Virée classique de l’OSM | A Transcendent End to The Evening

The PAN M 360 team is very present at the Virée classique, presented by the OSM. In the field, at free activities and indoor concerts, Alain Brunet, Alexis Desrosiers-Michaud and Alexandre Villemaire report on what they’ve seen and heard at events presented in Montreal until August 18.

The evening of August 17 at the OSM’s Virée classique concluded with a live performance where classical music met electronic music. On the large outdoor stage at Esplanade Tranquille, a trio of OSM string players – violinist Abby Walsh, violist Scott Chancey and cellist Julien Siino – joined keyboardist Nicolas Boucher and VJ Line Katcho to perform Guillaume Coutu Dumont’s Les Empires. Drawing its inspiration from childhood nostalgia, including memories of cartoons and movie soundtracks, the performance drew a respectable crowd, perhaps more than anticipated, as Virée volunteers had to busily set up extra rows of chairs. If the referents eluded us, the musical material as a whole and the interaction with the musicians, whose circular patterns and melodic lines were one of the driving forces behind the sound samplings controlled by Dumont Coutu. The video-music match was pleasant without being aggressive, for music that is complex in its treatment, but deliberately accessible: music that you can easily get carried away and transported by.

This concert, presented in partnership with the MUTEK festival, which kicks off on August 20, was a gentle introduction to electronic music and its potential collaborations with other musical genres, including orchestral music.

Photo Credit: Antoine Saito