MUTEK 2023 | Expérience 5: Sara Berts, Sheenah Koh, OBUXUM, ROSINA

by Théo Reinhardt

MUTEK Montréal 2023 and PAN M 360, a combination that makes perfect sense! That’s why our team is focusing on it this week. Fans of cutting-edge electronic music and digital creation are in Montreal this week, so follow our team’s vibrant coverage through Sunday!

Photos credits : Bruno Aiello Destombes

Sara Berts

Sara Berts is a designer of parallel worlds. I arrived slightly after the start of her performance, and from the first sounds I heard as I left Saint-Laurent station, I felt gently transported elsewhere.

The Italian composer and sound artist uses round, smooth tones and others that clatter a little like a marimba, as well as recordings of wave sounds, crickets and other nocturnal noises, all in a very elemental way. It’s a real treat for the ears. Often, while the low melodies move slowly, other, higher-pitched sounds spin much faster: arpeggiated chords, little synthesized soap bubbles, electronic chirps… The compositions are layered, from underground to ground, from ground to clouds, from clouds to atmosphere.

In this way, Berts creates sonic spaces that strangely resemble living worlds, rich and ripe for the act of contemplation. Calm, strangely wild worlds, harmonious all the same. “A conversation between natural ecosystems and synthesizers,” explains the artist’s page on the MUTEK website.

It’s a sound very reminiscent of the crazy, tribal electro flavors The Knife advanced on their album Shaking the Habitual, only more relaxed. The same world, perhaps, but on a different continent, in a different era, under different skies, with different creatures. Just as enchanting.

Sheenah Ko

“I’m not a DJ,” says Sheenah Ko before beginning her 100% improvised performance. “The energy I’m going to get from you, I’m going to send back to you”. A spontaneous set, then.

It begins with a slow percussion loop and a buzzing bass. The artist quickly darkens the sound, using an unusual scale. It doesn’t take her long to start singing some reverb-drenched semblance of lyrics. After gradual changes in effects, polyrhythmic interplay, heavier bass stabs and intensified vocals, we’re in strangely celestial territory. One wonders where the Chinese-Irish musician might go next. She, too, probably.

The percussion is then buried, and the overall pace slows, for a new section. New, angry, metallic percussion sounds, accelerated tempo, luminous chord progressions that swell like waves, adding a touch of clarity and hope to the atmosphere. Fifteen minutes later, a whirring bass and club rhythm take over, while arpeggiated chords of varying intensity sail overhead, their timbre mostly reminiscent of the ’80s, an aesthetic that the artist often uses in her work.

The whole thing ends with a very cinematic musical brightening, a general zoom-out wide shot… on the synthesizer, followed by a panning movement towards the sky… also on the synthesizer. Back to the real world. A very fluid performance, certainly the result of rigorous preparation on Sheenah Ko’s part, as well as impressive mastery of her sonic arsenal. Above all, a satisfying glimpse into her atypical creativity.

OBUXUM

OBUXUM’s sounds are varied. We go from what might be a hip-hop sample to drums and sticks, to retro cyberpunk electro, to an abstract industrial groove, and lots more of these sounds that don’t seem congruent at all. All the same, and despite the abrupt transitions, there’s a narrative sense to the experience. We feel that a story is being built, that each little piece will eventually fit into the order of the others.

Through the confusing rhythms, the 90-degree turns, and the generally kaleidoscopic nature of its approach, OBUXUM is perhaps making an anthological work, a somewhat random raking over different eras of musical history. What she presents is a mosaic of creative samples from the four corners of the world and the mind, a great exercise in variety, in historical sonic bricolage that an hour can barely contain… or something like that. A towering work surely hides behind this music, and it’s not hard to appreciate.

ROSINA

It may be said of Rosina that they are not “people-pleasers”. Yet let’s look at their demands: a world where anyone can love the person they like, a world where people have their basic needs met, a world where people can feel joy. Wouldn’t these things make people happy?

The ROSINA trio is led by poet, singer and producer ROSINA, as well as drag performer and multidisciplinary artist Franny Galore-Wngz, with producer Murr at the DJ station. Eccentric personalities, the two pretend to be English during their performance, adopting the accent and everything. This is just a glimpse of the mischievousness that radiates from these two people.

The members of ROSINA like to play their music at dusk. A symbolic reminder of their mantra: that nothing lasts forever, that everything is ephemeral, both joy and suffering. “We’re tired. We don’t want to be mad all the f****** time.”, says ROSINA (the artist). In the face of adversity, these weeds that grow in the cracks of hope decide to turn towards love, towards others, to embrace the sensual weirdness of our outer and inner worlds. A reconquest of the world through a reconquest of the self, which, as they say, can be scary. All of this with a self-assured, liberated, almost punk attitude, the DIY spirit in full force, against a backdrop of danceable music, embellished by affirmative lyrics like “I want to feel joy”, and mantras that seem to come from a pure, unadulterated train of consciousness. Consciousness that has surely been tested, bent, twisted and scratched by the world, but honest nonetheless.

Maybe not the most coherent, or smooth, or musically impressive performance, but ROSINA’s strength definitely lies in the free-flowing energy. One of the best, rooted in the euphoria, the terror, the flourishing rollercoaster that is queerness, and ultimately provoking great pleasure, and, no doubt, great liberation to whoever needs it.

MUTEK 2023 | Métropolis 1: .VRIL, E-Saggila, SYNC. (AtomTM & Peter Van Hoesen)

by Salima Bouaraour

Legs numb from dance, eyes full of stars and shouts of joy: Métropolis 1 was a profusion of love! This first MUTEK evening devoted to Techno was astonishingly formidable right up to first light. The finely thought-out programming offered the public a more than effective formula. The result: a crowd electrified by dazzling binary rhythms.

Crédits photos : Bruno Aiello Destombes

.VRIL

VRIL wandered through break, house and female vocals, bringing a smooth, percussive and progressive set to a powerful kick. In the middle of the night, the atmosphere was enriched by cold, repetitive industrial sounds, creating the sine qua non for an experience worthy of a German underground club.

E-Saggila

Using energetic strings, Canada’s E-Saggila raised the intensity of the high-voltage evening. The composer activated the detonator with a mass of heavy, round and massive beats. The bass picked up your body and your heart. Delicately interspersed with steamy synth sounds, her performance plunged us into the hidden abysses of the festival.

SYNC. (AtomTM & Peter Van Hoesen)

The long-awaited AtomTM & Peter Van Hoesen took to the stage with a long, 3-meter table featuring a hybrid hodgepodge of analog machines, modular, drum machines, effects pedals, controllers and a CDJ…. Although all the sets were of the highest quality, the hardware performance was outstanding. After an introduction tinged with groovy bass, the duo let loose in a wild free dialogue for three hours!

In an arborescence of pure techno, the packed Métropolis generously lost itself in the knowledge that MUTEK’s wild ride will continue unabated on Saturday and Sunday!

MUTEK 2023 | Nocturne 3 : upsammy & Jonathan Castro, Nick León, Halina Rice, Quan & DBY

by Alain Brunet

The PAN M 360 team brings you exhaustive coverage of MUTEK Montréal 2023. Here’s a selection of the best sets presented Friday night at the SAT, as part of the Nocturne series.

Crédits photos : Nina Gibelin-Souchon

upsammy & Jonathan Castro

Cabalistic shapes are projected onto screens on plant surfaces. In the middle of it all, a woman, a man. Dutch DJ, producer and multidisciplinary artist upsammy (Thessa Torsing) likes to illustrate extremes: comfort, discomfort, harmonious beauty, desolation. She uses different colors to paint her sound frescoes: processed voices, varied rhythms and tempos, the sounds of water, the sounds of tactile manipulation, melodic-harmonic fragments, a few feverish bursts of beats contrasting with cold, arrhythmic sequences. This approach, illustrated in space by Peruvian artist Jonathan Castro Alejos, a graphic designer by profession and visual artist of the digital universe, is said to be experimental techno and IDM. Perhaps… For our part, this approach has no apparent genre a priori, apart from the use of rhythms drawn from minimal techno and cerebral ambient. What we have here is a composite language with electroacoustic underpinnings that can nevertheless hook the night owl with a few electroshocks that can make him restless.

Nick León

Floridian Nick León is an enthusiast of Latin advances in electronic music, particularly Puerto Rican and Colombian. A psychedelic curve envelops the rhythms, transforming their original identity. Psychedelia and electronica have been going hand in hand for half a century, and here we have a Latin version. Reggaeton, afrobeats, cumbia, krautrock and ambient come together live. Just enough groove for a Friday, just enough nourishment for a set worthy of MUTEK. From a partner at his side, top-notch projections back it all up, moving jewel patterns, shimmers, stylized kaleidoscopes and more. Listening to this utterly conclusive set, it’s interesting to note that reggaeton has already generated some of its most refined forms. Clearly, Nick León and his stage partner are doing great things.

Halina Rice

A suite of harmonies and melodic fragments on the keyboard, pre-recorded music modulated live. Cerebral techno, electroacoustic, IDM. Londoner Halina Rice doesn’t have the look for the job, no extravagance in her clothes on stage, you could easily see her leading a doctoral seminar. Appearances are deceptive, however, for Halina Rice creates excellent technoid music, with a convincing variety of consonant arrangements, a superb selection of industrial sounds, techno, big beat, female choral singing, and synthetic hooting not unlike that of Arab women. This succession of contrasting climates, misted with dry ice and visuals designed by the main artist herself, illustrates the conceptual scope, superior intelligence, and sensitivity of this woman who, we predict, will leave her mark on her profession.

Quan & DBY

At the heart of the night, a Montreal tandem from the Chez.Kito.Kat label plays minimal techno, archly binary for the obvious needs of the dance floor at this hour of the night – 2am to 3am. The overdubs are relatively discreet, and there’s absolutely nothing ostentatious about this program deployed at the SAT: various whispers, raucous lines, boiling micro basses and other synthesized borborygms produce a counterpoint without overpowering the beat. Rather than displaying all the science they’re known for, breakbeat, deep house, acid, ambient, dub, bass music, dub, all produced by impressive lutherie, notably the purpose-built modular synthesizers Quan and Dog Bless You (hence the acronym D.B.Y.), Samuel Ricciuti’s real name) will give us a conclusive hour of small modulations and big beats for dancers who haven’t migrated to MTELUS, where Sync is playing at the same time.

MUTEK 2023 | A/Visions 1 : Kyoka & Shohei Fujimoto, Alexis Langevin-Tétreault & Guillaume Côté, Alessandro Cortini & Marco Ciceri

by Laurent Bellemare

For the first part of its A/Visions series, the MUTEK festival welcomed its audience in a Théâtre Maisonneuve equipped with a single giant screen. It was indeed through projections and loudspeakers that all the artistic action was communicated to the audience, at least for the first of the acts. In all, three artist duos were featured in this concert of experimental and immersive videomusic.

Crédits photos : Bruno Aiello Destombes

Kyoka & Shohei Fujimoto

The first quarter of Cinema Blackbox immediately sounded like a Ryoji Ikeda pastiche, with its high-pitched, sinusoidal tones and disembodied visuals. In fact, it featured many of the codes of the Japanese master of sound installations: exclusive use of black, white, and red, stroboscopic lines and rectangular shapes, minimalist aesthetics, and an abundance of synthesized sounds. Later, the composition became more complex, tackling more structured rhythms and multiplying visual planes tenfold into fast-moving mosaics. A brief moment of static brought in a few defined pitches, coloring an otherwise very industrial music, true to Kyoka’s performance presented the day before at the festival. Samples of voices and water drops also brought the work back to the earthly plain. Otherwise, Cinema Blackbox seemed to deliberately adopt a self-referential stance, where technological art chooses to represent technology itself. On the screen, we could see countless elements of sonograms, encephalograms, radar quadrants, and programming codes.

Alexis Langevin-Tétreault & Guillaume Côté

For the second part of the show, a table with electronic devices was added to the set. This was only natural, as Alexis Langevin-Tétreault’s approach is based on “electroacoustic performance”, i.e. the live creation of music usually conceived entirely in the studio. With his partner Guillaume Côté, he effectively evolved the sound mass that is Aubes by varying the timbral and melodic layers with a modular synthesizer. The meticulousness imposed by the highly academic style of electroacoustics could be heard, as the textures were rich and complex. However, the atmosphere always remained that of a reverie, even an escape from the physical world. The harmonic content always kept the audience in major keys, filling an otherwise rather cerebral proposition with hope and emotion. The visuals, too, were composed of colorful yet complex textures, confirming a balanced formula of experimentalism and catchy elements. It’s easy to forgive the intrusive, highly recognizable Macintosh sound that punctuated an abrupt change at the center of the work.

Alessandro Cortini & Marco Ciceri

The Italian duo presented a much heavier performance. In addition to a much slower tempo, the whole piece retained a minor key and was therefore perceptibly more melancholy. Arpeggios played on the synthesizers progressed slowly, resulting in a relatively static framework that grew happily denser during the finale. At this point, the harmonic spectrum quietly approached white noise, while the melodic elements were still clearly perceptible. Visually, the projections were a kind of study of the microscopic patterns of bee wings. Alessandro Cortini impresses with his invented synthesizer and a resume full of prestigious collaborations from Nine Inch Nails to Merzbow. His performance at A/V Visions, however, was less enthusiastic. Without being soporific, the music on offer was far from out of the ordinary. It was nonetheless effective as a mantra to reflect on the possible disappearance of pollinating bees and the disruption of plant fertilization cycles.

MUTEK | Nocturne 2: SAT – Twin Rising, Efe Ce Ele, Paraadiso, Animistic Belief, and more…

by Laurent Bellemare

Opening Photo By: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

For a second night, the Société des Arts Technologiques opened its doors to Mutek 2023 for the Nocturne 2 event, showcasing a nested palette of electronic artists. With its two open performance spaces, the performances followed one another without interruption, so that it was sometimes necessary to make agonizing choices between one or other of the rooms.

Twin Rising (VJ Isotone)

// Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Twin Rising’s mask, adorned with chains, revealed a soft, high-pitched voice, whose vulnerability contrasted with the often rough tones of the lower register. Indeed, despite a consistently harmonic framework, the undulating low frequencies marked a slow, ponderous tempo. In the heaviest moments, it was as if we were witnessing a dubstep performance as defined in the 2000s. An attentive ear could also detect deliberately asynchronous synthetic “snare drums”, creating a highly effective effect of anticipation. A balance between catchy pulsation and rhythmic deconstruction kept the audience on its toes, as did the heterogeneous visuals projected by VJ Isotone onto the satospheric dome. Between aquatic surges and granular geometry, the multicolored palette was the only thread to hold on to. In any case, these shapes went very well with Twin Rising’s music, creating a vaguely melancholy atmosphere. An excellent way to start the evening.

Efe Ce Ele

// Nina-Gibelin Souchon

Descending to the first floor, the change in atmosphere was immediately apparent. For Efe Ce Ele’s performance, the tone was decidedly darker: insistent pulsation, strobe lighting, psychedelic visuals and explicit political messages. There were echoes of techno and industrial music in this soundtrack to an anxious age. Melodically, the music evolved mainly in the low register, with occasional breakthroughs of piano, percussion and sampled vocals. More often than not, we were bathed in a complex drone of slowly modulating voices. Transitions were often articulated by superimposing sections, momentarily creating a very dense, dissonant passage.

Nadia Struiwigh

// Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Back in a crowded Satosphere, the atmosphere created by Nadia Struiwigh was the first of the evening to be reminiscent of a rave. The experience was necessarily more physical than the others, with the Dutch artist’s music operating with consistently catchy 4/4 rhythms. Here and there, syncopations added slight echoes of drum’n’bass and breakbeat. Harmonically, held or fading chords followed each other in a simple progression. These were coupled with short, repeated melodic cells, creating an ever-present contrast of rhythmic density. Textures added to this catchy base kept the sound interesting, while the body was easily carried along by the continuous backbeats. On the visual side, artists BunBun and Alex Vlair proposed a highly successful composition. Spiral patterns, concentric circles and circular mosaics were perfectly in tune with the SAT dome.

Paraadiso

// Nina-Gibelin Souchon

Composed of artists TSVI and Seven Orbits, the Paraadiso duo delivered a much less conventional sound. The atmosphere was sometimes ethereal and consonant, and sometimes suddenly chaotic and noisy. The common denominator here was well-calculated rhythms to avoid the predictable. Strong beats were often avoided, accentuating syncopation instead. At other times, polyrhythms created highly effective phase-shifting effects. Irregular subdivisions in turn destabilized the construction of a rhythm. Overall, the duo’s sounds were abstract, closer to digital art than dance music. This experimentation was also reflected in the projections, composed of microscopic images of the natural world, which were highly processed to the point of becoming unrecognizable textures. With a rich palette of sounds, the Paraadiso duo offered a skilful performance of “music not for dancing.”

Amselysen/Racine

// Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

The Amselysen/Racine duo presented austere music, where everything was rhythm and timbre. No melody, no harmonic cues. What’s more, the pulse was drowned out by fast syncopations or fast bass drum mats. Resolutely industrial, the sound was reminiscent of Autechre in its less consonant moments. In keeping with the gray but no less exhilarating music, the visuals projected onto the dome by Diagraf were all black and white. Origami stalagmites layered with stardust were transformed into sooty nebulae. Amselysen and Racine skilfully captivated their audience despite the difficult, rigid music.

X/O

// Nina-Gibelin Souchon

Already past midnight, x/o took to the stage to present tracks from their excellent album Chaos Butterfly. This heavy music, full of contrasts thanks to dreamy vocals, reinvested many familiar musical landmarks. From IDM to metal, from dream pop to breakbeat, the Vancouver artist gave a convincing performance. Unfortunately, the vocal performance was a little too timid, and did not stand out in the sound balance. Technical problem or lack of confidence? Whatever the case, the vocals weren’t treated in a way that did full justice to the compositions, a drawback that was somewhat corrected towards the end. Nevertheless, x/o captivated their audience with ease, creating a dark atmosphere enhanced by bluish strobe lighting and hypnotic projections. One could appreciate the almost shoegaze noise flights illustrated by Japanese-drawn characters. All in all, x/o provided a moment of catharsis as heavy as it was soothing, with a well-controlled rise in intensity from one room to the next.

Kyoka

// Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

From the outset, Kyoka’s music was almost entirely inharmonic, focusing on the fullness of its sound samples and the insistence of its rhythms. The beginning of the performance was colored only by the cubist projections of BunBun and Alex Vlair. Yet, in a sudden moment of weightlessness, every trace of rhythm faded away, giving way to a long, atmospheric, harmonic passage. It was a real breath of fresh air, in an evening where the continuous pulse was king. Rhythmic, but more nuanced music with new melodic elements then emerged from this lull, bringing a sequence of euphoric variations to a close.

Animistic Beliefs

// Nina-Gibelin Souchon

It didn’t matter to Animistic Beliefs that their appearance on stage was scheduled for the early hours. The duo truly transformed the SAT into a nocturnal party, intoxicating the audience with a relentless pulse and psychedelic sounds stacked one on top of the other. Their experimental music is generated in real-time by modular synthesizer work that doesn’t pull any punches. The sound was dense, the sound was loud, and the high-pitched rough whistles assaulted the senses as much as the thundering low frequencies. The duo’s music was peppered with intriguing sonorities, from samples to vocal outbursts declaimed like a punk singer screaming into a megaphone. Animistic Beliefs are said to incorporate Southeast Asian influences into their sound, sampling Vietnamese poetry and totobuang, the gong chimes of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands. However, this is not the kind of nuance that could have been perceived on the spot, since the duo’s show is such a smash hit. A discovery that makes you want to go and listen to their album MERDEKA (independence in Indonesian).

Eƨƨe Ran

// Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Here’s another case where tonality was in short supply. Alternating a frantic pulse with powerful syncopated rhythms, Eƨƨe Ran had the thankless task of closing a stimulating evening. The artist’s formula might have remained a little drab were it not for the numerous misbehaviors. The Montrealer didn’t hesitate to divert his rhythmic carpet by improvising a noisy passage evoking unintelligible vocoder sounds, or by momentarily stretching or compressing the tempo. It was all about working with texture. Otherwise, the music shared that industrial coldness common to many of the evening’s artists, in which white noise is more the norm than musical note. Perhaps a little randomly, pointillist images of molecular structures and spatial nebulae were interspersed with rocky desert landscapes, all creating an atmosphere of almost nihilistic abandon to dance and decibels too many. The evening ended with a rallentando and a decrescendo into nothingness.

MUTEK 2023 | Satosphère 2 : UNION — Nancy Lee & Kiran Bhumber

by Alain Brunet

Photo credit: Ash KG

Here’s a summary of this 25-minute work, part of the Satosphère program on August 23 at MUTEK: “UNION is an immersive narrative that tells the story of two beings discovering their ancestral memories through the desire for touch and the rituals practiced during their post-apocalyptic wedding ceremony.”

Nancy Lee and Kiran Bhumber have imagined their story as an artistic illustration of their diasporic identities. Their aim is to “unveil and reconstitute cultural memory through the sacred ritual of spiritual union and physical intimacy”. In other words, this spiritual union cannot function smoothly if the strains of its actors are not identified, understood and integrated.

The immersion proposed here is based on abstract images projected onto a dome: shimmering colors mingle on the concave screen, giant hands whirl around, suspended humanoid busts, deposits of gems, two flesh-and-blood women sketching short choreographies, an evocation of post-apocalyptic marriage.

In terms of sound, the soundtrack includes a brief narration of this fictional story and offers the ear a series of electronic effects typical of this type of immersion: synthesized percussion, industrial sounds, and electroacoustic processes generally familiar to dome immersion enthusiasts. The sound quality is also exemplary.

In short, the abstraction of this work outweighs its background, the aesthetic coherence of this work needs to be perfected, the integration of forms and sounds testifies to an art that is still exploratory and above all interesting for its fragmentary effects and not for their integration into an integrated whole.

This is a recurring problem with immersive works that include sound and images: a fascination with these new creative tools rarely leads to an integrated aesthetic, and we contemplate their technological advances without being marked by a total work.

MUTEK 2023 | Experience 2 : Airhaert, Dawn To Dawn, The Mole

by Théo Reinhardt

Photo credits : Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Airhaert

Airhaert doesn’t so much crowd the stage as she fills it, like a cloud of smoke. Her music, like her, finds its source in the depths of the earth, and seeks to bring us back to it. Between trip-hop rhythms, ambient techno and draped vocal passages reminiscent of Grouper, the meditative, spiritual aspect of the project is heard and felt. The voice is used as a stream of celestial energy flowing through the otherwise dark space of the music. I imagine ghosts of a phrase, a thought, long forgotten in the depths of being, deconstructed perhaps in form, but having acquired a whole new meaning. These voices are texture, they are a stream, and it’s tempting to let them enter us for how they might affect our currents, hot and cold, uncertain and obsessed. Because, after all, water is a sure current that always finds its way.

Airhaert’s recent album, I. I. (for Intuitive Intelligence) is an exploration of the depths of Being, a hypnotic, meditative, grounded and introspective experience that seeks to explore the notion of therapeutic music. On stage, the album seems to take a few spontaneous turns, no doubt at the whim of the moment and the lure of the buttons, wheels and indicators that surround the artist. Despite the improvisation and the few harder-cut transitions it brings, we can still lose ourselves in the music, or… in ourselves!

Dawn to Dawn

Dawn to Dawn is a trio made up of Montreal singer Tess Roby, along with Patrick Lee and Adam Ohr. Together, they possess that twilight electro sound which caresses the ears and seems perfect for imagining a high-speed nocturnal stroll through a futuristic, neon-lit cityscape.

Borrowing from pop structures, their style is clean and effective. The synths are round and glistening, like clouds at dusk, while the bass and percussion, with their techno and breakbeat accents, are predominant. Tess Roby’s voice is soaring, dancing lightly in the fine light of the landscape they conjure.

Towards the middle of the show, the songs rise in energy and tempo. Roby’s voice, performing from the front of the stage, soars with the music. This trio may not be the flashiest, but sometimes we like having the lights dimmed. Dawn to Dawn’s music is like that: warm, light and appealing, like distant lights on a summer’s night. The ones that remind us we’re not alone.

The Mole

After more than 20 years in Berlin, The Mole, aka Colin de La Plante, is back in Canada.

The man who made his name in Montreal as a DJ in the 2000s offers a sample-heavy proposal. Cut-up vocals, excerpts from instrumental breaks, bits of lyrics, all these flow together in a sound space built block by block and with great care. His “Go Wiggle!” project, which he presents on the Esplanade Tranquille stage, is based on lyrics from Parliament-Funkadelic.

In his performance, Colin de La Plante weaves together the different parts of his musical presentation with fades. Rhythms enter while others leave, a new melody overtakes the previous one, and, gradually, new sounds are integrated, to the point where we no longer remember what was coming out of the loudspeakers a few minutes earlier.

Working partly with vinyl, de La Plante is definitely searching for a retro aesthetic. The proposition remains fairly conventional and doesn’t get too experimental. Instead, each piece unfolds slowly and meticulously, revealing a sensitivity as well as an instinct for progression on the artist’s part, who leaves us time to notice the changes, fluctuations and disruptions he engenders. All in all, this becomes a show that has a good groove, and which manages to be pleasantly varied and spellbinding.

FORUM MUTEK JOUR 2 | Confronting the Future of Artificial Intelligence

by Elsa Fortant

At its inception, the MUTEK Forum was held 6 months before the festival. In 2018, the two events have been grafted together, offering a unique perspective on digital creativity. Programmed by Sarah Mackenzie and hosted by Claudine Hubert, the 9th edition is entitled “Courants d’avenir” and will be held all week long at Les 7 doigts de la main. MUTEK offers us the chance to delve into a wide range of contemporary themes: the relationship between culture, technology and the climate crisis; accessibility and inclusion within immersive technologies; the power of tech; art, governance and artificial intelligence; and the future of festivals. Here’s a report on the second day’s main conference, which focused on artificial intelligence.

Crédits photos : Maryse Boyce

Conference

Shifting narratives of AI : confronting tech’s power

Sarah Myers West – AI Now Institute

“We are at a moment when critical work must not be reduced to worst-case scenarios, but can be firmly rooted in its origins, in the possibility of an alternative vision of a world where small-scale democracy is possible.”

Sarah Myers West’s words struck a chord. Her message is clear: artists and creative workers have an essential role to play in addressing the issues raised by artificial intelligence (AI) and in shaping the world we want to live in.

AI is a hot topic, and the term is becoming overused, as the researcher reminds us, starting by questioning the appellation itself. The term artificial intelligence is often used as a marketing tool. It’s a “floating signifier” filled with ideas and visions, detached from a material and above all technical reality. In other words, we lend AI powers it doesn’t necessarily have. A whole imaginary world has been created around it, largely nourished by the great works of science fiction.

Artificial intelligence is also a term sometimes used to refer to applied statistics and linear regression. Then, Sarah Myers West quotes the definition of AI given by American AI ethics researcher Meredith Whittaker. This technology, since it is fed by user data and used commercially, can also be defined as a form of surveillance by-product. In this respect, it’s important to point out that not only are companies lacking in transparency about the provenance of the data they use to train AI models, disregarding issues of copyright and intellectual property.

Faced with the rise of AI and, above all, the desire of companies to develop these models on a large scale – which causes environmental and discriminatory problems and affects workers – Sarah Myers West reminds us that there are other possible trajectories.

Meaningful change requires tackling different forms of advantage:

The data advantage: information asymmetry between companies and the public
The computational advantage: dependence on infrastructure, hardware and software
The geopolitical advantage: framed by (the absence of?) regulation, and governments that support the development of AI as a strategic and economic asset

Going beyond the regulatory framework of public policies

Negotiations to regulate AI in the USA, Canada and the European Union are underway, but for the time being, safety is a priority, rather than the issue of algorithmic bias and discrimination. To date, we still lack information on the data used to train models like GPT-4, and Sarah Myers West reminds us that we can’t take companies at their word when they tell us they know what they’re doing. So far, they’ve proved that they’re ready to market their technologies even if they’re not.

Mechanisms need to be put in place to hold companies accountable for their actions. And the Frontier Model Forum, “a new industry body to promote the safe and responsible development of cutting-edge AI systems” launched by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, isn’t enough.

How can we take action and make our voices heard? We need to confront the concentration of corporate power and get organized, says Sarah Myers West. Workers, creative workers and artists are at the heart of the resistance to these tech giants. They are in a position, collectively, to create leverage to ensure that AI is not used to devalue their work. The most recent strike by WGA authors is an example of this struggle.

Not wanting to hear about AI is one thing, but what’s certain is that the train has left the station and you’d better be ready to ride it, to be able to act collectively.

MUTEK 2023 | Cross-coverage, from Moon Apple to Tim Hecker

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Experience 1

On Tuesday, May 22, Mutek Montréal 2023 took to the air on the Tranquille esplanade in the Quartier des spectacles. Outdoors and free? This is not outdoor programming made up of the leftovers from our indoor line-up, but rather a mix of internationally established artists whose current buzz here at home doesn’t yet justify paying admission.
– Alain Brunet

Leon Louder

// Vivien Gaumand

With Leon Lounder, the audience wasn’t sure whether to listen with the body or with the head alone. On the one hand, the pulse was drowned out by a sound design built around insect sounds, commissioned by the Insectarium de Montréal. Here, harmony and melody were not parameters. Rhythm, on the other hand, was mostly created by sound phrasing of a certain length, repeated in loops. Later, low frequencies changed the texture and were coupled with short sounds, but repeated so rapidly that they created the effect of continuous sounds. Towards the end of the performance, a more harmonic passage with what gave the illusion of being synthesized voices came to confuse this entomological music.
– Laurent Bellemare

Moon Apple

// Vivien Gaumand

That said, the Expérience 1 series also features emerging artists who have yet to fine-tune their proposals, but who show interesting potential. Such is the case of Moon Apple, an adopted Montreal producer whose grandmother became a Buddhist monk, which inspired her pseudonym. Equipped with modular synthesizers, a loop pedal, and percussion instruments, the musician offers an organic sound filtered by various effects whose purpose could be ritualistic at times. She also sings and taps live on a digitized surface. A little clumsily, we noted, when the rhythmic pattern was combined with other pre-recorded sequences,

It presented a kind of ceremony whose purpose was to represent the Four Pillars of Destiny. Guests Dédé Chen, author, and performer, and Ahreun Lee, multimedia artist and musician, came to lend a hand to a Moon Apple symbolically addressing mythical creatures – at least that’s what it says on her biographical profile. This integration of melodic synth-pop into this multi-layered experience is interesting but still needs some care before it hits the bull’s eye.
– Alain Brunet

Moon Apple’s music contrasted with the opening performance. The artist immediately immersed the audience in a harmonic universe of soft tones and ethereal vocals. Despite this delicacy, powerful attacks in the lower register quickly saturated the frequency range, creating a resounding yet soothing bath of sound. The musician from Seoul, Korea, incorporated some instrumental interpretation, notably with the rhythms she played on a digital pad before looping them. Unfortunately, these sequences were not synchronous, which even led the artist to abandon this technique towards the end of the performance. On the other hand, the highly processed vocals of the two guest artists added to the pop sound that must surely be delectable on the album.
– Laurent Bellemare

Indus

// Vivien Gaumand

This Colombian duo, self-proclaimed “electro-folk”, was the act that brought the house down. From the very first strokes of the Tambora combined with the powerful electronic rhythms, the audience started dancing. The catchy music was interspersed with samples of voices singing choral songs, although in the end the rhythm and bodily performance outweighed any melodic or harmonic content. Decidedly, the marriage of traditional percussion with electronic music is a winning recipe, as Indus’ performance was undoubtedly the most energetic of Expérience 1.
– Laurent Bellemare

Exclusive to the program, Colombian duo Indus made a splash on the Tranquille esplanade. Indus is made up of producer Oscar Alford and percussionist Andres Mercado, whose album of the same name did not go unnoticed in 2020. Indus’ appeal is based on the use of Afro-Colombian and Afro-descendant chants and rhythms (champeta, currulao, mapalé, etc.) at the heart of a rather pop electronic approach, in line with much of the genre’s dance-floor-oriented music. The vocals may occasionally sound a little out of tune (a problem with the monitors?), but the overall quality of the work made us forget about these minor discrepancies. Indus’ approach is solid and unifying, with warm percussive rhythms and traditional vocals blending well with the synthetic keyboards and other digital tools that make up the lutherie of this well-received tandem.
Alain Brunet

Opening event at New City Gas: Grand River and Tim Hecker

// Bruno-Aiello-Destombes

At New City Gas in Griffintown, the huge New City Gas club hosted the opening indoor program. Perfectly renovated (since 2012), this factory dating back to the Industrial Revolution (1847) boasts a surprisingly efficient sound system for the concert format.

The first artist on the program had never performed at MUTEK before but enjoyed a genuine buzz in MUTEK networks. And the buzz is perfectly justified! With origins in Italy and the Netherlands, Berlin-based Aimée Portiori, aka Grand River, offers marvelous superimpositions for fans of ambient music steeped in minimalism. She chooses to insert a few consonant chords and melodic or choral fragments as beacons for her brilliant explorations. In the vein of Christian Fennesz and Tim Hecker, Grand River’s electroacoustic proposals are laced with multiple tasteful synthetic filters. They are set to rhythms that are generally slow, sometimes faster, and more robust, but which have nothing to do with the binarity essential to the dance floor.
– Alain Brunet

Grand River’s performance was one of those that operated by gradually densifying the musical material. With very little development, the various moments of the show were built on short melodic loops and an accumulation of sound layers. Rhythmically, we moved from total abstraction to pulsation. Moments of contrast between slow keyboard chords and background noise, or vocal sampling, occasionally extended the artist’s sonic range, plunging his audience more than once into a form of urban trance.
– Laurent Bellemare

Tim Hecker

// Bruno-Aiello-Destombes

There’s no need to rehash the career of Tim Hecker, one of Canada’s most respected electronic composers. No Highs, his most recent album, is the expected extension of his most remarkable approaches. An ace of saturated frequency superimpositions, Tim Hecker has not been content to build these richly layered works despite their apparent linearity. His latest album is a long sinusoidal curve, so shallow that it can flatten out before resuming its roundness. Over time, the composer has added an instrumental dimension to his proposals: the bass clarinet is tangible on his new album, to cite just one example.

Hecker’s live performance is by no means an exact reproduction of his recent discography. The distortion effects may be more violent, the pulsations heavier (and wham in the plexus!), the quotations sometimes different, taken notably from the Anoyo and Konoyo recordings, which are largely Japanese-inspired. But these subtleties blend discreetly into the sometimes searing flows of this coherently performed concert. Pure Tim Hecker, no doubt about it.
– Alain Brunet

From the very first notes of Tim Hecker’s performance, we could recognize the sound world of his 2018 album Konoyo. Frames of instruments belonging to Japanese Gagaku began a long session of ambient drone, always navigating between harmony and dissonance. The hichirki glissandi that so distinctly opened the piece “This Life” then came to color the abrasion, serving as a transition to a new passage. Considering that it was the music of No Highs (2023) that was in the spotlight, these nods to an earlier album created a subversive effect. The same goes for Fumiya Otonashi’s shô interventions, unfortunately, inaudible during the first part of the concert.

More generally, the audience was treated to a forced immersive experience, with low frequencies so intense you could feel them through your body. Fortunately, Tim Hecker’s music is fascinating, and we happily play along behind his analog and digital machines.
– Laurent Bellemare

MUTEK 2023 | Satosphère 1 : Metaract et Iwakura

by Théo Reinhardt

The first Satosphère event of the MUTEK 2023 festival features a double program, with the audiovisual projects Metaract and Iwakura. The former is, according to MUTEK’s website, “an exploration of the duality between analog and digital”, and the latter, “a supernatural journey to rediscover the transcendence of nature.”

Photo credits : Ash KG

Metaract

Metaract is the first of two presentations, created by Japanese artists Manami Sakamoto and Yuri Urano. It’s an immersive film focused on nature which, in the context of the SAT, certainly questions the relationship between the natural and technological worlds.

From a dust particle in nothingness, to a drop of water in a freezing river, to a lump of earth in a forest, we seem to be taken through all the states of matter, as if we were experiencing them in first person. Things move slowly, even if it feels like we’re crossing universe-scale time jumps in the space of 20 minutes or so. What’s more, the exploratory but still modest tone of this rather abstract representation of nature is reminiscent of the curious and avid lens towards nature shown in Terrence Malick’s films, in particular The Tree of Life (2011) and his recent documentary Voyage of Time (2016).

The music remains fairly calm, with ambient layers that place us in a space without beginning or end, with a few distant sounds of bells and chimes here and there. The most recurring image is that of thousands of tiny dots floating in nothingness, which can be infinitely small or large. There’s no real scale of reference here, but even the small seems immense when sitting down, head up, under the dome of the Satosphère.

At the end of the film, as low-frequency blasts mimic a living heart, the thousands of colored dots acquire some intelligence and form trees, before hatching, falling back into galactic chaos, and finally returning as trees, their final form. At least, for the time being.

Iwakura

This second presentation, by artists Kazuka Naya, Ali Mahmut Demirel and Maurice Jones, is more abstract, more bizarre, more preoccupying and, above all, more psychedelic.

Born from what appears to be an obsession for geology, our journey begins by surveying very, very closely the walls of various caves, which merge into one another. The music here is dark, murky, calcified. It’s like being immersed in a meticulous, if not slightly fantastical, search for a fossil. But we won’t stop there. The journey will take us much further into the limbo of form, and we’re not sure we’ll be coming back.

As the images unfold, the rocky entities, now solitary in the void, follow one another, and their movement becomes increasingly supernatural: they collapse in on themselves, open out towards us in a tunnel that crushes and lengthens to infinity, at the same time hollowing out and unfolding in geometric, symmetrical excrescences, while we forget the music and all our attention is trapped in this geological black hole.

Eventually, we’re back where we started, with rock walls blending with waterfalls and trees, as the music builds in intensity, orchestration and sentimentality. Quite a journey. Have we reached transcendence? The sublime? Horror? A little of all three, maybe…

FORUM MUTEK DAY 1 | New horizons : digital creation and curation

by Elsa Fortant

At its inception, the MUTEK Forum was held 6 months before the festival. In 2018, the two events have been grafted together, offering a unique perspective on digital creativity. Programmed by Sarah Mackenzie and hosted by Claudine Hubert, the 9th edition is entitled “Future currents” and will be held all week long at Les 7 doigts de la main. MUTEK offers us the chance to delve into a wide range of contemporary themes: the relationship between culture, technology and the climate crisis; accessibility and inclusion within immersive technologies; the power of tech; art, governance and artificial intelligence; and the future of festivals. PAN M 360 reports on the first day.

Photo credits : Maryse Boyce

Opening talk – Festivals as radical rituals

Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson – founder of Dweller and cofounder of Discwoman

As programmer of the Bossa Nova Civic Club in Brooklyn, Frankie Hutchinson had a front-row seat to observe the impact of the electronic music industry on the expression of black artists and people, i.e. a lack of space and visibility. It particularly struck her when an artist approached her to organize a special event for Black History Month. Why limit yourself to one event, one week, one month? So naturally, she ended up taking the lead and creating a space for electronic talent from black communities to express themselves, in the form of Dweller, a DIY festival, launched in 2018.

Quickly becoming a “ritual” offering the necessary space for a form of individual and collective catharsis, Dweller has grown to the point of going international with an event at the famous Berghain (Berlin) and programming headliners such as Jeff Mills. With this expansion comes questions: how do you grow without sacrificing the intimacy of your events? How can we develop our audience without losing our curatorial perspective? And, of course, how to ensure its sustainability and financing? At Dweller, financing is largely based on merchandising, and the community can meet and connect in other ways on a blog, Dweller Electronic, which has a political dimension. These are all interesting reflections for thinking about the development of independent events, imagining the future of festivals and their community roots.s, qui comporte une dimension politique.

Panel – Future Festivals : Forging new horizons

Maurice Jones, moderator; Jasmin Grimm, NEW NOW Festival ; David Lavoie, FTA; Naomi Johnson, imagineNATIVE Film | Media Arts Festival

Introduced by Maurice Jones of Future Festivals Lab, the aim of the discussion was to question the power of festivals. The discussion began with a round table on the challenges faced by festivals during the pandemic and the post-pandemic period.

David Lavoie of Festival TransAmériques was one of the 16 initiators of the open letter “Attention, festivals fragilisés” published in February 2023 in Le Devoir. The signatories joined forces to highlight their fragility and the issues they share, mainly the mental health of employees, the maintenance of events and their terms and conditions. The coverage of this letter enabled them to make their voices heard and initiate discussions with the government.t.

For Naomi Johnson, the priority was to pay the artists, which led to an evolution in the festival’s mission to become a content producer. In addition, experimentation with video-on-demand has enabled them to develop their audience. Naomi Johnson also laments the loss of institutional knowledge when there is a departure in the team, which makes the task of getting back to “where we were before” all the more difficult.

As for the NEW NOW Festival, the change was quite radical, as the annual event became biennial, the only way for Jasmin Grimm and her team to stay healthy. Like other festivals, they’ve had to contend with inflation, worker shortages and, above all, the climate issue. NEW NOW is held on the site of Europe’s largest former coal mine, Zollverein, in Essen (Germany). This historic site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. The site’s past and present use inevitably makes us reflect on the climatic consequences of yesterday’s industrial activities and today’s events. For this reason, the festival has taken up the theme of climate change and offered workshops on self-sufficiency to festival organizers.

A younger festival like NEW NOW has to deal with the bureaucratic issues associated with its heritage site. However, as with its counterparts, successfully bridging the needs of artists and communities is a challenge.

What about the death of festivals? As David Lavoie points out, institutions sometimes have to die, and we need to be able to address this issue if we are to foresee the future of festivals. That’s why the NEW NOW Festival has given itself a 10-year lifespan.

We’ll leave you to ponder.

An August 20 at Virée classique: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Fauré, Monteverdi, Trio Débonnaire and more!

by Rédaction PAN M 360

The PAN M 360 team is very present at the Virée classique, presented by the MSO. Our contributors report daily on what they have seen and heard at the concerts presented in Montreal until August 20.

Three Choirs Come Together to Sing Fauré’s Requiem

Photo credit: Antoine Saito

Under the baton of Rafael Payare, the OSM unveiled a nuanced interpretation of Fauré’s Requiem that resonated with luminous clarity and depth. Presenting this seminal work in collaboration with three amateur choirs and a concert organist, this afternoon’s performance aligned more closely to Fauré’s original intent, allowing one to hear the counterpoint more clearly than with full orchestral accompaniment.

The program began with François Morel’s Prière pour Orgue, a short piece for solo organ which briskly set a reverent but equally grave tone in the halls of the Maison Symphonique. It was in the silence that followed that the choir, composed of three sections, each with its own choir conductor, took to the stage with a performance of Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine. Often performed alongside his Requiem, this text setting was an early sign of the unique musical and religious vision Fauré had.

Fauré’s text settings marked a departure from the severity and drama of traditional musical settings of the mass, and perhaps nowhere was this better illustrated than in the “In Paradisum” movement. The conductor, the choir, and the organist merged together to craft a sublime ascent into the realms of paradise. The music floated, weightless and serene, as a sense of tranquil closure enveloped us in the auditorium.

Varun Swarup

Jeremy Denk, or how to link JS Bach, Ravel and Ligeti

Jeremy Denk is now considered one of the finest American concert pianists on the classical planet, and we were able to confirm this assertion at the Virée classique. What’s more, he’s also one of those virtuosos interested in intimately linking eras, as we were able to savour on the reconfigured stage of Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on Sunday morning.

The program featured JS Bach, Ravel and Ligeti, composers from the Baroque, modern and contemporary periods respectively. First up was the Partita no. 1 in B flat major BWV 825, one of those “German suites” renowned for the contrapuntal genius of their creator, whose style had achieved its full identity by the time it was conceived, some two decades before the composer’s death – Partita no. 1 was premiered in 1731.

As for Jeremy Denk’s style, it can roughly be said that it is neither too delicate nor too abrupt. This centrism can also bear the defect of its quality, to the point of sometimes feeling a certain academic coldness in the playing of the Bach Partita played first. But perceptions change when the pianist plays Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, composed in 1908 and inspired by poems by Aloysius Bertrand. Divided into three “poems for piano”, the work becomes increasingly dense and climbs in intensity, particularly in the last one (“Scarbo”), where we can contemplate the full capabilities of the performer. We are then ready to absorb the piano studies IV (“Fanfares”) and V (“Automne à Varsovie”) by Hungarian composer György Ligeti.

Not so long ago, such a program would have been unthinkable: negative “social acceptability” would have repelled any concert company’s artistic management from putting forward such a combination, but this is clearly no longer the case. On the contrary, the program proposed by Jeremy Denk is now just what’s needed to feed music lovers properly in 2023.

Alain Brunet

Learning Music the Fun Way at Virée Classique

Photo credit: Antoine Saito

Programming for families and children is an integral part of the Virée classique. Each year, several concerts and activities for toddlers give the OSM the opportunity to showcase music through play, stories and tales. This year’s concert featured Les créatures fantastiques with Rafael Payare, as well as a series of activities with a musical mediation objective, such as the Enchanted Forest, which was a musical enigma combined with the exploration of the sets, or a number of participatory workshops where the audience composed with the ensembles, while discovering various instruments.
On Sunday morning, in the superb Piano Nobile space in the foyer of Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, children were introduced to the enchanting sounds of the orchestra’s woodwinds. Through the medium of the classic tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the musicians (Vincent Boilard on oboe, Alain Desgagné on clarinet and Mathieu Harel on bassoon) and guest actress (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) taught the children how music can evoke specific objects, characters or scenes while introducing the orchestra’s instrument families.

Pieces by Jacques Ibert, Joseph Canteloube, Alexandre Tansman, Jean Françaix, Ange Flégier, Mozart and Jacques Hétu lent themselves to the game, sometimes illustrating the idyllic forest, sometimes reverie. The sound of the wooden trio was magical, and it’s certain that the families present enjoyed their little escape to the home of the three bears.

Alexis Ruel

Encounters with Inuit Throat Singing

The Les grands espaces project, in collaboration with the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), was presented on Sainte-Catherine Street in a participatory format. Katia Makdissi-Warren, composer and conductor of the group Oktoecho, is behind this project, aimed primarily at young people. Ideally, the piece would have been conducted by a child in the audience, but only one young girl volunteered to do so, accompanied by her mother. The children seemed embarrassed and a little intimidated. Nevertheless, the result was very successful. The concept is to create a choral soundtrack, singing short, simple melodic motifs and adding body percussion, to imitate sounds of nature (rain, wind, owl, geese). Meanwhile, two women perform the katajjaq, producing the corresponding vocal patterns in this musical tradition. The idea is to open up a space for an encounter, where two musical traditions meet with the utmost respect.

Inuit throat singing is a competition between two women, but also a game. Those attending the workshop are treated to a demonstration and explanation of how to produce the sounds. The audience is curious and asks lots of questions, which the two singers on stage answer with great generosity. Les grands espaces is a project that provides an opportunity to encounter a musical tradition that has long been outlawed but has been enjoying a resurgence in recent years.

Elena Mandolini

A Breath of Fresh Air at Complexe Desjardins

Les vents de l’île de Montréal is a band made up of young people from several Montreal high schools, directed by Éric Levasseur. The pieces presented ranged from film music to the more classical wind band repertoire. The works presented were original, even daring (there was one slightly dissonant piece, performed with great confidence by the young musicians). The assurance with which the works were performed is to be commended. The sound produced by these young musicians was powerful, precise and assured. The ensemble’s sound was broad and its direction was remarkable for an ensemble of this level. The audience greeted the works with enthusiasm, and were treated to solemn, triumphant and powerful musical moments!

Elena Mandolini

The Entertaining and Charismatic Trio Débonnaire Takes Us On A Journey Through Time

One of the great successes of Virée classique’s free programming, Trio Débonnaire performed to a full house every time. A success that testifies to the complicity between its members. The ensemble is made up of Laurence Latreille-Gagné on horn, Simon Jolicoeur on trombone and their spokesman Frédéric Demers on trumpets. And yes, trumpets, because one of the great attractions of this concert is the overview they give of trumpets and mutes, thanks to the arsenal displayed on stage. With excerpts from Bach, Beethoven, Edith Piaf and the Beatles (and yes!), the audience is taken on an overview of the possibilities the trumpet has to offer. Frédéric Demers takes mediation to heart and strives to communicate his love of his instrument to the audience.

Two simple words can be used to describe this concert. Interesting, and above all, entertaining. Time flies, and the entertainment is at once charismatic, instructive and amusing. Place des Arts resonates with the warm, noble timbres of the horn and trombone supporting the melodic trumpet. The explanation and use of mutes is an excellent idea. However, we regret that the demonstration did not extend to the other instruments, whose use of mutes is just as important.

You’re transported through the ages, having a great time and learning, all in the blink of an eye!

Alexis Ruel

Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Virgin: Beauty and Contemplation

Photo credit: Antoine Saito

Some thirty musicians shared the stage at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier to perform Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Virgin, but the space didn’t feel overcrowded. The number of musicians was kept to a strict minimum, and that was welcome. This enabled the ensemble, directed by Eric Milnes, to offer an intimate, delicate and luminous interpretation of Monteverdi’s work.

This composer is best known for his mastery of polyphonic art. In the Vespers of the Virgin, we are treated to majestic musical lines, enveloping basses and complex harmonies. The performers play with great sensitivity and know how to support the delicious dissonances present in the score. The music moves easily from major to minor modes, and you feel transported by it. One movement follows another, moving from a triumphant tone to a sorrowful one in a fraction of a second. In this interpretation, we have the opportunity to see and hear ancient instruments, such as the sackbut, dulcian, and lute.

The only downside to this interpretation is the acoustics. The sound is lost and muffled in this arrangement of the hall. This music, designed to be performed in a church, would have been even more beautiful if the sound could have resonated in the hall and all around the audience. Nevertheless, the ensemble knows how to use space and spatialize sound. Halfway through the work, the choir begins to rearrange itself to diversify the acoustics. Musicians and singers move backstage, to play in the space and offer new listening conditions to the audience. Despite the acoustic shortcomings of the venue, the ensemble’s sound is round and powerful. This is a moving and luminous interpretation of Monteverdi’s work.

Elena Mandolini

Dances of the Bohemian Countryside With the Orchestre Symphonique des Jeunes de la Montérégie

On Saturday and Sunday, the OSJM presented Dvořák’s 8th Symphony to the public and passers-by at Complexe Desjardins. A work reminiscent of Mozart passages, aspects of Beethoven and the folk tunes of the composer’s native Bohemia, it got young and old dancing and marked the end of the Virée classique in style on Sunday afternoon.
Better suited to wind orchestras or harmonies, the Complexe was not very conducive to the symphony’s subtleties and nuances, especially during the second movement, with its slightly too voluminous acoustics and ambient noise. On the other hand, we admire the energy with which the orchestra overcame these obstacles in the first and last movements. The dancing rhythms of the third and fourth movements were perfect for the situation.

The orchestra takes us on an epic journey through the countryside, from sunrise to the celebrations that stretch into the night. We hear the birds and cicadas singing and imagine the forests and pastoral landscapes that lulled Dvořák throughout his life. We seem to share with him the pleasure of hearing the popular tunes and joys of his childhood.
The OSJM enchants with its precision and ardour. A fine showcase for the next generation of musicians, it offers an encouraging and hopeful vision of the future of symphonic music in Montérégie and Quebec.

Alexis Ruel

Sortie 210: Destination Big Band for Destination Fun

The final performance on the quiet Esplanade of the tenth edition of Virée classique concluded with the brassy sounds of Big Band Sortie 210. Founded in 1992, this ensemble brings together “professional musicians, music teachers, college and university music students and serious amateurs” from Victoriaville and the surrounding Bois-Francs region. Accustomed to musical events and several international festivals, the twenty or so musicians gathered on stage, directed by Guillaume Allard, delivered a thoroughly enjoyable performance in which everyone had a chance to shine. The program was eclectic. Not a string of great jazz standards, but a mix of genres and styles consisting mainly of hits from the classical and popular music repertoires, arranged for big band. So, for the opener, we were treated to a Toccata and Fudge (arranged around Bach’s Toccata in D minor); a Blues for Elise and a jazzy version of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5. Interspersed between these arrangements are pieces with different expressions. These include John Coltrane’s Central Park West, the only piece to be taken from jazz standards, with its muted colours and timbres, and Bar Talk, a wildly energetic piece which, contrary to its name, is not at all suited to “melancholy contemplation of a glass of alcohol”. As for the soloists, Dominique Rancourt’s performance on violin and Yvon Tardif’s on saxophone in the original composition Hot and Blues were particularly noteworthy for their rapport and complicity. Judging by the number of people tapping their feet and swaying their hips, Sortie 210 was a great success.

Alexandre Villemaire