New European Ensemble open the 12th edition of M / NM

The Netherlands-based New European Ensemble kicked off this year’s 12th edition of the Montréal Nouvelles Musiques Festival. The opening concert titled “Dynamite Barrel” showcased the work of innovative contemporary composers whose pieces on the night would adhere to this year’s theme: the marriage of music and images.

Heading into this concert with little information, I assumed that this meant music that evokes imagery but that ultimately each listener was to be responsible for their own imaginations. As I would soon see, each of the featured composers would run with this theme slightly differently.

The pieces are set out to represent locations, sonic evolution, historical periods, or a mixture of the three. Sometimes this was done, as it routinely is when it comes to new chamber music, by pushing the limits of textures and timbre; meaning that they contained all the florid passages, extended techniques, mixed orchestration, and meterless moments you would expect. For those who found this fatiguing, the piece Cyan Saturn, inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, provided some nice contrast as it contained some compositional conventions of jazz fusion which made for something a bit different.

Regardless, most of the pieces of the night would couple their music with images projected onto a screen and essentially require the players of the New European Ensemble to “score” the images live. In one piece this meant recontextualizing old Looney Tunes scenes; on another occasion, a Bollywood film; and at the very end, a surf rock piece superimposed with Thai music set to shadow puppetry. 

When the musical scoring lapsed into what I would consider dense, pointillistic, or meterless soundscapes, I was much more tolerant of any shrieks and squeals when I could see they were in accordance with what was happening on the screen. The brain is funny that way.  At other moments I felt some dense soundscapes overstayed their welcome. I can wholly admit that contemporary chamber music asks important questions of established practices when it goes down this route; my gripe is that it always seems to be the same questions. And they’ve been asked for more than a few decades at this point. Overall I would say the New European Ensemble interpreted for us some very interesting music, but I wasn’t about to rush to the merch 

photos: Marie-Ève Labadie