on Lobster Theremin Black Label. Outside the city, she’s performed in Paris, Berlin, London, Barcelona, Detroit, Norway, Düsseldorf, etc. Softcoresoft shares the stage with the timelessly technoid Absurde, and also with Simon Chioni, who leaps between the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, Absurde changes hats and becomes Félix Félix Gourd Gourd, whose approach involves light installation, 3D animation, sculpture and video scenography. And then there are the audiovisual experiments c/o Render.Tex, another alias linked to video-game consoles.

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Garage Punk / Garage Rock / Grunge / Rock

Black Lips • Warish • Hood Rats

by Patrick Baillargeon

Atlanta’s enfants terribles have never made a secret of their penchant for country music, and on their new album Sing in a World that’s Falling Apart, released at the end of January, the Black Lips bring the southern twang with a vengeance, a bit like the Sadies, without strictly adhering to the genre. If the shadows of the Byrds, the Stones or Gram Parsons hover over several of the twelve tracks that make up this ninth album, the sense of urgency and the lo-fi garage rock that characterizes the majority of the Lips’ records remains. The Californian grungy trio Warish and the Montreal trash-punk combo Hood Rats will knock you out as curtain-raisers.

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Amazigh / Maghrebi / Synthwave

Flèche Love

by Alain Brunet

Flèche Love is of Amazigh (Berber) origin, lives in Switzerland and presents herself as a citizen of the world, striving to transcend her cultural heritage through superb, multilingual auteur pop. She’s eloquent, imposing on stage, haughty despite her delicate physique. Amina Cadelli’s (real name) powerful voice and excellent delivery are propelled by a globalized strain of synthwave, adorned with touches with hip hop, Berber, Mediterranean, Iberian and more. Without a doubt, Flèche Love is a unique figure with multiple identities, and whose story is just beginning.

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Classical / Contemporary / Modern Classical

McGill Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven’s Pastorale

by Alain Brunet

Symphony No. 6 in F major, known as the Pastoral, was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1805 and 1808. Evoking nostalgia for the rustic life at a time of dramatic shift to urbanization, Beethoven imagined pastoral settings where people were in harmony with their natural environment. Beethoven’s Pastoral coincided with the decline of instrumental works, the essential purpose of which was to evoke the sounds of nature. However, this work also depicted the psychological state of humans in a context of pre-industrial change. An essential part of learning to play orchestral music, the Pastorale is conducted here by Maestro Alexis Hauser, at the helm of the McGill Symphony Orchestra, composed of course of students. The Orchestra will also perform the Cello Concerto in E minor by Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian, with soloist Braden McConnell, winner of the 2018-2019 McGill Concertos Competition. Also on the program is a premiering  work by Kit Soden, winner of the 2017-2018 Andrew Svoboda Composition Prize.

PROGR
McGill Symphony Orchestra
Alexis Hauser: artistic director and conductor
Kit Soden: composer
Braden McConnell: cello
Works:
Kit Soden: new work
Aram Khachaturian: Cello concerto in E minor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 6 en F Major, Op. 68 (Pastoral Symphony)

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