I’d like to tell you right away that I had a wonderful evening, despite some flaws I’m about to add to the appreciation of last night’s concert. The evening, entitled Aptitudes matérielles (Material Skills), was an encounter between the contemporary creative scenes of New York and Montreal, presented at the Espace Bleu du Wilder, in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles, under the umbrella of Le Vivier, an indispensable musical catalyst on the Montreal scene.
New York’s Hypercube ensemble, an unusual quartet comprising piano, saxophone, electric guitar and percussion, crossed sonic paths with three Montreal artists, Antonin Bourgault, Antoine Goudreau and Corie Rose Soumah. Only Bourgault actually joined the New Yorkers with his saxophone. For the others, the relationship took shape solely as composers.
I’ll take several things away from this experience: the excellence of the Hypercube performers, a tightly-knit group that shows deeply intimate mutual listening and displays impressive technical quality. I also note that the musical avant-garde has come a long way in the last 50, even 75 years. We’ve reached the point where we can enjoy a concert of this kind, savoring the interpretative excellence displayed and the plastic beauty of the sounds generated on stage, without really being surprised by the proposal. Indeed, this was the feeling that assailed me during the concert: I’ve heard it all before. For in the narrative abstractions suggested, the numerous timbral projections, textural contrasts and sonic outbursts, nothing truly revolutionary, or even intriguing, emerged. Beautiful and plastically impeccable, but not surprising or off the beaten track.
That said, as mentioned, yours truly enjoyed the evening, as the music on offer was intelligent, informed by the best of musical knowhow and conceived in a clear spirit of aesthetic and sensory communication.
First and foremost, the acousmatic portions of the scores were beautifully spatialized, with an effective octophony (if I’m not mistaken) that succeeded in plunging the audience into the center of pleasant synthetic outbursts. Musically, I’d sum up by saying that Soumah and Goudreau are the best at taking advantage of the coloristic possibilities of the Hypercube ensemble, integrating them into effective dramatic constructions, discursively fragmented but comprehensible. Corie Rose Soumah is one of the most interesting emerging voices in scholarly music, and her Soundcloud page should be a priority listen, if you’re really interested in contemporary stuff. The Montrealer is based in New York, so her close relationship with the band.
Corie Rose Soumah Soundcloud page
Hypercube’s saxophonist, Canadian Erin Rogers, has offered Mirror to Fire, a piece derived from a Nine Inch Nails song (The Lovers, from the album Add Violence). Mirror to Fire has become a kind of study in the musical possibilities of separating the harmonic and rhythmic pillars of a “popular” work, and is the easiest score in terms of discursive path that could be heard in the concert. All the works on the program were world premieres (except for one of Soumah’s pieces, a Canadian premiere ‘’only’’).
Classic avant-garde, drawing as much on Stockhausen as 1970s free jazz and acousmatic music, with no particular astonishment but undeniably seductive artistry.
