Genres and styles : Avant-Garde / Experimental / Contemporary

Additional Information

The Quasar Quartet have long been Montreal’s premier saxophone quartet. Specializing in contemporary repertoire, the group have over 25 years of experience together exploring the interstices between chamber music, electronic music and the avant-garde. Marie Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard from Quasar joined me for an interview about their upcoming presentation, “Dialogues Intercontinentaux,” at this year’s New Musics Festival.

PAN M 360: Thanks for being here. The description for Quasar’s presentation this year is very exciting. A saxophone quartet with remote performances featuring European musicians and even Artificial Intelligence. What exactly can we expect?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Well it’s a very original proposal. Since its conception there have been many people involved and the project has seen many different iterations. The idea first came from Dániel Péter Biró, currently in Bergen, who has long been a close collaborator with Quasar. In the Montreal concert as such, only the musicians from Quasar will be present, but we will have other musicians from Europe playing live with us via remote streaming technology. For example, the second piece, Hongshuo Fan’s “Conversation in the Cloud” features Jean-Marc playing Baritone from Montreal and Andrea Nagy on Clarinet from Freiburg. In fact, the same piece will feature an AI joining us from Manchester.

PAN M 360: So not only is there a show happening in Montreal, but in Freiburg and Bergen as well.

Marie Chantal Leclair: Yes! The idea is that the show will be different for all the audiences, and of course we will be the remote musicians for the audiences in Europe.

PAN M 360: How exactly are the remote musicians integrated into the pieces?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Think windows. We begin a piece, for example “Udvarim Achadim,” and at some point, the sound will come from Norway but it will still be one continuous piece of music.

PAN M 360: Are you ever playing live together in the show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Yes, and of course during the pandemic we were able to experiment with this technology a lot and learn what we can about its limits. We’re well aware about latency, but the music was conceived with all these things in mind. We’re not necessarily trying to avoid it, but to compensate for it. Actually now we’re in a phase of testing, seeing what are the best mics, the best positions, etc.

PAN M 360: Could you explain a bit more about the inclusion of AI in the concert?

Jean-Marc Bouchard: It’s a bit complicated but what happens is that the composer, Hangshuo Fan, is in Manchester, and from there he is managing audio and video processing which is going to Freiburg. In Freiburg, the signals are transmitted to Montreal, and from Montreal it goes to Bergen and back to Freiburg. Is it any clearer that way? But really the AI is listening the whole time and adding to and manipulating the signals. For example, as we play, we use cameras which transpose our bodies into 28 points, which is lighter to transmit on the Internet, and that image is then sent onto a screen. The same thing is happening with the audio signals. From our input, it generates a new score each time. And we can actually see it in the form of a written score. It’s not exactly as neat as a classical piece, but the result is really fascinating, putting together acoustic instruments and live electronics.

PAN M 360: Is there a lot of chance for something to go wrong then, for such a technically demanding show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: (Laughs) Well yes. We are risky people, but if you want to push things forward, you need to take risks. Of course we’re doing what we can to minimize those risks, and there are many meticulous people involved in this project, so I’m confident but still there is an unavoidable element of chance.

PAN M 360: How long has this show been in the making, did COVID give the impetus to do a show around remote musicians?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Well it’s hard to say. It wasn’t necessarily conceived of as a COVID project, but of course the fact that we experimented and made those remote connections during that time made it more possible in a way.

PAN M 360: Does this represent a new direction for Quasar, or is it a natural moment for the quartet?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Yes and no. We’ll see how it goes, but Quasar is always about exploration and creation, and that takes many different forms and paths and this presentation is one of them. Even though we are experimenting with elements coming from abroad, it’s still thoroughly a live experience, and that is something we’ve always strived to deliver.

PAN M 360: This show seems very topical. This year we are seeing the impacts of ChatGPT on text-generation, and it’s not long before the musical equivalent of ChatGPT will gain traction. How do you feel about these developments?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Technology is part of music because technology is simply a part of our lives. So of course it is an inevitability, and I’m not afraid of that at all. We’ve been working and experimenting with electronic music since 2000, for more than 20 years, and actually it is very exciting to see where this technology can go. There has been bad music before, there will be bad music written again, regardless of the tools. At the end of the day, it’s about the choices we make using these tools.

PAN M 360: Sounds like this will be quite a unique show. Any words for people who will be attending the show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Come with an open mind and you won’t be bored. It’s going to be diverse, we’re really excited by the show and I really think it’s going to be a very special experience.