expérimental / contemporain / Musique de création

M/NM | The Use of Audiovisuals as Creative Material—Welcome to Nicole Lizée

by Alain Brunet

Gravelbourg-born Montrealer Nicole Lizée is a true visionary in the field of using cinematographic or videographic material in the composition of musical works. On Saturday evening at UQAM’s Cœur des sciences (Agora Hydro-Québec), this was the program dedicated to her: Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques presented three of her works in a program of five.

The audiovisual materials Nicole Lizée employs in her works include various items taken from everyday life at different times in her life, toys, audiovisual archives, and other everyday artifacts. The composer also films her own scenes involving actor-musicians, such as the teacher who mistakenly explains to us what is an acceptable rhythm and what is an unplayable one.

It also makes use of absurdist humour and fantasy when it makes fake scores appear in the hands of a musician who recounts her setbacks with a possibly malevolent entity. Yet this narrative framework has no other purpose than to be one of the channels of expression for a piece of music, in this case, the re-orchestration of 8-Bit Noir, composed in 2019. In this case, flutist Marie-Hélène Breault is the sole instrumentalist on stage, around whom the composer has erected an audiovisual environment made up of video sketches. The DIY nature of the work is also a feature of this aesthetic, as can be seen in the other pieces on the program.

By Margareta Jeric, Les échos de l’Adriatique was premiered on Saturday by the Ensemble de la SMCQ under the direction of Cristian Gort. For flute, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, piano, cello, double bass, support, and video device, this piece is accompanied by images of the Adriatic Sea—particularly a dilapidated, abandoned sardine factory on the Croatian coast, whose fate is unknown. The sounds imagined by Margareta Jeric illustrate the cracks in the scenery and nature’s reassertion of its rights. The musical work is full of percussive details, bells, high-pitched bow strokes, and more.

“Black Midi,” composed in 2017 by Nicole Lizée, is an evocation of this sub-trend also called Black MIDI, which consists of compositions using MIDI files to create a piece or remix containing a mind-boggling number of notes, arbitrarily placed on the score or in the composition program, to such an extent that the sheet of music ends up blackened with notes, hence the expression. Execution requires mind-boggling results, impossible for human fingers to interpret such scores. Around this idea of impossible-to-play music, the composer has imagined a narrative: the characters from the previous video are back, recounting their adventures with a sense of humour, stunned by the phenomenon.

For piano and audiovisual treatments performed in phase, this work includes frequent changes of tempo, accelerandos, metric modulation, and the use of musical toys. The aim is to extract this computerized compositional process and link it to the live performance, the piano played by Pamela Reimer wearing a wig in this context of strangeness and fantasy. Very interesting, entertaining, and humorous, but… you might want to give up before the 22nd and final minute of this work, which nevertheless makes its way into Nicole Lizée’s already considerable body of work.

Closures by Philippe Macnab-Séguin is a work in which the mass of sound expands, spreads, contracts, coils, or explodes in the manner of our life trajectories. The piece opens with a whirring sound, followed by slow glissandos leading to bursts of high frequencies. These successive waves are generated by an Ensemble de la SMCQ, this time comprising flute, clarinet, percussion (prominent vibraphone), electric guitar, piano, cello, double bass, stand, and video device. The movement of the tides gradually becomes a continuous rhythm, lightening again with ascending melodic spirals of clarinet and flute, then building up again and slowly fading out until a final percussive blow, topped by the same roar served up in the introduction. Frankly, this Philippe Macnab-Séguin must be taken seriously.

We conclude with “Dancist,” Nicole Lizée’s third work on the program, composed in 2019. In the same spirit as her other works on the program. “Dancist,” for clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, piano, cello, double bass and audio/video device, is dedicated to the surreal evocation of dance music, taking up a similar narrative framework, tinged with a kind of magical realism, as well as with caustic humour and self-reflexivity about her own creative process. The results lie somewhere between audiovisual installation and composition. As we leave the amphitheatre, we are reminded that Nicole Lizée has often performed her works with her own ensemble, which is less visible given her burgeoning career as a composer. The challenge ahead for her, we thought as we left the concert hall, is to create works that will have the same impact as those produced by her own orchestra.

Publicité panam

Classical / Modern Classical

OSM and Khachatryan | Music, Politics and The Human Condition

by Hélène Archambault

There are moments when you feel privileged to be where you are. Such was the case on Wednesday evening at the Maison symphonique. I think the feeling was mutual, at least if I’m to judge by the encore given by violinist Sergey Khachatryan, who gave a superb performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35.

The orchestra provided a setting in which he could express his sincerity, as when the flutes pick up at the end of his very personal cadenza, or again in the opening bars, as the strings introduce the solo violin.

The reminder is a piece by Grigor Narekatsi, a 10th-century Armenian mystic poet and saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church. In 2015, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Pope Francis declared St. Gregory of Narek (Frenchized name), Doctor of the Church, the 36th, for his timeless writings. Timeless, Havoun, havoun is. More than 1,000 years apart, his play resonates.

After intermission, Payare and the OSM attack Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”. 11 young instrumentalists from Montreal’s Conservatory, McGill, and Université de Montréal music schools join the orchestra for the occasion. Knowing the history of this symphony is the key to fully appreciating it because it’s not the kind of piece you listen to while preparing a chickpea salad on Monday morning before catching the metro. The program notes are illuminating. Symphony No. 11 is intimately linked to the history of Russia, and later the Soviet Union, both in its writing and its reception by the regime. With the USSR having decreed Shostakovich’s music an enemy of the workers in the aftermath of the Second World War, new compositions had to wait until the 1950s. Composed at the beginning of 1957, Shostakovich recounts in music the popular uprising of 1905 against the Russian Empire.

The first movement, “Palace Square”, opens with a hostile winter scene, where bloody repression soon unfolds. Military snare drums, bugles, and folk song illustrations are all sound manifestations of the violence of the repression. The second movement evokes Red Sunday, and here again, Shostakovich uses musical material to depict the horror of the massacre and the desolation of death. The third movement, “Eternal Memory”, is reminiscent of the Revolutionaries’ Funeral March. As for the Finale, “Tocsin”, this is revolutionary fervor, characterized by trumpets and low strings, interrupted by an English horn melody, and ending with the sounds of cymbals and bells. When the music stops, you wonder what you’ve just experienced. I was moved, disturbed, and thrown to the ground. This concert embodies the human condition in all its fragility.

Photo Credit: Antoine Saito

Contemporary Jazz / expérimental / contemporain / Métal / Musique de création

M/NM | Metal and Contemporary Jazz at The SMCQ Buffet

by Alain Brunet

Wednesday evening at the Music Multimedia Room (MMR) of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, David Therrien Brongo, percussion, Louis-Philippe Bonin, saxophones and Alexandre David, guitars, gave us a convincing glimpse of a creative alliance between contemporary music of classical origin, contemporary jazz and… metal. A few weeks after the OSM’s Voiviod symphonique experiment, which sought to magnify a popular repertoire in an orchestral context, the metal aesthetic was invited this time to the SMCQ and its M/NM festival.

This program, with variable geometry for its performers, was not intended to be fundamentally metal, but rather a hybridization of aesthetics seemingly foreign to one another, but coming together after a long history of almost mutual ignorance.

Thus, the first work on the program, Rocío Cano Valiñ’s Átropos, a 9-minute piece composed in 2020-21, features the advanced techniques of alto and soprano saxophones and the percussive interventions of xylophone, drums and other cymbals. The interest here lies in the saxophone playing, reminiscent of the last decades of contemporary jazz in its textural and atonal advances, but without introducing us to anything new.

Ditto for True North, composed in 2007 by Andrew Staniland, which uses comparable techniques for the saxophonist, whose scores are distributed over 4 lecterns encircling the performer, all coated with electronic processing.

In 2016, Montreal composer (originally from Saskatchewan) Nicole Lizée imagined a work inspired by the Parents Music Resource Center organization, the Mothers of Prevention, to use the nickname suggested by Frank Zappa to taunt the censorship of these uptight mothers, once scandalized by hardrock, metal or hip-hop for their crude, explicit, sexual and sometimes violent language.

On the big screen, an archive film is gleefully butchered: Tipper Gore’s mother (then the companion of Albert Gore, ex-US VP) and Susan Baker, wife of James Baker, ex-US Secretary of State, are rightly ridiculed for the creative use of their ridiculous indignation.

We know that Nicole Lizée has mastered the use of cinema in her work, this time devoted to a written, jerky percussive language, dotted with sharp changes and punctuations of varying intensity, always in phase with the editing of this widescreen pamphlet, percussion and electroacoustic treatment.

In my opinion, however, the program’s greatest interest lay in its second part, two works fusing contemporary written music, contemporary jazz and metal. David Therrien Brongo then swapped his typical classical percussion paraphernalia for a typically metal drum kit, an instrument that had deeply seduced him before he took up advanced percussion studies. This virtuoso clearly doesn’t have a jazz background; the stature of his playing obviously excludes swing, and his qualities lie elsewhere, in the fusion of his metal playing with his classical percussion expertise.

Infinite Jest (Superpose III), a 7-minute work composed in2010 by Alexander Schubert for a power trio of sorts, was closer to musique actuelle/contemporaine in its lexicon and discursive framework: saxophone drawing atonal lines and belching out many sounds typical of free research; guitar also introspective, impressionistic, rather tenuous given its possibilities, and very contemporary drums based on a complex path defined by the composer.

The best piece on the program was the last: Delta, an 11-minute piece composed in 2024 by guitarist Alexandre David, paired this trio, of which he is one of the gunners, with a magnificent contemporary dance video.

The dancers’ performances were projected onto a large screen as they performed. A veil of synthetic textures covered these much more muscular impulses, which in no way precluded finesse in the writing. A total spectacle. This was the pièce de résistance, and certainly a source of inspiration for these musicians, who still have a lot to say if they wish to continue the experiment.

musique contemporaine

M/NM | Music with soul and Indian ink

by Frédéric Cardin

Yesterday the Festival Montréal Nouvelles Musiques presented an unusual programme, Le son de l’encre, at the centre of which was the mechanical and symbolic process of line, drawing and writing. Five works for flute and various additions (video, gesture-animated sound interface, live calligraphy) were performed. The spirit of Asian calligraphy is associated with elegance, harmony and meticulousness. It was also in this state of sound, at least in general, that the music on offer flourished. Although ‘contemporary,’ most of the pieces on the programme were enveloped in more or less explicit echoes of Asian music, thanks to the harmonies on pentatonic scales.

Penned by François Dery, Claire-Melanie Sinnhuber, Tao Yu, Gualtiero Dazzi and François Daudin Clavaud, the evocatively-titled works (Bambous, Fleurs de prunes tombantes, Le son de l’encre, Vent léger, etc.) set the scene in a way that was both modern and timeless, bathed in an atmosphere that was often contemplative, even ritualistic. Some pieces were more poignant than others, such as Gualtiero Dazzi’s La demeure du rêve, a superb sound construction based on drawings by South Korean Kim Yung Gi, one of the great illustrators of our time, who died at the age of 47 in 2022. Gi’s drawings, four in all and admirable for their naturalness but also for their symbolic complexity, took the form of a series of family portraits set against each other. A deeply moving moment.

The presence of renowned calligrapher Shanshan Sun was necessary to accompany some of the works, such as Feu, neige, cendres by François Déry. I wasn’t as convinced by the coherent relationship between Sun’s live gestures and the music. Especially in the last piece of the evening, coordination seemed to be lacking, with Sun finishing his writing on a large piece of paper on the floor, while the musicians had finished playing. I’d say almost a minute passed during which I caught the look on the face of one of the flautists, silently wondering how long he should hold his instrument up…

Be that as it may, I must mention the great versatility of the Trio d’argent, made up of Michel Boizot, Xavier Saint-Bonnet and François Daudin Clavaud. Three flutes together, some would say, is suicide. The French have shown that it can be done very well, and sound magnificently too. The variety of flutes used was also a major factor. Western, Oriental, bass flutes (I love them!), etc., the colours deployed were numerous and beautifully applied, in a contemporary perspective, certainly, but not experimental.

It was an evening that was sometimes bewitching, often soothing, always pleasant and surprising. A lovely offering from the Festival Montréal Nouvelles Musiques, and it’s only just beginning.

Interview (in French) with one of the musicians :

Publicité panam

musique contemporaine / Piano

M/NM : Kafka’s Insect in metamorphosis under the Satosphère

by Judith Hamel

On Monday evening, a handful of audience members braved the icy gusts of wind and mountains of snow to make themselves comfortable on the beanbags of the Satosphère, in the heart of the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT). All the way from Malta, composer Ruben Zahra and pianist Tricia Dawn Williams swapped the mild Mediterranean climate for the cold of Montreal to present Kafka’s Insect as part of the Festival International Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques (M/NM).

An immersive audiovisual performance, Kafka’s Insect is a retelling of Franz Kafka’s famous novel La métamorphose (1915). Spanning some 40 minutes, the visual narrative features characters from the Austro-Hungarian author’s story, as well as a real insect filmed from various angles and in motion. The narrative is built up in fragments and is supported by sound events taken directly from Kafka’s text: the pounding of rain against windows, the crash of a laboratory flask crashing to the floor, or the clash of apples thrown against a wall. These diegetic sounds blend with the soundtrack that is played live by piano and synthesizers. Towards the end of the piece, a dialogue is established between a violin recorded in the film and the piano played on stage. These interactions reinforce the cohesion between the sound and visual worlds, making the experience all the more immersive.

In addition, these looped elements encourage us to interpret the sound and visual scenes from different perspectives. This process amplifies the strangeness of the work, paying homage to the absurdity that permeates Kafka’s text.

The video projections – usually broadcast on a two-meter-diameter inflatable sphere placed at the center of the stage – have been specially adapted for this event, exploiting a large part of the surface of the SAT’s immersive dome. The film, shot for the most part with a vintage Daguerreotype Achromat lens from 1838, featured a singular aesthetic: soft light, with a blur evoking a flourishing imagination, just like Kafka’s protagonist. The circular image was projected onto the dome. Projections of the protagonist, depicted as a giant insect, were thus projected onto an imposing screen, creating a captivating atmosphere.

The integration of projected texts, while making the story easier to understand, sometimes broke the immersion. On the other hand, the moments when synthesizers were added to the piano created a particularly enveloping atmosphere. Finally, the impeccable synchronization between live music and video, facilitated by a click in the performers’ headphones, was an appreciable element that enhanced the fluidity of the performance.

This show marked the final M/NM event presented at the SAT, but the 12th edition of the festival continues with several more concerts to be discovered in the coming days. Focusing this year on the dialogue between music and images, M/NM offers no fewer than 18 concerts over 16 days.

photo: Emma Tranter

Publicité panam

expérimental / contemporain

M/NM | ¡Némangerie mâchée!… What a Menagerie!

by Alain Brunet

On a historically stormy evening at the Society for Arts and Technology, M/NM nevertheless honored the biennial’s theme: the meeting of image and music. The program ¡Némangerie mâchée! attracted a highly motivated audience, and for good reason: this superb video-voice performance must be presented to the public again, given its real unifying potential. Together, vocal ensemble Phth and visual artist Beth Frey create a whimsical, sometimes hilarious world of humanoid mutants, expressed through the 5 singers, improvisers and seasoned onomatopists.

From left to right, looking behind the audience where the performers are: Sarah Albu, Elizabeth Lima, Kathy Kennedy, Gabriel Dharmoo, David Cronkite together develop a hallucinatory vocabulary in which singing and all the other sounds coming from the human body find artistic coherence: borborygms, onomatopoeia, croaks, chirps, cries, baby cries, greasy laughter and other sounds of our lives blend with romantic or baroque lyrical singing, jazz singing, barbershop, doo-wop or other well-known and tried-and-tested vocal practices. Very cool!

We have to admit that this avant-garde lexicon has been enriched by its practitioners over the last few decades, and that it is now obsolete to consider this practice as an experimental fantasy. On the contrary, these augmented singing techniques are making a major contribution to real advances in music today, here and now.

¡Némangerie mâchée! projects a series of video tableaux in which the strange creatures express themselves vocally, a kind of improvised lipsync that never ceases to captivate the audience until the end of the performance.

“The formless, chromatic nature of Beth’s creatures,” state the program notes, ”shares striking conceptual and sensory echoes with their bizarre voicing by Phth, known for a sonic palette that welcomes the organic beauty and ugliness of sound without discrimination.”

Beth Frey’s art-video is perfectly matched to the work of the performers and improvisers, expressing themselves in real time and drawing on their profound knowledge as singers.

Absurdist humor is not the only cardinal virtue of ¡Némangerie mâchée! Through the prism of the outright laughter induced by this performance, other sensitive emotions and perceptions emerge: pain, sorrow, panic, astonishment, tolerance of difference, you name it.

Can’t wait for the sequel!

Publicité panam

Africa / Indigenous peoples

Black History Month | An Afro-Indigenous Immersion

by Sandra Gasana

For its third edition, Immersion plunged us into a meeting between two African women artists, Dalie Dandala, from Congo-Brazzaville, and Lerie Sankofa, from Côte d’Ivoire, and an Atikamekw woman, Laura Niquay. Together, they shared with us the fruits of their 21-day artistic creation residency, during which they got to know each other, created together and sang in each other’s respective languages.

Under the direction of Fredy Massamba, himself a renowned artist, the art of staging had its place in this show. From dress to dance to the many instruments played by the three women, nothing was left to chance. Each woman took her turn to explain her songs, with the others participating in the chorus or playing an instrument. At times, it was hard to tell whether the language was African or native, as the boundaries were so porous.

Singing, dancing, instruments and their arrangement came naturally, allowing the artists to tell their own stories. Ngoma, percussion, guitar, handpan drum and ahoco: it was all there. Each artist sang in her mother tongue, with occasional bits of French.

“Nzobi, in my language, means ritual or prayer, a bit like vodou,” explains Dalie Dandala before intoning her song in Nyari. She is joined by Lerie on percussion and Laura on backing vocals before dancing away, all dressed in red.

In turn, Lerie shares a song in Avikam about women and their desire for freedom when mistreated by their husbands. Dalie and Laura accompany her, one on the ahoco and the other with poetry in the Atikamekw language, with a touch of French.

Despite a string coming loose on her guitar in the middle of the show, this didn’t stop Laura from playing it on the track “Stéréotype”, which denounces prejudices about the role of women, with Dalie and Lerie on backing vocals and percussion.

These women even got the audience involved on one track, when Fredy Massamba couldn’t hold back from dancing. Indeed, he did so at one point in the evening when he joined the trio on stage, quickly accompanied by Louise Abomba, a visual artist from Cameroon.

They closed the show with a tribute to twins, considered a blessing in many African cultures, in song, music and dance. The complicity was more palpable between the two African artists, of course, but Laura managed to carve out a niche for herself while giving them the space to create a stronger bond between themselves.
This was followed by a question-and-answer period, during which the audience had the opportunity to ask the three artists a few questions. The theme of women was central throughout the show, the power conferred on them, their role in society and the prejudices to be deconstructed about them.

To the question “What’s next?” from the audience, we learned that Laura, who is currently working on a blues album with an all-female band, has invited Dalie and Lerie to participate in her project. So we’ll have to wait for a follow-up to this artistic immersion that resulted in a cultural symbiosis between Africa and one of Canada’s aboriginal peoples.

musique contemporaine

Ali Zadeh @ Molinari: a visit that will live long in our memories

by Frédéric Cardin

The three-day event Le quatuor selon Ali Zadeh (The quartet according to Ali Zadeh), organized by the Molinari Quartet, reached its climax on Saturday evening, February 15, at the Salle du Conservatoire de Montréal. In the presence of the composer, a small, elegant woman of 78, we listened, probably for the very first time, to all her string quartets in one go. This was made all the more special by the fact that it included the premiere of a work written specifically for the Molinaris, her Farewell quartet.

WATCH THE INTERVIEW WITH OLGA RANZENHOFER FROM THE MOLINARI QUARTET (In French)

After a full and fast-paced introduction by multidisciplinary artist Nicolas Jobin, who is also a “specialist” in the work of Franghiz Ali Zadeh, the seven quartets by the Azerbaijani composer were launched in non-chronological order, contrary to the Molinari Quartet’s usual practice for this kind of event. An idea of Mrs. Ali Zadeh’s which, I think, turned out to be a happy one, as it favored an alternation between harmonically “modernist” works and those more openly “folkloric”.

I won’t summarize each piece here, but the final impression of the many listeners present is probably that of an authentic fusion, sophisticated without abstruse cerebralism, of Eastern and Western musical universes. The language of Azeri sacred chants, called mughams, is omnipresent in Ali Zadeh’s expressive palette, but with variations in intensity and explicitness depending on the quartet. While 2015’s Reqs (Dance), and especially 1993’s Mugham Sayagi, her most famous work (commissioned by Kronos), are strongly tinged with what Western ears perceive as obvious orientalism, others such as Dilogia (1974, rev. 1988), In Search Of… (2005), and even the premiere Farewell (2025) are more strongly in the wake of chromatic modernism, or even the Second Viennese School (Farewell is explicitly inspired by Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto). That said, even in these, the soul of an art music linked to Islamic sacred chant remains perceptible, for those who know how to listen.

Franghiz Ali Zadeh’s music is an authentic fusion, a brilliant syncretism, all the more natural as it has been personally experienced by the artist throughout her life (Nicolas Jobin’s lecture was very enlightening in this respect). This music is even more powerful in its expressiveness because Ms. Ali Zadeh possesses two additional major assets: firstly, she is an excellent musical narrator, who knows how to tell stories with sufficient focus to set a lively scene, but also to leave interpretative space, both for the musicians and for the listeners, so as to allow each and every one to immerse themselves with a certain freedom of perception. Secondly, Ali Zadeh is a fine colorist, using almost the entire palette of string techniques such as col legno battuto, tremolos, glissandos, pizzicatos, mutes and so on. Elsewhere, the musicians sing, or (in Mugham Sayagi) also play percussion, moving around the stage and playing backstage. The rhythms used by Ms. Ali Zadeh, often demanding but propulsive, endow her music with an infectious accessibility.

For this ease of reception, combined with an elaborate academic knowledge and structural complexity that is anything but obtuse, Franghiz Ali Zadeh’s musical proposal is one of the most inspiring of our time, and perhaps one of the most promising for the future of contemporary creation.

This kind of world-class event (which also included two previous days of conferences and discussions) is a landmark event. The Molinari Quartet gave us the kind of privilege that music lovers in Berlin, Vienna or Paris know so well. The ensemble has benefited from the support of a far-sighted and essential patronage (the Lupien Family Foundation), to which we are grateful.

I’ll end with an arrow aimed at a few media “competitors” (forgive me, but you’ll understand): to my knowledge, no one from Radio-Canada, La Presse or Le Devoir was present. This just goes to show the deplorable cultural state of the mainstream media, unable to grasp the unique and historic nature of this event.

expérimental / contemporain

M/NM | Saturday Night Ether…eal

by Alain Brunet

On Saturday, M/NM promised us a “unique immersive and meditative audiovisual experience” under the SAT (Society for Arts and Technology) Satosphere dome, with solo piano interpretations by Isak Goldschneider and Eve Egoyan, set to visuals by Elysha Poirier and David Rokeby. A calm, celestial immersion, we observed on site. Etherial ? Saturday night ether !

Isak Goldschneider was asked to play two related works, although composed at different times. First, a work by Quebecer Hans Martin, Variations sérielles, composed in 2024 and premiered before us on Saturday February 15. Video artist Elysha Poirier’s visual environment was conducive to this chromatic language slowly unfolding on the keyboard. Over the 7-minute duration of this new work, each note gently settles, spreading out these explorations of the 12 tones of the scale like a meditation. At first glance, this approach seems familiar, but it doesn’t stand out clearly. You need to listen very carefully to detect its singularity, particularly in the rhythmic ruptures, pedal effects and minimalist chords in a context of assertive serialism.

This was followed by the execution of Palais de Mari, imagined by Morton Feldman almost 40 years ago, a year before his death. The original inspiration lies in the idea of a virtual visit to the palace of King Zimri-Lim, who was the last to rule Mari, a city planted near the Euphrates 4000 years ago. The aesthetic here is similar to that chosen by Hans Martin, whose work dates back to 1986. The punctuations are sharper and the harmonic constructions atonal, typical of this period in contemporary music. Reverberation effects are very present in chords and sustained notes (tenuto), producing a sonic bond and reinforcing the impression that the notes are linked (legato), without apparent interruption. For 25 minutes, the imaginary visit continues in a post-modern, sometimes even futuristic evocation of this several-thousand-year-old palace, of which only shapeless ruins remain. Hence the minimalism of this work, in which motifs are repeated here and there.

Performed by Eve Egoyan, Simple Lines of Enquiry was composed by the late Ann Southam (1937-2010) and extends this ethereal, dreamlike, hypnotic proposition. Once again, note lapping generates reverberation between the slowly constructed motifs. The atonal choices and slowness of the pianistic execution encourage the viewing of David Rokeby’s video Machine for Taking Time. This art video projects almost still images of downtown Montreal, often the rooftops of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, many of which were taken a long time ago – as many buildings have since emerged from the ground. The same shots are repeated over the seasons, contemplating atmospheric changes, snow and/or greenery. Here again, this work is typical of contemporary composers of the previous century, as is the art video projected onto the concave screen, which was not designed for such immersion.
Other creative times, other creative morals…

Baroque / Classical / musique contemporaine / période romantique

Les Violons du Roy and Kerson Leong: A Time of Grace

by Alexandre Villemaire

Les Violons du Roy’s first concert of 2025 finally took place not in Quebec City, but in Montreal’s Salle Bourgie. The weather having forced the postponement of the February 13 performance at the Palais Montcalm to a later date, it was Montreal audiences who got to hear violinist Kerson Leong and the world premiere of Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Found in Lostness, to a full house.

The evening’s repertoire was structured around works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn. Bringing together the figures of Bach and Mendelssohn in a program is not a new or innovative idea. As first guest conductor Nicolas Ellis, in charge for the evening, rightly reminded us in his introduction. Indeed, Mendelssohn made a major contribution to the rediscovery of the Leipzig cantor’s music, which had been somewhat forgotten in the 19th century, when he presented The St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829. Mendelssohn, himself an organist, was greatly influenced by Bach, as were many other composers who saw him as a spiritual master.

The first work on the program was Mendelssohn’s Symphony for Strings No. 10 in B minor. A youthful composition – he was fourteen when he wrote it – the influences are clearly classical in the treatment of the strings, reminiscent of Haydn, but the conduct of the voices, particularly in the first movement, marked Adagio, is eminently Bachian. In fact, the choice of the key of B minor, the same as that of his famous Mass, is a nod to Bach. For the rest, the form remains classical, but is peppered with the lyricism and passionate dynamic changes characteristic of Romanticism. It is clear that this is a young Félix exploring musical language, who has not yet found his style.

This was followed by a sensitive, meditative interpretation of the organ chorale O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde groß [O man, weep for your great sin]. Nicolas Ellis guided the musicians into an intimate, pleading world. The arrangement for strings by German composer Max Reger (1873-1916) lends a hushed, more interior character where, right up to the last note, we are left in a state of suspension. It’s another nod to Bach’s legacy to include Reger, who is said to have said: “Bach is the beginning and the end of music”.

What an excellent idea to seamlessly link the arrangement for soloists and string orchestra of the aria “Erbarme Dich [Have mercy, my God]” from St. Matthew’s Passion, featuring the evening’s guest soloist Kerson Leong, with Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Found in Lostness. With a sound of purity, Leong is accompanied by violist Jean-Louis Blouin in this vocal duet that perpetuates the dynamics of the previous chorale. Seconds that rub against each other to create dissonance magnify the imitation of the Apostle Peter’s guilt-ridden weeping after denying Jesus.

The transition into Kelly-Marie Murphy’s world is a natural one, as the aesthetic of the piece explores the theme of loss. The piece opens with chilling high notes, following a double bass solo by Raphaël McNabney that exploits the unnatural treble of his instrument. The piece then takes off in an energetic burst, featuring vivid melodic lines, extended violin playing techniques imitating shrill cries, tense chords and constant dynamic changes. After this wild ride, calm returns with a harmonic string carpet over which Kerson Leong’s violin brushes a dissonant line that the rest of the orchestra lightly joins. This finale reminded us of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question. Coherent, accessible and engaging, it deserves to be heard and, above all, listened to!

After opening with the music of the young Mendelssohn, the concert concluded with his last work, the String Quartet in F minor, composed after the death of his sister. The language of maturity asserts an unabashed romanticism, where the development of ideas is more developed, personal and marked by emotionally charged orchestral lines and treatments.

Choral Music / Classical / Classical Period / Renaissance music

Beethoven’s 9th, Montreal, 200 Years Ago…

by Alexis Desrosiers-Michaud

On this Valentine’s Day, we were treated to a premiere at the concert by Ensemble Caprice and Ensemble ArtChoral: Beethoven’s 9ᵉ symphony on early instruments, conducted by Matthias Maute.

The original program was to have opened with the little-known cantata Hiob by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Instead, we were treated to two Yiddish pieces, Ernst Bloch’s Yih’yu L’ratzon and a traditional aria calledOy dortn, as well as Gregorio Allegri’s famous Miserere.

The two Jewish pieces feature soprano Sharon Azrieli and her imposing vibrato. Acting as cantor, she announces psalmodies and the choir responds. We don’t know if it’s a microphone or projection problem, but she was barely audible from the back of the audience. All the same, it’s very pretty, and reminds us that this Jewish and Hebrew music is too rarely performed in our concert halls.

The Miserere is a jewel of musical genius that leaves no room for error. Unfortunately, there were mistakes. Firstly, the voices of the quartet perched high up in the Maison symphonique are not homogeneous; those of the men do not vibrate, whereas those of the women do. What’s more, it’s not always right. Then, there’s no change in volume throughout the piece, and as this piece is often repeated, it becomes redundant and loses all its intimacy. Then, in the psalmodies, different notes are accentuated by the choristers, instead of being lightly pressed, and it’s sometimes unclear in the cuts and consonants. In short, this is a fine work, but it would have deserved a more consistent rendering.

The real treat of the first half is Höre auf meine Stimme, written by William Kraushaar, also a chorister in the bass section. Maute warned us that the melody would stick in our heads, and for good reason. Simple without being kitschy, repeated often enough without our noticing it too much, it is supple and expressive. The accompaniment doesn’t impose itself, leaving the choir to sing along, acting as a harmonic carpet. Were it not for a few dissonant chords from the language of Morten Lauridsen and his contemporaries in the a cappella passages, we would have placed this work between the styles of Mendelssohn and Schubert, and on our first listen, this piece seems accessible to most amateur choirs. When will it be published?

According to conductor Maute, this is the first time in Montreal that Beethoven’s Ninth has been played on period instruments. It takes a few minutes to adapt to the new sound, but it’s very pleasant and successful, despite a few lapses in accuracy and precision. The sound isn’t fat, and the loud passages don’t give the impression that Obelix is lifting the Sphinx, but the tension is there. In the first movement, which Maute conducts at breakneck speed, you can hear all the elements of the musical dialogue, and the second really has the feel of a dance, something you don’t get from many other conductors. However, the middle section of this movement is too fast, and the winds don’t keep up. The third movement is certainly not adagio, but very cantabile. One enjoys the phrases without lingering or falling into the moon.

The last movement opens smoothly and lightly. Finally, the cello/bass recitatives are not too heavy! And all is exalted before the entrance of the chorus, with the recitative of bass Dominique Côté. But as soon as the chorus begins, something annoys us: a soprano pierces more than the rest of her section, especially in the high register, which is like saying almost all the time in Beethoven. Once this is targeted by the ear, it’s extremely difficult to ignore. My seatmate, who was also bothered by it, confided to me at the end of the evening that it wasn’t the first time it had happened to this tandem. If you don’t want one person’s work to unbalance a rare, high-level performance, this is something to be corrected.

photos: Tam Photography

Contemporary

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

by Vitta Morales

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