Modern Classical / Modern Jazz / période romantique

Soir de jazz symphonique à Laval

by Alain Brunet

À travers leur vies professionnelles qu’on devine intenses, les saxophonistes Yannick Rieu et Lionel Belmondo ont mis deux ans à mettre ce programme au point : un jazz symphonique construit, aménagé et reformulé autour des compositeurs Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel et Lili Boulanger, soit la fin du 19^e siècle et le début du 20^eau service du jazz moderne. Malgré la tenue du débat des chefs et le match décisif du CH pour accéder aux éliminatoires de la LNH, une salle André-Mathieu bien garnie a chaudement accueilli l’exécution de ce programme.

La première intervention au programme est baignée de ces harmonies romantiques exécutées sur un mouvement lent et des notes graves. Les trois souffleurs de jazz se fondent dans l’Orchestre symphonique de Laval sous la direction de Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser. Jazzmen et interprètes classiques se fondent dans la partition, aucune improvisation n’est ici prévue.

La section rythmique sextette s’amène pour une relecture orchestrale du Nocturne de Lili Boulanger, sœur cadette de la grande pédagogue parisienne Nadia Boulanger, soeurette dont les musiques sont de plus en plus jouées, un siècle après sa disparition tragique et prématurée: Louis-Vincent Hamel, batterie, Rémi-Jean LeBlanc, contrebasse, Jonathan Cahier, piano. Le menuet en do mineur de Ravel est parfaitement propice à la jazzification. On observe déjà les croisements entre le Français Maurice Ravel et l’Américain George Gershwin, dont se sont nourris les plus grands penseurs du jazz moderne,de Bill Evans à Duke Ellington.

Cette fois, le sextette s’impose au sein de l’OSL et impose cet équilibre entre jazz moderne et musique classique moderne. Les French, très solide trompettiste australien transplanté à Montréal, prend le premier solo, suivi du pianiste Jonathan Cayer, devenu l’un des très bons jazzmen de la période actuelle sur le territoire québécois. Les deux saxophones et la trompette sont entrelardés dans certains thèmes, familiers et agréables à l’écoute.

Composé pour le piano seul, ce Menuet en ut dièse mineur de Maurice Ravel a été orchestré et arrangé par Lionel Belmondo pour orchestre symphonique et sextette de jazz. Le thème principal met en relief le saxophone soprano de Belmondo complété par les bois de l’orchestre, suivi du saxo ténor de Rieu.

Inspirée du premier mouvement de la Symphonie No 4 de Brahms, cette pièce de Yannick Rieu implique l’improvisation des vents dont les lignes mélodiques ajoutent un contrepoint supplémentaire à la progression harmonique prévue pour l’orchestre. Il est alors intéressant de noter l’unification heureuse des deux esthétiques, cette fois dominée par le romantisme brahmsien.

S’ensuit Nostalgie, une pièce de Yannick Rieu dont il est le soliste principal aux côtés de Rémi-Jean LeBlanc, mais la partie jazz de l’œuvre demeure très jazz, l’orchestre se transforme alors en faste accompagnateur et rappelle les arrangements et orchestrations typiques des grands orchestres américains au milieu du 20^e siècle.

Un riff de contrebasse introduit l’orchestre, le piano et les autres solistes du sextette. Le piano mature et assuré de Jonathan Cayer et le sax soprano de Rieu sont ici mis de l’avant. Les somptueuses harmonies sont tellement propices au jazz moderne qu’on en oublie les fondements originels. Il faut toujours rappeler que les jazzophiles ont intégré les musiques romantiques ou classiques modernes sans nécessairement en connaître précisément le répertoire, en voilà une autre éloquente démonstration intitulée Ritournelle.

La suivante,Ballade sur le nom de Maurice Ravel , a été composée par Yannick et arrangée par Lionel, cette œuvre relativement courte est introduite par les cordes ravéliennes de l’OSL qui précèdent le thème exposé par le sextette. La nappe est dressée pour un riche exercice harmonique à l’échelle symphonique, l’excellent trompettiste Lex French y est mis en valeur pour une improvisation fervente qui en coiffe la conclusion.

Un solo de batterie bien senti de Louis-Vincent Hamel, et puis c’est parti dans un swing soigneusement enrobé par l’orchestre symphonique. Pour Pharaon de Yannick Rieu, des accords de piano précèdent le thème exposé à troix voix, on se trouve dans un romantisme luxuriant, et le piano s’élance sur un groove lent et ternaire avant de donner la réplique à l’orchestre symphonique et ses collègues du sextette pour conclure aux côtés des saxes, cuivres et compléments orchestraux.

Inspirée des Jeux d’eau de Maurice Ravel, La Couleur de l’eau est l’occasion pour Lionel Belmondo de fusionner le discours ravélien avec un jazz moderne typique des années 50, époque hard bop et Third Stream, s’envole alors Lex French dans un chemin dont il connaît parfaitement les balises.

On conclura ce programme ambitieux avec Embrahms-moi de Yannick Rieu, une pièce qui ne fut pas sans difficultés côté arrangement, dixit Lionel Belmondo. Le piano s’exécute d’abord et puis le romantisme brahmsien, donc pré-moderne et tellement repris dans les trames cinématographiques hollywoodiennes, se fond dans le discours de Yannick Rieu dont le thème au saxophone est purement romantique.Solidement ficelé tout ça, au plus grand plaisir des mélomanes.

Experimental Rock / Post-Punk

FACS, WORKS, and DahL at Quai Des Brumes

by Stephan Boissonneault

Last weekend we had a ripper of a show at Quai Des Brumes in the form of FACS, WORKS, and DahL, all single-word band names, all with their own vibes, dabbling in the “experimental” or abstract rock sound genres. Many in the crowd were here for FACS, but some where just looking to support a live show and had their feeble minds twisted—and better for it.

We begin with the arsty trip-hop rock stylings of DahL, who take us on a psychedelic journey through their 2024 album, That’s It, adding a cerebral live energy during songs like “Edie and Ginger” and the crowd favourite, “Una Minutes.” I’ve seen DahL three or four times and it’s always good. Lead singer and guitar player, Nassir Liselle always seems to go into a trance of swagger, fully taking on the form of the characters he sings about, demanding prasie from the audience. Then we have Bryan Greenfield holding down the funk with his bass, modular synth, and occasional reverb-y backing vocals. William Winston adds another layer on another all-encompassing synth, and drummer Edward Scrimger holds down the chaos with his jazzy drumming, popping in a few ghost notes for more flair.

Next up is another local band, WORKS—whom I was unaware of until this show, with a wave of noisy art rock that immediately feels like the Montreal equivalent of the UK’s Dry Cleaning. Singer Skylar Aung-Thwin puts her own spin on the spoken word post-punk style, occasionally throwing in a weird, falsetto-y vibrato that brings to mind bands like The B-52s—as the WORKS dual guitar players unleash wave after wave of angular guitar riffs. The MVP of WORKS has to be bassist Zakir Jafry, who does not miss a beat during the off-kilter jams. Aung-Thwin’s stage prescence was cool and aloof, and kind of surreal as she offered the crowd apples, not once, but three times.

A few beers in, our heads are on swivels, waiting for FACS to take the stage. For the uninitiated, FACS is a weirdo noise rock three-piece from Chicago, who just released the album Wish Defense—the last album engineered by the legendary Steve Albini before his passing last year. As FACS take the stage, the bass guitar lets out the fuzzy and sludgy opening to “When You Say”—from 2023’s Still Life in Decay, and lead singer/guitarist Brian Case lets out his discordant and bright guitar harmonics. As he riffs, Case falls into the Quai Des Brumes walls, as if he’s being constantly hit by some luring presence. He looks like he’s in a constant fight, elevated by the fact that he raises his head to scream into the mic. Live, FACS’ music feels an inescapable vortex. This was of course, an Analogue Addiction show, so the quality was brimming, meaning the lead up to FACS—a local combiantion of DahL and WORKS—was weirdly perfect.

Classical

Université de Montréal: Stars shine on music’s next gen

by Frédéric Cardin

Saturday evening, April 12, saw the Université de Montréal’s Rising Stars concert. Graduates in conducting, composition and flute performance presented the results of years of learning. It was inspiring.

Conductor Marie-France Mathieu began by presenting the first three pieces on the programme, creations by three composition students, Gabriel José Melim Schwarz, Amichai Ben Shalev and Charles-Vincent Lemelin. Schwarz offered a tonal and rather sunny neo-romantic piece, ironically entitled Folle (Crazy). Vibrant with energy and inspired by Schwarz’s native Brazil, it is a work that is pleasant to listen to and not very demanding for the listener.

This was followed by A Groyse Metzieh by Ben Shalev, a musician also known as a member of the ensemble Les Arrivants. The title means ‘a beautiful find’, which is in fact a sarcastic formula typical of Jewish humour, meaning ‘not much of anything’. I really enjoyed this post-modern piece, which mixes tonality with noisy avant-gardism, thanks to a wide range of instrumental techniques linked to experimentation. It begins in a sombre atmosphere with a warm string theme, quickly interspersed with bursts of colour that would not have displeased Messiaen. The rest moves slowly but surely towards saturation, punctuated by thunderous stridencies, before ending with a return to consonance, but with the brass choir. Superb.

Finally, Lemelin’s Passacaille had the greatest effect on me. In this piece, which treats the orchestra as a living mass, dark but nonetheless criss-crossed by many luminous streaks, and which gradually swells to its maximum sonic and harmonic density, I perceived echoes of Saariaho and Rautavaaraa, but also of a certain Straussian monumentalism and the muscular expressionism of ex-Hollywood composer Goldenthal. Passacaille is a demonstration of quiet power, perfectly calibrated and constructed. Your humble reviewer thoroughly enjoyed it.

The rest of the programme featured Romantic repertoire, starting with a charming Concerto for two flutes by Franz Doppler, the king of the flute (along with his brother) in the 19th century. It was an opportunity to see and hear at work two young performers who won 3rd prize in the OUM 2024 Concerto Competition, Gabriel Lapointe Guay and Sarah Billet. The two artists injected all the right sparkle into this smiling, feel-good music.

The second part was devoted to Schumann’s Manfred Overture and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919). Above all, it was an opportunity to judge the conducting work of Marie-France Mathieu and Paul Karekezi. It was the latter who gave us a Manfred full of drama, inhabited by a necessary discharge of conflicting emotions. Perhaps a little tempered, but beautifully embodied.

The Firebird was brought to life with beautiful colours and crystalline details, powerfully underlined by conductor Mathieu.

Since the two young conducting artists also led the OUM (Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal) in the creations mentioned above, I noticed two different but complementary personalities of baton and control.

Paul Karekazi, who conducted Lemelin’s Passacaille (and, as I just said, Manfred), gave a clear performance, but above all one imbued with emotional intensity and inner strength. This favoured strong nuances and a legato imbued with heartfelt lyricism.

Marie-France Mathieu, on the other hand, is more sober in her outpourings, but nevertheless skilfully brings out the detailed colours and textural contrasts in a limpid manner, thanks to a surgical baton that leaves no room for doubt. She conducted the pieces by Schwarz and Ben Shalev, the Doppler (and of course the Stravinsky) very well.

Karekazi and Mathieu are students of Paolo Bellomia, the two flautists come from Denis Bluteau’s class, and the three composers benefit from the knowledge of Jimmie Leblanc, Ana Sokolovic, François-Hugues Leclair and Olivier Alary.

It was a wonderful evening for the future of music in Montreal, Quebec and Canada.

Photos: Tiago Curado

Jazz Pop

Magnificent Heiresses

by Marilyn Bouchard

This Wednesday, April 8, at Théâtre Outremont, was the opening of Héritières, a show imagined by composer and singer Karine Pion, who we’ve known for some time as the lead singer of Belle et Bum and a member of the group Galaxie. As she opens, she explains that the project was born during the pandemic, and that she had long toyed with the idea of an all-female, multi-performer show. Indeed, none of the 20 performers on stage (plus the stage management artists) are men. A look back at an evening of feminine celebration.

The show opens with the soloists: Erika Angell, Simone Bournival, Marie-Christine Depestre, Coral Egan, Soleil Launière, Kim Richardson, Mamselle Ruiz, Meryem Saci, Malika Tirolien and Karen Young. In chorus around fire-like lighting, they follow Karine’s lead in an almost dance-like fashion.

The pleasure and bond between the singers is palpable, right from the start.

This is followed by an intergenerational journey for women, with recordings, memories and confidences from loved ones punctuating the narrative, often with humor and tenderness. Accompanied by double bass, cello, viola, violins, saxophone, drums and sometimes guitar, we hear the performers’ mothers, sisters and grandmothers share their visions and memories of what it means to be a woman.

There’s a jazzy duet, a creative and sensitive drum solo, engaged lyrics, a surprising canon of vowels, slam-poetry and a magnificent Spanish song that transports us for a moment to the warmth of the South. And let’s not forget the power of Kim Richardson, who, even without amplification at times, moves through us with the same resonance as her miked colleagues. All this skilfully highlighted, notably with memorable side lighting that creates an oversized shadow of the performer on the audience wall. Very theatrical.

All in all, it a very fine evening “to the rhythm of legends and traumas,” in which Quebec women’s talent takes pride of place and where the committed tone is a reminder that victories and women’s rights are never easily won and that the struggle to achieve them is never over.

Drum & Bass / Hip Hop / Trap

Tunisian Goddess Emel Presents MRA

by Sandra Gasana

If there’s one thing Emel Mathlouthi has mastered, it’s the art of staging a performance worthy of a tragedy. Accompanied by her two musicians, on drums and keyboards, Emel Mathlouthi, known as “the voice of the revolution,” made a spectacular entrance on stage, adding lighting effects and appearing like a goddess on top of her throne. Wearing a sophisticated crown and an antique-style white dress from the 15th century, the Tunisian artist presented her most recent album, MRA, which means woman in Arabic, released in 2024 and produced entirely by a team of women.

Always with a screen behind her, her voice is rarely in its natural state. She uses a lot of reverb and plays with her microphone, adding an enigmatic effect to her universe in which trap, hip-hop, and drum ‘n’ bass cohabit harmoniously. Emel really gets into her character and lets herself go, inserting saccadic dance movements on several tracks. She taps her drum at times, complementing the work of her drummer and adding to the danceable effect.

At the end of the third song, the audience starts dancing, contrasting the solemn style of the first two tracks. Emel also adds pre-recorded sounds that merge with the looped images, a true sensory cocktail. Most of her songs are in Arabic, but she also sings in English, a language she mastered, and French. She switches from one to the other when addressing the audience.

Unfortunately, Naya Ali, who was due to perform, was unable to attend after all. That said, one of the highlights of the concert was when artist Narcy took to the stage for the track Yemenade. And that’s when the evening took a turn for the better, as his energy was felt throughout the room. He managed to get us singing, dancing, all in one song, while Emel danced behind him, banging her golden drum.

The other artist I was looking forward to seeing again was Ziya Tabassian. Also performing on four tracks, he added a traditional Middle Eastern touch to the show. He was perfectly attuned to the drummer’s rhythms, with whom he exchanged glances.

“I hope you like crazy percussion like we do! We don’t know how it sounds from your end, but we like it,” she says between songs. “I can’t seem to make soft songs, I can’t help it,” she confides.

During the song “Souty,” which means “My voice”, she scrolls through sheets on which it is written “My voice is time less like the wind” among other words, as if these were the lyrics of the song. She also takes the opportunity to mention the names of prisoners on some of the sheets.

Emel took the time to share a message from a Palestinian activist who wrote to her to give her the state of play. Indeed, Palestine was the backdrop throughout the show, including during the opening set by Checkpoint 303, a DJ duo who set the table for Emel’s performance. My favourite song is “Mazel,” which means Again, and speaks of the hope she still carries within her, and the new tomorrow she intends to build. In the background, we could see the faces of activist women from all over the world.

She finished with “Rise,” involving the audience on the chorus, before giving us an audience-pleasing encore. I was expecting to see a packed National, but that wasn’t the case. But one thing’s for sure: the people who were there went home satisfied with their evening.

Photo Credit: Ola Choukair

Choral Music / Classical / trad québécois

Sacré Gilles Vigneault | Between Natashquan and Buenos Aires

by Judith Hamel

Sacred music sometimes tells us more than the catechism. It brings us together, it uplifts us, it reminds us that we are here, together. This Saturday evening, the Chœur Métropolitain invites us to a double mass at the crossroads of the Americas. A meeting of the Argentinian and Quebecois peoples, these Masses bring the rhythms of everyday life to life, blending European traditions with local folklore.

But the real star of the evening was Gilles Vigneault. A charming old lady sitting beside me whispered in my ear: “Monsieur Vigneault is here! People in the front, in the back, turn around and pull out their phones to capture the presence of this legend. Even before the first note rings out in the Maison symphonique, an ovation rises to salute this great man who forged the Quebec nation.

The first part of the concert was devoted to Argentina, through the music of four of its composers: Carlos Guastavino, Astor Piazzolla, Juan de Dios Filiberto and Ariel Ramírez.

The concert opens on a note of wonder and contemplation, with Carlos Guastavino’s Indianas. His charming melodies sing to us of the apple through love lyrics and nature metaphors. In Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion, a work originally written for bandoneon, the arrangement for choir and solo voice with soprano Myriam Leblanc bewitched us from the very first note with its pure, colorful timbre. This melancholy version makes the work’s theme of forgetting resonate like sweet nostalgia. With Caminito de Juan de Dios Filiberto, the dynamic changes. This light-hearted song, rooted in the tango tradition, adds a lively, convivial touch to the concert.

Finally, before the Quebec mass, Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla concludes the first part. Like Gilles Vigneault with his native land of Natashquan, Ramírez explores the mix of cultures, between Indigenous roots and European heritages. The work surprises with rhythmic dance sections alternating with lyrical passages. Soloists Antonio Figueroa (tenor) and Emanuel Lebel (baritone) complemented each other beautifully. This lively mass, rooted in local traditions, deserves to be heard again and again.

Like Ramirez, Vigneault weaves the threads of people who are both Indigenous and European in this mass that evokes our northern winds and the prayers of ordinary people. Presented in its world premiere, this new arrangement of the High Mass by Sebastian Verdugo takes on a light, colorful form, where the textures of the choir mingle with those of guitars, charango, piano, double bass, violin and percussion. While most of the mass retains a traditional structure and texts, some tunes are transformed into rigodon accompanied by spoons and folk guitar, which pleasantly surprises listeners.

Rooted in Vigneault’s memory of Natashquan, the first and last part includes lyrics in Innu: “Shash anameshikanù. Matshik! Ituték! Minuatukushùl etaiék.” (Now that the Mass is said, Go live in peace on earth).

Finally, after waiting patiently for their moment, the Vincent-d’Indy choristers joined the musicians for the final songs of the concert. Under the sensitive arrangements of François O. Ouimet, several emblematic Gilles Vigneault songs were performed, ending, of course, with Gens du pays. With their eyes riveted on Vigneault, the entire audience stood to sing him our anthem, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, as is the Alliance chorale du Québec. It was a touching moment in which we felt the love of a people for our Quebec, but above all for the man who gave birth to the hymn we all know so well.

Baroque / Classical / Modern Classical / période romantique

Les Violons du Roy and Antoine Tamestit | A Gripping and Profound Performance

by Alexandre Villemaire

Two years after a musical encounter that was described as masterful, French violist Antoine Tamestit, considered one of the world’s finest, returned to the Quebec stage with Les Violons du Roy. Presented on Thursday evening in Quebec City, this same concert, which took place on Friday evening at Salle Bourgie, featured themes such as death, loss and departure: themes which, despite their dark side, are nonetheless necessary to address, and in which we can nonetheless find light and a form of humanity.

Without preamble, once the orchestra and Tamestit had taken the stage, the hall was plunged into darkness, with the only source of light the lamps on the musicians’ lecterns. This set the stage perfectly for the first piece of the concert, Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale Für deinen Thron ich tret’ich hiermit [Lord, here I stand before your throne], arranged for strings. According to Antoine Tamestit, in his speech following this short piece by Bach, he wanted to create a sensory experience in which the audience and musicians were led to feel the music through their breathing, through the intrinsic energies of the movement of the musical lines. The moment was indeed soothing, with a sound that was relentlessly gentle, yet rich in harmonies and low tones. The soloist, who also acted as conductor for the first part, followed with Paul Hindemith’s Trauermusik for viola and strings, composed a few hours after the death of King George V. We then enter another universe and harmonic language, with varied textures and musical materials, ending with a quotation from the same Bach chorale.

Tamestit then invited the audience to take part in an aural treasure hunt with Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae, in which the composer quotes, in the form of variations, the song by Elizabethan composer John Dowland, If my complaints could passions move. To provide context, he performed the original in an arrangement of his own, preceded by the beautiful Flow my tears. A particularly touching moment, in which Tamestit’s sensitive playing came to the fore as the strings accompanied him in pizzicato. In Britten’s piece, Tamestit invited listeners to try and spot the musical extracts of these Renaissance songs scattered throughout Britten’s work. There was a strong appeal to pique listeners’ attention and invite them to open their ears wide to this universe of sound. His interpretation of the musical lines, with their enveloping thickness of sound and pure, fleshy grain, showed an invested and sensitive musicality. It has to be said, however, that Britten won the game of musical hide-and-seek, with Dowland’s excerpts remaining difficult to identify, even for seasoned ears.

The pièce de résistance of the concert was Tamestit’s arrangement for string orchestra of Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet in G major. For this final piece, in which Antoine Tamestit joins the viola section, we were treated to a blaze of emotions and luminous vivacity, particularly in the first and last movements, while the central movements – Adagio and Un poco allegretto – flirted with Hungarian folk accents and melancholy affects respectively. In this new texture with its increased sound amplitude, playing with 21 instrumentalists together without a conductor is a challenge that Les Violons du Roy met with brio and aplomb, producing a particularly rousing and gripping result, especially in the last movement, which is extremely dance-like with gypsy inflections.

The warm ovation from the audience and the radiant smiles on the musicians’ faces made this second collaboration between Antoine Tamestit and Les Violons du Roy well worth repeating. Having begun in darkness and contemplation, the concert ended in great light and human energy. Bringing out the beauty of a program that traces in filigree the themes of death and loss is not in itself innovative. But in this program, imbued with a skilful organicity, where we are naturally transported from one state of mind to another, we are reminded that even in the darkest moments, we can find beauty. To quote Félix Leclerc: “C’est grand la mort, c’est plein de vie dedans.”

Photo Credit : Pierre Langlois

Baroque / Choral Music / Classical / Classical Singing / Sacred Music

Ensemble Caprice | A Beautiful Evening of Passion

by Alexis Desrosiers-Michaud

Just two weeks away, Ensemble Caprice and Matthias Maute prelude the Easter celebrations with a presentation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion. In his opening address, Maute recounts that this work has many links, especially in the arias, with the art of opera. As he told us earlier in the interview, “The St. John Passion alternates recitative, arias and choruses to carry the story with intensity. The recitatives tell the story, the arias express the emotions of the characters, and the choruses embody the crowd, reinforcing the drama. The orchestra supports the whole with expressive writing that underlines the key moments.” The proof was shown on Friday.

In the absence of staging, characteristic of the oratorio, a narrator – in this case, the Evangelist – is needed to describe the scenes. Supporting the entire work on his shoulders, tenor Philippe Gagné rises to the challenge of interpreting this thankless but oh-so-important role. His intention to really tell a story is clear, with impeccable German diction, and he lets the textual phrases dictate his interpretation, rather than following the score, placing absolute trust in the continuo.

The other discovery of the evening was chorister-soloist William Kraushaar – whose composition had captivated us at the last Caprice concert – in the role of Jesus. Not only is his voice clear, but God, it carries! We’re already looking forward to hearing him as a soloist next season. Countertenor Nicholas Burns and soprano Janelle Lucyk deliver their arias with great emotion. Burns is very moving in duet with the mournful viola da gamba in Es ist vollbracht (“All is finished”). As for Lucyk, her voice is somewhat restrained, but blends well with the flutes in the aria Ich folge dir gleichfalls (“I follow you”). These two soloists not only deliver their arias with musicality, but also with a spellbinding, moving stage presence.

The chorus is very well prepared, and the dry articulations given to it fit well with the role it occupies, that of the plebeian ordering and cheering the action of the biblical tale. The best example is the track “Kreuzige” (Cruxify it!), where the short, accented articulations are incisive.

At the very end of the work, there was something solemn about seeing the soloists (except for John the Evangelist) join the chorus in a dancing Rut Wohl, and the final chorale, in accompaniment, thanksgiving and celebration of Christ’s life.

Photo: Tam Lan Truong

Classical Singing / Contemporary

Nouvel Ensemble Moderne | New Songs for a New Era

by Judith Hamel

The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) is writing the first pages of a new book in this 2024-2025 season, divided into three chapters and driven by the wind of renewal of Jean-Michaël Lavoie, who succeeds Lorraine Vaillancourt after 35 years at the helm of the chamber orchestra. For the second chapter of three this season, the NEM invites us to the Cinquième salle at Place des arts for a concert in collaboration with the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal.

Entitled Chapitre 2 – Des airs nouveaux, this afternoon concert featured a repertoire equally divided between three Quebec composers and Korean composer Unsuk Chin. Upon entering the foyer, the audience was greeted by a mediation team led by Irina Kirchberg, visiting professor at the Université de Montréal, which included a recording device for superimposing spectators’ voices, as well as an interactive panel in the form of a memory game inviting them to discover more about the works on the program.

The concert then opened with José Evangelista’s Vision, a piece for small ensemble and mezzo-soprano with a mystical aura. Brazilian singer Camila Montefusco brilliantly interpreted this work, which highlights the composer’s Spanish origins and multiple influences.

This was followed by Claude Vivier’s Bouchara, a long love song sung entirely in an invented language. Soprano Chelsea Kolić, buoyed by the expressiveness of the writing, gave us the impression of understanding her message, even as it eluded us. So we don’t need to speak the language to understand love.

In the second half, Luna Pearl Woolf’s Orpheus on Sappho’s Shore impressed with the rich voice of countertenor Ian Sabourin, who deftly navigated his multiple registers.

Finally, the NEM offered Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix Sopranica, the only piece outside Canada on the program. Written for two sopranos, a countertenor and ensemble, it was performed here by Chelsea Kolić, Ariadne Lih and Bridget Esler, three sopranos whose timbres intertwine perfectly in this texturally fascinating work. Chin explores the very act of singing, summoning vocal warm-ups, role-playing and unexpected reversals between singers and musicians. Its fragmented writing makes it a hyper-vocal work in which the orchestral ensemble extends and magnifies the voices. Accessible and complex at the same time, blending virtuosity, humor and emotion, this piece is a perfect match for the NEM’s new direction.

The collaboration between the Atelier lyrique and the NEM has been a success. The commitment of the young singers, with their expressive, precise voices, blends very well with the spirit of the NEM.

Jean-Michaël Lavoie conducts with such fluidity. When the lights illuminate the musicians’ work, we can at the same time deconstruct every little intention of the conductor, seeing with clarity the variations of suppleness in these gestures. In this way, the NEM is in good hands.

For their next concert, we’re lucky not to have to wait too long. On May 10, they’ll be at Salle Pierre-Mercure, presenting Chapitre 3 – Dérive 2 Pierre Boulez.

Electronic / Indigenous peoples

Centre PHI / Habitat sonore | A Totally Sublime Afternoon with Moe Clark and Pursuit Grooves

by Léa Dieghi

An all-encompassing bath of sound. A wave of sound that caresses our minds: immersed in the sound habitat, one of Montreal’s only spatialized listening rooms, at the Centre PHI.

It was a sunny Thursday afternoon, between my morning and late afternoon classes, in the middle of the week. Like everyone else, it’s the frenzy of everyday life: school, work, meetings, subway. The usual movements are at the heart of the city’s hustle and bustle. We rarely think about the hustle and bustle of the city, with all our senses constantly in focus. Then, one day, we make the choice: unconsciously or consciously. We stop. And today, this interruption of the mundane took place at the Centre PHI.

There, I discovered one of their new interactive experiences: Habitat Sonore.
In this intimate listening room, where our bodies rest on ball cushions in near-darkness, we are projected into a new universe. Everyday life is transmuted into a reality composed entirely of music. No telephone, no conversation, no lights, no movement, no outside distractions whatsoever.

All that remained were the musical compositions and the few colored, subdued glimmers of neon. It was the first time I’d experienced being immersed in such a listening room. With this “orchestra” of 16 loudspeakers scattered around the room, the music seemed to come from nowhere. And from everywhere at once. It was a little inside me, and a little outside me, too. A true mastery of sound spatialization.

Of course, this active listening offered by the Centre PHI would not have been possible without the work of various artists, who for several months had the opportunity to rework some of their musical productions. Totally sublime, Moe Clarke and Pursuit Grooves were also able to master spatialized music production, creating their own auditory decors.

After a few minutes’ wait, with only three people around me (a rather intimate setting), program 2 kicks off. Totalement Sublime, with songs from the Albédo album, opens the dance. The performance is surely the longest of the three, and the most progressive. It gets off to a gentle start, with sparse synthesizer sounds and little analog glitches. I recognize their “760KM” music, but it stretches out much longer than I remember.

This is a light-hearted opening that anchors us in our cushions, yet it is soon shattered by the brittle sound of guitar strings. The composition follows a linear, if sometimes chaotic, trajectory, with the various noises and notes moving back and forth across the room.

If Totalement Sublime offered us a glitchy journey into sonic matter, Moe Clark, for her part, takes us into the depths of the Canadian mountains and aboriginal myths. Between her use of soundscapes (trees in the wind, the current of a river, leaves and branches crackling under the weight of an animal’s footsteps…), and her “spoken words” – her poetry – we take flight to the rhythm of the beating of a hummingbird’s wings, water drums, horn and gourd rattles and throat singing. Her voice, which sings in creative form, is piercing in piyêsiwak ahkohtowin, and Montreal suddenly seems far away.
The program closes with a final composition by Ontario-based artist-producer Pursuit Grooves. She offers us an experimental composition, somewhere between downtempo and abstract, to bring us down gently from this hour-long sonic journey.

INFOS and TICKETS

Contemporary / Minimalist

Steve Reich’s quartets at Bourgie Hall : a perfectly oiled minimalist mechanism

by Frédéric Cardin

On Tuesday 1 April, for the first time in Montreal, all three of Steve Reich’s string quartets were performed in a single concert. When I say string quartets, I really mean string quartets AND tape, because they all use the latter. Played in inverse chronological order by the Mivos Quartet, the three works are emblematic of the sonic universe of the American, a pioneer of minimalism and, for many artists of subsequent generations, the grandfather of techno music and the sampling technique.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VIOLIST OF THE MIVOS QUARTET ABOUT STEVE REICH’S QUARTETS

Indeed, two of the three quartets use sound sampling (concrete sounds, snatches of voice, etc.) in a rhythmic and melodic perspective. The use of concrete sounds in music does not date back to Reich (Schaeffer, Henry and Stockhausen were there before him), but his instinctive and rhythmically catchy way of distributing them has inspired a creative movement of which hip hop is the latest genre to take up, often unknowingly, certain imperatives.

The most recent, WTC 9/11, uses sounds taken from the tragedy of 11 September 2001 in New York, while the first, “Different Trains” (which remains the best of all), draws a parallel between the trains travelling between New York and Los Angeles (which Reich often used at one time), and those that transported Jews to extermination camps during the Second World War (Reich is Jewish, and the allegory came forcefully to mind). In between, the Triple Quartet requires a tape on which two other quartets each play a score while the live ensemble performs its own on stage.

The Mivos Quartet has recorded these same three quartets for Deutsche Grammophon (they also played all the tracks of the two recorded quartets used inTriple Quartet). Its musicians are therefore well versed in the demands of this music. Nevertheless, performing this music on stage is extremely demanding. You have to concentrate at all times to react precisely to what is happening in the soundtrack and with your colleagues, and you have to keep track of all the repetitive patterns of the score, regularly punctuated by small changes that are as subtle as they are fundamental to the dynamic energy of the music. As they say, it’s easy to get lost in all that.

Hats off to the four excellent musicians of the New York-based ensemble (on their first visit here!) Olivia de Prato and Adam Woodward on violins, Victor Lowrie Tafoya on viola and Nathan Watts on cello. Their reading was breathtaking in its precision and coordination.

It’s almost an annual gathering of great names in minimalism that the Bourgie Hall programme offers us (in recent years we’ve had Glass and Missy Mazzoli), and we welcome it with enthusiasm. We hope it will continue and, why not, that there will be even more.

Baroque / classique / période romantique / post-romantique

Jaeden Izik-Dzurco, Beyond Impeccable

by Alain Brunet

Every year, if not every semester of this era, we enjoy an emerging supravirtuoso, and we have to admit that the best on Earth are more numerous, that the nec plus ultra is more considerable than ever. A few weeks ago, for example, a Montreal teenager electrified the small Salle Claude-Léveillée, as Sophia Shuya Liu’s hallucinatory abilities were revealed to her precocious public, including international agents who had heard about her exceptional technique and playing.

On Sunday afternoon, Pro Musica brought us Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, a young man with a string of major awards, including the Leeds, Maria Canals and Montreal International Music Competitions (MIMC), who verges on perfection.

We got the full measure of this prodigious 26-year-old Canadian musician, based in Germany.

As for JS Bach, Izik-Dzurko’s performance of the Partita no.4 in D major BWV 828 is simply ideal. Izik-Dzurko’s respect for the score is impeccable, with no unnecessary affectation or exaggeration. Exemplary precision and clarity, period. Here, the performer is concerned to respect the composer’s exact intentions, without becoming technically austere or clinically obsessive – which is often the case with excellent… technicians. This fine line between virtuosity and musicality will be honored from the first to the last bar of this excellent concert.

From JSB, we move on to Rachmaninov’s Preludes op.23, imagined by the virtuoso pianist and composer at the turn of the 20th century (1901-1903), of which no. 5 in G minor has gone down in history. Again, the performer is dazzling in his refinement, tone and accuracy. The virtuosity stakes are exceptional here, and any concert pianist must master this repertoire, whereas Izik-Dzurko manages to transcend it without going overboard.

After the interval, Scriabin’s Fantaisie in B minor, also composed at the dawn of the previous century (1900), also generates this impression of perfection, of absolute understanding of the score and a rendering that is both sober and deeply musical, even in its most entangled moments.

For a musician who claims to be less naturally inclined to master Chopin, whose Sonata no.3 in B minor Op.58 he played, one can’t help noticing irritations, tensions and other excesses of zeal, even during the most vertiginous phase from the sonata to its conclusion. Here again, it’s pure music-loving bliss.

At the age of 26, Izik-Dzurco has reached this level of mastery and has a long road ahead of him. Of course, life should provide him with the rough edges to further refine his artistic personality and make him even more relevant. What’s more, more touching.