The tranquil and (too) discreet music of Missy Mazzoli

by Frédéric Cardin

On Wednesday 28 February, Salle Bourgie welcomed violinist Jennifer Koh and composer and pianist (and keyboardist) Missy Mazzoli for a type of concert that is still rare in Montreal, hence the title of this article. It’s a discreet kind of music, because here in Montreal it’s still under-recognised. Yet Mazzoli is one of the most important musical creators of our time. Elsewhere in English speaking North America, she is a star.

The programme presented in Montreal was part of a tour by the two musicians and friends celebrating fifteen years of collaboration. It featured works by Mazzoli either written for solo violin or as a duo with piano (or synthesiser keyboard). With perfect organic coherence, this programme was deployed like a great thin veil, with undulating movements that swell and deflate the sound fabric, in a stylistic whole that is quite soaring and resolutely post-minimalist.

The final result gives an imperfect idea of Mazzoli’s musical contribution to the early 21st century, for her output is far more complex and fleshed out than yesterday’s relatively monochrome programme. Listen, for example, to her superb Double Bass Concerto ‘’Dark With Excessive Bright’’, her opera Proving Up, or These Worlds in Us for orchestra, and you’ll get a better idea.

That said, this concert, full of beautiful moments of intangibility and contained spirituality, was important because it presented in Montreal a still too rare concert of what I would describe as real “music of our time”. Scholarly music that blends the need for a return to tonality with the sonic possibilities inherited from the modernist avant-garde, scholarly influences with vernacular, impressionistic and affective atmospheres with textures more akin to indie pop/rock or electro. But, because Montreal has been a strong continental hub of avant-garde post-Boulezian contemporary music, the awareness, even less the appreciation, of newer post-minimalist stuff has been slow coming.

This is not to say that this music is better than ‘traditional’ contemporary avant-garde music. Not. At. All. It’s just a paradigm shift. Traditional contemporary music, with its abrasive and abstract worlds, is in fact a tool, a way of doing things that is hyper-concentrated on intellectual formalism. The result can be works of fabulous, suprasensible beauty. New contemporary music, on the other hand, takes an infinitely more holistic (or inclusive) approach, aiming to create new worlds of sound and, above all, emotion, without denying itself any compositional tool or technique, and shunning concepts of High and Low art.

The first is fuelled by rigorous knowledge, and leads sometimes to emotions. The second is fuelled by emotions and imagination, using a large amount of knowledge that leads to transcendence.

I’d like to thank Olivier Godin, Artistic Director of Salle Bourgie, for his commitment to the development of a Montreal listening culture for this music that we can’t afford to ignore for long.

Africa / Afro Funk / Afro Fusion / Afrobeats / Dancehall / Kompa / Reggaeton / Soul/R&B

Burna Boy almost fills two Bell Centres: Nigeria on our doorstep!

by Alain Brunet

Over the past sixty years, Africa has popularized some of its most remarkable stars in the West: Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti, Touré Kunda, King Sunny Adé, Alpha Blondy, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita, Angélique Kidjo, Oumou Sangaré and Yemi Alade. The last black, non-Western frontman to fill a major Canadian arena as a headliner was Bob Marley… who wasn’t a native of the continent of his forefathers, that’s saying something!

Outside Africa, where they easily fill stadiums, none of the artists mentioned has had such an impact in North America as that seen this week. There is now one exception, the first of many to come.

Burna Boy makes history this week, 18 months after his sensational performance at Osheaga (August 2022), a precursor to the Nigerian Afrobeats movement’s invasion of North America. The first African artist to play Bell centers twice in a row, the frontman embodies a global transformation of pop culture. Wow.

Over 30,000 fans will have flocked to the Bell Centre this week, two nights in a row, to applaud the biggest star of the Afrobeats movement, a non-Western style that has gone global. The influence of this style compares favorably with other powerful movements born outside the U.S. and Western Europe, starting with reggae and reggaeton.

On Thursday evening, the arena was packed with diversity. Predominantly populated by the 18-30 generation, the crowd sang along to the offerings of Lagos-based DJ Lambo, one of the opening acts in a wide-ranging program that began at around 7.40pm and ended shortly before midnight. Also from Nigeria, singer Nissi Ogulu did her best (with ups and downs, to put it politely) and the program’s first DJ, Spaceship Billy, returned to warm up the room before Burna Boy triumphed for two hours. Generous!

The playground is an urban setting inspired by a working-class district of Lagos. A telephone booth is set up in front of several local shops, including a barber and a grocery store. The 4 reeds and brass instruments overhang the stage on the right, while the 3 backing singers do the same on the left. Drums and percussion are arranged at the ends, with the harmonic core of 4 musicians (keyboards, guitars, bass) in the center. A string trio (violin, viola, cello) appears a few times, while 6 dancers express themselves throughout this highly ambitious show.

Burna Boy is frontman, bandleader, crooner, groover and sex symbol all rolled into one. His ascendancy over the female gender is more than obvious, with the ladies clearly in the majority singing along to his megatubes, particularly his romantic ballads.

On the PAN M 360 side, we preferred the mostly epidermal Afrobeats grooves, an infectious mix of dancehall, reggaeton, afro-funk, juju, konpa, soul/R&B or even jazz, matched with a significant layer of Nigerian culture. Among the thirty or so songs on the program, we’ll have noticed the performance of the following hits: “I Told Them”(also the title of the tour), “Gbona”, “Pull Up”, “On The Low”, “On Form”, “Giza and more.

We all know that humanity is going through a critical period in its presence on Earth, but it’s not all bad news. The rebalancing of planetary cultural forces is good news! Burna Boy is here to remind us that there is always hope for humans of good will.

Photos by Stephan Boissonneault

Contemporary / musique contemporaine

“In the Half-Light” – Barbara Hannigan with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

by Varun Swarup

Under the guidance of Rafael Payare, Barbara Hannigan, accompanied by the OSM, delivered an enthralling rendition of Zahra Di Castro’s composition, “In the Half-Light.” As title itself suggests, this work is an exploration of the liminal spaces of dusk and dawn, weaving a fragile narrative that gracefully shifts between moments of tension and resolution, between the light and the dark. The composition, a song-cycle featuring text by Malaysian writer Tash Aw, transcends mere musicality to delve into themes of human displacement, reflecting the aspirations and dreams of migrants, refugees, and those in search of a metaphorical light elsewhere.

The work, appropriately charged with tension, incorporates cinematic and impressionist textures reminiscent of Ravel and Lili Boulanger. Hannigan, renowned for her virtuosity and adept command of contemporary repertoire, skillfully brought to life the inherent drama embedded in Di Castro’s composition. Her vocal prowess, marked by a rich vibrato that effortlessly filled the Maison Symphonique, revealed not only technical mastery but also a profound emotional depth. Each note carried a sense of authenticity, resonating with the integrity with which Hannigan approached the performance.

While the overall impact of the piece was undeniably powerful, any potential criticism could be directed more towards the nature of the work itself than Hannigan’s execution. As is common in many contemporary compositions, “In the Half-Light” ventures beyond traditional tonal structures, embracing dissonance to convey broader thematic nuances. While this may not always align with conventional musical preferences, it serves a narrative purpose, underscoring the broader themes of the composition. Despite moments of dissonance, these choices only served to amplify the impact of the luminous moments, where the intricacies of Di Castro’s orchestration seamlessly merged with Payare’s direction and Hannigan’s delicate execution, creating moments that approached the sublime.

classique / Modern Classical / période romantique

Kevin Chen, or the challenges of an 18-year-old virtuoso

by Alain Brunet

Budapest Liszt Competition, Geneva Competition, Arthur Rubinstein Competition… Between the ages of 16 and 18, Alberta’s Kevin Chen has already won top prizes in these international competitions, not to mention honorable mentions in several others. Clearly gifted, this instrumentalist has only just passed the threshold of adulthood, and we present him to the music-loving public always eager to discover an emerging virtuoso in the context of a recital.

Too soon, we might say, after this program presented on Sunday by Pro Musica at Salle Pierre-Mercure, but…. If Kevin Chen has won these competitions, it’s certainly not for his technical skills alone. Musicality, emotion, grace – in short, all the characteristics that distinguish great musicians from the best technicians – must also be present.

And yet, on Sunday, the young man did not experience his best afternoon, that is to say, a moment of grace when all the values of great music come together. Should we conclude from this that it’s always the same on his side?

From a strictly technical point of view, the ivories are perfectly mastered, and both left and right hands do their job in this program. The articulation is very solid, the pedal play interesting, the sonority ample. The problem with this Sunday performance, in fact, is one of style, voluptuousness and even pianistic personality.

Here again, we can’t be peremptory on this question, as a musician of this age probably hasn’t yet acquired the consistency of his elders. Nevertheless, we assume that he can sometimes be inhabited by the great spirits of music and … as was the case on Sunday, it happens that pressure, fatigue and other worries of life can block their harnessing on the performer.

Nevertheless, we assume that he can sometimes be inhabited by the great spirits of music and … as was the case on Sunday, it happens that pressure, fatigue and other worries of life can block their harnessing on the performer.

At this early stage of a potentially remarkable career, Kevin Chen is not immune to the irritants that limit him to a clinical, albeit technically remarkable interpretation for anyone who rarely has access to such a level of execution. Although… I heard several doubts expressed, and these doubts did not come from the patented critics.

The 28^th of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, it has to be said, is no mean feat to pull off early in one’s career, but one imagines he’s done it before since it was a big part of this program. Calculated risk? As for Felix Mendelssohn’s Fantaisie en fa dièse mineur, op.28, we felt he was more fluid, but not exactly on the side of magic and transcendence. To conclude the first part, the version for solo piano of Ravel’s “La Valse”, a ternary course certainly influenced by the jazz of the 20s, starting with that of George Gershwin and the stride piano then in vogue in New York, is played with… abrupt precision. As if emotion exploded through a form of pianistic violence…

The second part was dedicated to Franz Liszt, who was himself a piano virtuoso and part of the obligatory career path of every aspiring concert pianist. He played three sonnets from the Années de pèlerinage, taken from the 2nd^e year of the cycle, nos. 47, 104 and 123. And concluded with Réminiscences de Norma, S.394, also by Liszt. At the encore, he will play Liederkreis, Op. 39: XII. Frühlingsnacht, by Robert Schumann, arranged by Liszt.

In short, we’ve seen Kevin Chen’s immense talent, but we haven’t yet seen the immense musician he could become. High virtuosity in classical music is more and more remarkable in this world, and never before have so many musicians reached such a level, but… life must take its toll, and the challenge for the best like Kevin Chen lies in the quest for style and personality. Let’s bet he’ll be different and better by his next recital, of course, if he’s aware of these issues and those around him grasp them too.

Classical / Modern Classical

Friday night at OM: spectacular violin and Fairy sand tales

by Frédéric Cardin

Another symphonic evening that fills the music-loving heart with hope and pride. The Maison symphonique in Montreal was packed to capacity on Friday evening. A colorful, well-diversified crowd, with many young people in attendance. The Orchestre Métropolitain (OM) attracts, and what’s more, with a program of works largely unknown to the general public. Something very positive is happening in Montreal for the future of classical music. In short, my first impression of this evening: a success.

Now for the program and the rendering. Let’s say it right away: it was very enjoyable. Conductor JoAnn Falletta, a pioneer of female conducting in the U.S., addressed the audience in a very correct, respectful French. She set the scene for what was to come with sobriety.

The evening opened with Gustav Holst’s Winter Idyll. A short symphonic poem with a pastoral feel, but with a broad, sometimes cinematic deployment. It evokes a picture of wintry England, shrouded in snow. ‘’A bit like Quebec,” the intro says. I doubt it. Holst wouldn’t have written such relatively serene music if he’d known the Canadian cold. Nonetheless, it’s very pretty and Falletta leads with precision, albeit with a little too much reserve, in my opinion.

The first of the evening’s two “stars” arrived for the second course: the flamboyant violinist Nemanja Radulovic. Long hair down to the middle of his back, wide-ankled pants almost reminiscent of a dress, he represents what in another era purists would have loved to hate. Fortunately, we’re not there anymore. What counts is the music. This one, Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto, clearly required this kind of performer. Movements 1 and 3 are furiously expressed, often bringing us back to the energy of his famous Saber Dance. Then, a central movement full of tenderness but also sadness, with exquisite triple pianissimos from the soloist. I was expecting, however, a brighter, more propulsive sound from him. Instead, he sounded veiled, especially at the beginning of the score, resulting in some imbalances between him and the orchestra, which buried his speech on a few occasions. Things settled down along the way, and the musician’s technical fireworks (what diabolical mastery of his instrument!) lifted the crowd into, shall we say, delirium.

I’d like to note the exceptional playing of a few of the Orchestra’s first chairs: horn player Louis-Philippe Marsolais, who performed to perfection a monstrously difficult solo in the 1st movement, and then, in the same movement, clarinetist Simon Aldrich, in an intimate exchange with Radulovic, who was very attentive (the violinist turned around for this passage, with his back to the audience to better converse with Aldrich). A beautiful moment.

After a prolonged standing ovation, Radulovic finally gave an encore: Što Te Nema by Aleksandar Sedlar, a Bosnian mourning song in which the Serbian violinist demonstrated that he cannot be reduced to a media circus virtuoso. In this piece, which oozes melancholy, he achieves an almost unimaginable degree of dynamic sweetness. What, four or five pianissimos? A needle hitting the carpet would have outdone him. Impressive. Thanks to the Maison symphonique’s mesmerizing acoustics, such incredible music-making can be heard in all its finesse. This piece can be found on Radulovic’s Roots album.

Nemanja Radulovic
JoAnna Falletta
Orchestre Métropolitain
cr.: François Goupil

The evening’s other star soloist is not a musician, but a visual artist. Ukrainian sand artist Kseniya Simonova has been travelling the world for several years. She has taken part in, and sometimes won, all kinds of popular competitions such as Got Talent in several countries (Ukraine, Britain, America, etc.). Her work is very beautiful, with a more fluid and animated resemblance to shadow theater techniques.

Last night, she was given the challenge of bringing visual life to the score of Zemlinsky’s The Little Mermaid (Die Seejungfrau). Of course, the subject itself was already well-suited to this kind of animation: a classic fairy tale, evocative visual accompaniment, everything was in place for a relevant marriage. I must admit, I didn’t expect it to be so successful and enchanting. Not only does Zemlinsky’s undulating, post-romantic, impressionistic-tinged music have what it takes to transport the mind and heart, but the virtuoso’s visual artistic technique is perfectly suited to it. Kseniya Simonova, too, transforms her canvas with magical fluidity to the ever-changing music. The beard of Neptune, god of the seas, can become, with remarkable ease and speed, a ship carried by the waves or a starry sky. Before our very eyes, the mermaid’s tail becomes a pair of elegant legs. And so on, so that the audience fully understands what the music is telling (although everyone present must already have known the story by heart).

The beauty of the setting is amplified by the slightly golden color of the tabular backlighting, on which the grains of sand manipulated by the artist twirl, lending an ancient, even timeless aspect to the fantastic panorama unfolding before our eyes. All of this projected onto a giant screen for an enthralled symphony house.

As I said, the Orchestre Métropolitain outdid itself. But I’d also like to highlight JoAnn Falletta’s clear, solid direction. Without being breathtaking, the conductor imposed order and confidence, leaving enough room for the musicians’ expressiveness. A no-nonsense maestra, devoted to the music and leaving the “show” to those who are paid to do it.

I had a very strong feeling that the largely unaccustomed audience came away from this adventure with a shared sense of satisfaction and wonder. Bravo to OM, that’s exactly what music is for.

8th annual ViU concert | The Different Avenues of the Next Generation

by Elena Mandolini

Since 2015, Le Vivier has been the umbrella organization for the Vivier Interuniversitaire (ViU), a group that aims to create links between the various institutions of higher education in music in Montreal, to stimulate and give visibility to up-and-coming artists and their creations. Last night too place the ViU’s 8th annual concert, which featured some interesting and, above all, highly diverse discoveries.

The six works on the program were intended for a variety of musical formations. The first, Canción by Tomás Díaz Villegas, was for trumpet, accordion, two cellos and conductor. The great control of all the instrumentalists is particularly noticeable in the pianissimo moments. The trumpet takes pride of place, with melodic lines taking center stage, while the other three instruments accompany. The accordion, with its complex sound, acoustically bridges the gap between trumpet and strings, adding another dimension to the work. A very well-thought-out composition.

The second piece, As The Light Shines Through by David C. Gale, for electronics, requires no stage presence. The sound recording is launched, and the audience listens, absorbed, in the near-darkness of the auditorium. This is a spatialized work, with a three-dimensional soundscape. This highly evocative work explores sonorities. A steady beat is heard throughout the work, but this beat transforms, develops and moves around the room. This work is unsettling, in the best sense of the word.

Studies for the Second Womb, by Yulin Yan, is probably the most disconcerting piece on the program. Inspired by the universal (but forgotten) sensory experience of the moment spent in our mother’s womb, this work is composed of noises, onomatopoeia, clicks, echoes and breaths, partly produced by the performers, partly broadcast over loudspeakers. The saxophone and cello are given pride of place, but mainly to produce sounds outside the traditional repertoire of their respective instruments.

Philippe Mcnab-Séguin’s Generic Music 1: Trad drew the most enthusiastic response from the audience, and for good reason: it’s a surprising work that plays with our expectations of Quebec’s traditional music repertoire. This mixed composition combines a soundtrack with which the solo violinist plays. Just when you think you know where the melody is going, you branch off and go somewhere else entirely. We pass through trad music, of course, with great fiddling virtuosity, evoking the reels and other folk dances of Quebec. But we also explore prog rock, passing through metal with frantic distortions and rhythms.

Ramification by Hannah Barnes is a piece for solo percussionist. Behind an installation of drums, gongs and chimes, the performer takes us into a world of sonic exploration. We hear ghostly noises and sounds that seem to have emerged from a science-fiction movie soundtrack. There are also beautiful moments of contemplation, followed by frenetic moments.

Finally, Florence M. Tremblay’s Insides is performed by a string quartet. This work, which explores the use of quarter tones, requires each performer to tune differently. The work opens with long, held tones, and chords that change and evolve slowly. The immense control of each performer is commendable: the notes are stable, impeccably stable, despite the very soft nuances and dissonances. The work ends with chromatic scales, where the instrumentalists come together for a fraction of a second, once in a while.

The evening’s varied program demonstrated the many different modes of expression in new music. The works were carried throughout the concert by remarkable performers. We can’t wait to see the careers of this brilliant new generation develop.

classique / Modern Classical / post-romantique

Barbara Hannigan, La voix… superhuman!

by Alain Brunet

Exploit. Prowess. Vision. Unprecedented. Extreme refinement. Superlatives are not enough to sum up this performance by Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, able to provide solid orchestral direction while magnificently interpreting La voix humaine, a text by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) set to music by modernist composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), i.e. the nec plus ultra of French culture in the previous century.

It could have been as simple as a technical feat: singing, playing a character and conducting an orchestra all at the same time are unprecedented. Yes, let’s face it, it’s been done before, but a form this accomplished this virtuosic? Not likely.

From the outset, Hannigan conducted a post-Romantic work by Richard Strauss (1964-1949), composed in the twilight of his life at the end of the Second World War. Upset by the conflicts and by a Germany in perdition with dramatic consequences for its cultural facilities, including a Munich theater of which he was long artistic director, Strauss had taken refuge in Goethe’s writings, including The Metamorphosis of Plants, which is said to have inspired Metamorphoses TrV290, a 26-minute continuous work for just over twenty instrumentalists, and whose purpose is to calmly and darkly express the cycle of life, even at the lowest level of existence.

We then have the opportunity to contemplate the relationship between the guest conductor and the OSM, very much in tune with the context before the main course. Imagine an opera singer playing the role of this poor woman talking on the telephone to the man she loves so much, apparently on the other end of the line, communication occasionally interrupted by the technical problems inherent in the prehistory of the telephone – the late 20s. Throughout the drama, the woman abandoned by her lover multiplies her reproaches and supplications to the last degree of despair, while leaving some rubble of lucidity on the devastated site of her love drama. The soprano’s task, you will understand, is immense: with a symphony orchestra, she has to perform a major work lasting some forty minutes. Is that enough? Not at all.

Now imagine that, apart from this already complex task to honor, Barbara Hannigan conducts La voix humaine simultaneously with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. With complete fluidity! One imagines that a colossal amount of work had to be done to gracefully link the character’s gestures with those of the instructions given to the orchestra in real time. And it’s mission accomplished, in front of a stunned audience who applaud him wildly for long minutes at the end of this exceptional performance.

Given that she has been living in France since 2015, after a 6-year stay in Holland from 2009, and that her Canadian upbringing had already opened her up to bilingualism, Barbara Hannigan’s French is exemplary. What’s more, it adheres to the pronunciation rules of traditional French opera singing – notably those generously rolled R’s as they were once pronounced in a large part of the Hexagone.

The theatricality of his performance is exemplary, magnified by a brilliant staging (Clemens Malinowski) and multi-image video capture superimposed in real time on a large screen (Denis Gueguin). It’s worth noting that the voice is amplified, and that it couldn’t be otherwise in such a context. Although the singer’s back is to the audience for most of the performance, amplification is essential if the soloist is to be intelligible to a symphony orchestra. This theatricality is sober, minimalist and highly refined. The interplay between screen and real-time performance is extraordinarily effective, and the sixty-strong orchestra responds perfectly to the maestra’s instructions.

For we are dealing here with a great maestra and a great soprano, so come and see and hear this woman of almost supernatural talent during her stay in Montreal!

Le même programme est présenté ce jeudi, 19h30, à la Maison symphonique, INFOS ET BILLETS ICI

Avant-Garde / Classical / Contemporary / expérimental / contemporain

Bozzini Quartet : microtones, great music

by Frédéric Cardin

Contemporary art music is doing well in Montreal. Yesterday (Tuesday night), a full house (the Espace Bleu in the Wilder complex in the Quartier des Spectacles) hosted Harmonies inouïes (Unheard-of harmonies), a concert by the Quatuor Bozzini, while the day before, the Agora Hydro-Québec in UQAM’s Cœur des sciences gave a full house to the SMCQ. Good news, then. But back to our Bozzinian business. This concert was no easy proposition: four creations of microtonal music by four relatively unknown young composers: Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière, Paolo Griffin, Bekah Simms and Francis Battah (who is nonetheless enjoying a growing reputation).

Next concerts of the Bozzini Quartet

Paolo Griffin’s Adherence is a rather monochrome (or should we say microchrome?) exercise that places the listener in a kind of sonic microgravity, made up of sustained notes (microtonal, of course) superimposed on one another in an almost non-existent dynamic. Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière’s Tout coule (everything flows) is stylistically close to Adherence, but already more fluid and active in its dynamics and instrumental writing. Numerous glissandos detail an undulating general architecture, constantly swelling and un-swelling. These dynamic peaks and lows remain centred on an average that oscillates between mezzo-forte and forte, but reach an intense double forte about four-fifths of the way through the piece.

The two best pieces (in my humble opinion) framed the programme. Songs for Fallow Fields by Bekah Simms, first in presentation, dares to use melody and consonance, grafted with ornamentation and microtonal harmonic coating. In this sense, the score by the young Glasgow-based Newfoundland composer is resolutely more ‘’contemporary’’ than the previous two. At the start of the 21st century, the exploration of encounters between neo-tonality, or even straightforward melodicism, and experimental avant-garde techniques is a promising avenue that greatly refreshes the discourse of learned music. It also has the not inconsiderable advantage of broadening the audience for this discipline. In short, to Bekah Simms (present in the audience), who said of this piece: “I’m not used to writing melodies, but this time I took the time to do so”, I would reply: “Keep going in this direction, and keep taking the time, it works!’’

The last piece on the programme was also the most fleshed-out, the most accomplished and the one that demonstrated the best mastery of the musical language, but also of the principle of discursive structure and of a narrative that is both demanding and easy to understand.

Simply entitled String Quartet No. 4, the work by Montrealer Francis Battah goes even further than the melodic consonance/microtonality encounter of Bekah Simms. In his quartet, Battah constructs a system of microtonal modal music! This is not in itself an invention, since in certain cultures, such as the tradition of maqam singing in learned Muslim music, modal microtonality is a given. Nevertheless, Battah’s approach is accomplished and frankly successful, enabling him to create a vehicle in which imaginary folk music is evoked in a generous canvas of some 20 minutes. Listening to it, we get the impression that a door to a parallel universe has opened, letting us discover a world similar to our own, but in which the ‘normal’ musical foundations are microtonal. Battah has listened extensively to a wealth of non-European folk and art music to inspire his writing. Celtic, Indian, Arabic and Persian influences can be identified, like ghostly but easily discernible spectres. Francis Battah’s String Quartet No. 4 will, I ardently hope (and dare to predict), have a long and happy life. Serious and daring quartets will find in it material worthy of their talent and a work which, despite its high degree of knowledge, will appeal to a curious and attentive public. My friend and colleague Alain Brunet, who accompanied me to the concert, also agrees.

It would be almost pointless to underline, once again, the quality of the Bozzini quartet’s playing. Impeccable and perfectly in tune with the will of the creative artists. There is certainly a lucky star hanging over the heads of these four young artists in learned composition, because to see one’s music played by an ensemble of such high calibre is an exceptional privilege.

Left to right : Francis Battah, Bekah Simms, Alissa Cheung, Clemens Merkel, Stephanie Bozzini, Isabelle Bozzini, Paolo Griffin, Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière – credit : Alain Brunet

Contemporary / expérimental / contemporain

SMCQ: Prana, breathing, “comprovisation”

by Alain Brunet

Sandeep Bhagwati is an authentic and vibrant incarnation of transculturalism in music, and we’re contemplating the extent of this during the SMCQ’s 2023-24 season, here’s the most recent illustration : last Monday and Tuesday at UQAM’s sold-out Coeur des Sciences, the composer highlighted in the SMCQ’s Série Hommage presented a work that was ” deeply emotional, spiritual and immersive “.

For 4 voices and 4 trombones, Prana explores breathing, drawing on spiritual concepts from southern Asia. On the program, inspiration, expiration, meditation, textural quest, frequenting the body’s 7 yogic chakras, performance, comprovisation – a combination of the words composition and improvisation, illustrating and assuming the dynamic coexistence of these two practices in musical creation.

Isolated in different localities during the pandemic, the trombonists had united (in visio, we imagine) their respective breaths, thanks to the breathing exercises induced by this comprovisation project. Inspired by this experience, Bhagwati composed Music of Breaths, this time written for four a cappella voices. From this idea of merging the two experiences was born Prana.

” In Sanskrit,” Bhagwati explains at the outset, “Pra means to fill and Na means life or breath. ” Thus, Prana explores the sounds generated by the human breath and offers ” new perspectives in the way you breathe and listen “.

A Montrealer by adoption, born of Indian and German cultures, the composer and theorist of transcultural comprovisation expresses himself here in French, English and German. He clearly introduces his composite work, based on a synthesis of both philosophical and spiritual concepts, concepts inducing the sounds to be expressed by the 4 singers and 4 trombonists : Kathy Kennedy, Sarah Albu, Elizabeth Lima, Andrea Young, Felix Del Tredici, Kalun Leung, David Taylor, David Whitwell.

First it’s the expression of brass instruments exchanging long-exhaled notes, then it’s the voices’ turn to express themselves in linear frequencies. Then the 8 artists work together, then in sections, and so on to a more compositionally elaborate conclusion.

The extensive techniques of trombone playing (grumbling, low harmonics, human breath exacerbated through the sound of the instrument, etc.) and voices (subtle games of onomatopoeia, vast lexicon of textural research, etc.) lead us to this zone of comprovisation arranged by Sandeep Bhagwati.

The structure of the expression games is simple, requiring the creativity of each performer in real time, reminiscent of several free improvisation experiments observed over the last few decades, lightly harnessed by a loosely-constrained compositional system. Nevertheless, the superimposition of voices and trombones requires real compositional coherence, with pre-recorded elements (direct or indirect respiratory evocations, etc.). The trombones opt for continuous sounds, while the voices express themselves in jerks, producing an interesting counterpoint.

Fragments of melody are subsequently interwoven into an organized whole, and on the trombone side, a vocal bestiary is set in motion, leaving us somewhere between a concert and a hike in the Ecuadorian forest;

At the end, the organization of sounds imagined by Sandeep Bhagwati becomes denser and more complex, requiring orchestral direction (Cristian Gort) and extra effort from the performers to flesh out the discourse and execute its conclusion.

photo credit: Marie-Ève LaBadie

Contemporary Jazz / musique de chambre

A Very Elegant Marriage of Strings and Jazz

by Michel Labrecque

It was a chilly evening! The wind pinched our faces. But, once inside the Fifth Room of Place des Arts, it was the strings of the violins, violas and even those of the piano that were plucked; and there was a lot of heat inside.

A daring double bill awaited us: Sources, a suite created by pianist Marianne Trudel in 2016 and Focus, a suite for strings and saxophone designed in 1962 by American composer Eddie Sauer, performed here by Yannick Rieu. The link between these two works was the ECO string ensemble of the Montreal national jazz orchestra, conducted by Jean-Nicholas Trottier. About twenty female musicians (there was one man) on violins, violas and cellos.

Beyond the musical aspect, this evening contained something magical on a human level. Marianne Trudel had a compelling need to communicate with the spectators. She asked the lighting engineer to turn on the lights, so she could see us to talk to us.

A concert is also a meeting.

The Sources suite is dedicated to water, in all its forms. It goes from the St. Lawrence River, near which Marianne grew up, to the possible shortage of drinking water, to the rain. A liquid musical suite, which in addition to the string ensemble, featured the pianist’s two former sidekicks, percussionist Patrick Graham and double bassist Étienne Lafrance, who formed the jazz group Trifolia in the previous decade.

So we immersed ourselves in this music. Initially, the meditative dialogue between piano and strings reminded me of Keith Jarrett’s Arbor Zena (1979), a cerebral but fluid neo-classicism. Little by little, more jazzy, more dissonant elements appeared. Marianne Trudel started to improvise and she knows how to do it. The work of Patrick Graham with very diverse percussion, from indigenous drums to mini-gamelan cymbals, is breathtaking in its subtlety.

Then, a magical moment arrived: a few members of the ECO string ensemble abandoned their written scores to dive into improvisation. I had chills. I would have taken a little more.

We arrived at the harbour safely before making a new musical trip with Focus.

Thanks to the presence in the room of the public radio host and writer Stanley Péan, we learned that this play had already been presented in Montreal in 2005, as part of the FIJM.

From the outset, the difference in the string arrangements compared to Sources is striking. Here, we are more into pizzicati and daring rhythmic changes.

It has already been said, that the American Eddy Sauer was very inspired by Béla Bartok (1881-1945) when he composed this suite. Sauer’s brilliance is to combine this inspiration from the Hungarian composer, keen on folklore, with jazz. It gives a very inspired chamber jazz.

Focus was written for American saxophonist Stan Getz, who became known for his collaborations with Brazilian musicians such as Joao Gilberto. The idea was to let the saxophonist improvise around the string arrangements.

The excellent Yannick Rieu was ideally suited to take Stan Getz’s place. He completely appropriated the work in his own way, on tenor and soprano saxophones.

It was a more introspective and less explosive Yannick Rieu than heard in other concerts. It was the music that wanted that. At one point, however, the strings fell silent to let Rieu do a long solo as he knows how to do.

After two hours of concert, we were full.

However, one thing puzzles me: why only one performance of this concert, which mobilized a lot of people and energy?

I understand that it’s niche music. At the same time as this concert, there was a huge crowd lining up to attend Mireille Mathieu’s show at the far bigger Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. The Cinquième Salle was not quite full. It’s like David against Goliath.

But I sincerely wish these artists to be able to play together again. And to expand their audience.

OSM | Variations on a Theme With Louis Lortie et Eun Sun Kim

by Elena Mandolini

The OSM welcomed two distinguished guests on Thursday. Firstly, Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim was at the helm of the orchestra for this evening of themes and variations. Pianist Louis Lortie also took center stage for half of the program, which was accessible and very well conceived. All the elements were in place for a concert of the highest quality.

The first piece, Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn, has its pitfalls, not least the tempo. If it’s too slow, the piece sounds weighed down, and if it’s too fast, the theme, a chorale, loses all meaning. But Eun Sun Kim has found the right balance for each movement. The piece also draws complexity from the balance required between the different sections of the orchestra. The melody shifts constantly, and the musicians move from rapid passages to long, held notes. Here again, it’s a success. The work unfolds with all the relief required. A fine example of synchronicity on the part of the orchestra.

Mozart’s Rondo in D major for piano and orchestra, the first piano piece of the evening, is also successfully performed. This piece is constructed as an exchange between piano and orchestra, alternating in the interpretation of the theme or its variations. In his role as a soloist, Louis Lortie shines, interpreting the work with lightness and ease, bringing out the humour characteristic of Mozart’s compositions.

After intermission, the piano takes center stage once again in Fauré’s Ballade for piano and orchestra. This work, originally conceived for solo piano, was later orchestrated to develop it further. Imbued with romanticism, the piece features numerous climbs in intensity, successfully carried by both orchestra and pianist. There are also many moments of delicacy and discreet dialogue between the various instruments. Lortie’s interpretation is once again noteworthy and admirable, bringing out the main melody with great clarity through streams of notes.

The concert closes with Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. If we felt that the OSM had shown restraint until now (sometimes out of necessity, as the score obliges…), this is no longer the case in this latest work. As soon as the theme is announced by the trumpet, quickly followed by a powerful brass choir, it becomes clear that the concert will end in grandeur and nobility. The OSM has mastered Pictures at an Exhibition, having performed them this summer at the opening of the Virée classique. The conductor’s precise, expressive gestures make a major contribution to this solid interpretation.

With this concert, the OSM has once again offered its audience a most enjoyable evening with some very talented guests.

This concert will be presented again on Saturday, February 17 at 2.30pm. INFO AND TICKETS HERE!

Photo credit: Gabriel Fournier

Classical / Turkish Classical

Didem Başar: Music, space, time Continuum

by Frédéric Cardin

Turkish-born Montrealer Didem Başar (pronounced Bashar) is the Grande Lady of the kanun (my words). This instrument from the zither family is widely used in traditional Turkish music and throughout the Middle East. Başar is adding several strings to her already strong instrumental game by incorporating composition and above all encounters with other musical genres, something she can easily do in Montreal’s rich musical ecosystem.

On Tuesday evening at Salle Bourgie, as part of the Musique des cultures du monde series, she presented her Continuum project, in which her compositions (and a few arrangements) for kanun, percussion and string quintet offered the attentive audience some 80 minutes of delicate and delightful travel, a kind of tangible link between the present and the long history of the millenias-old culture of the Middle East. A continuum of space, time and, of course, music. Accompanying her on stage were the Andara Quartet, double bassist Étienne Lafrance and percussionist Patrick Graham.

With the exception of a few arrangements of traditional pieces, all the works were written by the artist herself, including a Concerto for kanun and strings, written in the rules of the art. It’s a wonderful adventure that begins with a light first movement, full of pointed textures (string pizzicatos and plucking of the kanun), interspersed from time to time with lyrical caresses from the strings. If this initial section suggests a stroll in all simplicity, the second movement betrays this prejudice with a plaintive adagio in dark colours, evoking a sadness swollen with powerful melancholy. It’s as if we were homesick with her. The third movement, the finale, reveals more rhythmic muscle and a willing, assertive drive that visibly satisfies the audience present.

The entire repertoire offered in the programme stems from this oriental atmosphere, based on an essentially modal harmonic universe, but to which Didem Başar adds touches of more western chromaticism here and there, a chromaticism that also invites microtonality. The result is a set of attractive melodic constructions that never, however, become recipes for auditory tourists. Başar’s music is easy to like, but never “easy”. It also leaves a little room for improvisation by its companions, particularly in the piece Lame Pigeon, where Étienne Lafrance gets brilliantly improvisatory before handing over to cellist Dominique Beauséjour-Ostiguy, who is expansive but more controlled, violist Vincent Delorme, who is impressive, and percussionist Patrick Graham, who is always spectacularly subtle and refined.

A wonderful moment of music and intercultural encounter, à la Montréal. Continuum is a concert you shouldn’t miss if you see it in your area, and it will also be released as an album on 18 May 2024. Definitely one to watch.