Interviews

The flagship of Quebec trad music, Le Vent du Nord is continuing the symphonic experiment it began in 2007 with arrangements by Tom Myron, two of which will be retained in this unprecedented encounter with Maestro Kent Nagano. The rest of the repertoire has been reworked by composer Régis Campeau, responsible for the interludes between the pieces on this program and three new arrangements from the Vent du Nord repertoire. Two pillars of the group, Olivier Demers and Nicolas Boulerice, co-founders of the band, were joined on stage by André Brunet, Réjean Brunet and André Gagné, and spoke to Alain Brunet for PAN M 360. This unique program with the OSM is presented on Thursday, December 12 at the Maison symphonique de Montréal, and we have no doubt that this creation will outlast this performance. So, Le Vent du Nord invests every possible field, and this is the right one!

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

Established in 2006 by businessman and philanthropist Seymour Schulich, the Golden Violin Award is an annual competition that recognizes the excellence and talent of the Schulich School of Music’s string cohorts. The 2024-2025 edition will take place on December 11 and 13 at Tanna Hall. “The winner, chosen after a rigorous selection process by a jury, will receive a substantial bursary, which in its 18th year has reached a value of $30,000; a 14-carat gold pin, a smaller replica of the gold violin; and the opportunity to perform in concert as part of the Schulich School of Music’s regular season.” Last year, violist David Montreuil took top honors in this prestigious competition. PAN M 360 contributor Alexandre Villemaire spoke to Montreuil to learn more about his background and what his experience as a candidate and laureate has brought him.

This interview was conducted in French

December 10th: Semifinal Round

December 11th: Final Round

FREE ADMISSION

To look at the webcast of these events, click here

The former OSM Principal Conductor and Artistic Director returns to Montreal to conduct 2 distinct programs, spread over 3 consecutive evenings, at the Maison symphonique, from Tuesday December 10 to Thursday December 12. Based on a blend of creation and interpretation of well-known repertoire, both programs highlight the work of composers Régis Campeau, for new orchestrations of Le Vent du Nord and the composition of interludes, Matthew Ricketts and Alain Farah featuring the great contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, and Ariza Sadikova for her singular evocation of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Between rehearsals, Maestro Nagano kindly agreed to grant this interview to Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

FIRST PROGRAM WITH MARIE-NICOLE LEMIEUX : TICKETS AND INFO HERE

Artists

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

Kent Nagano, OSM conductor emeritus

Marie-Nicole Lemieux, contralto

Vincent Boilard, hautbois

Paul Merkelo, trumpet

Anna Burden, cello

Serge Desgagnés, percussion

Œuvres

Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski, Casse-Noisette, extraits (24 min)

  • Miniature opening
  • Walk
  • Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
  • Entertainment: Chocolate (Spanish) Coffee (Arabian dance) Tea (Chinese dance) Trepak (Russian dance) Mirlitons dance; Mother Gigogne
  • Waltzing flowers

Matthew Ricketts (music), Alain Farah (livret), Cent soleils, for contralto and orchestra, world premiere – Order from OSM (20 min)

Intermission

Aziza Sadikova et Antonio Vivaldi, Farbenzeiten, North-American creation (48 min)

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in a new version for oboe, trumpet, cello, percussion and orchestra by Aziza Sadikova

  1. Frühling [Le printemps]
  2. Sommer [L’été]
  3. Herbst [L’automne]
  4. Winter [L’hiver]

LE VENT DU NORD, 2nd PROGRAM: TICKETS AND INFO HERE

From February 14 to March 1, 2025, no fewer than 18 generous programs of new music will be presented by the SMCQ, in the context of its biennial event Montreal / Nouvelles Musiques (MNM). Under the broad theme of “music and images”, this is the first large-scale operation for the new artistic direction of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, embodied by composer Simon Bertrand. Its editorial line is first and foremost to spotlight many of Quebec’s most remarkable composers. And, as has been the case with other MNM presentations over the past two decades, to present a substantial aeropage of creation from abroad. Alain Brunet chatted at length with Simon Bertrand, who gave an exhaustive overview of the 18 programs to come next February. To make it easier to digest this imposing program, the interview is broken down into a few parts.

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

Publicité panam

On December 8, 1974, guitarist, composer, improviser and bandleader René Lussier gave his first concert in Chambly, at the local cinema. On December 8, 2024, at the Ministère, 8pm, René Lussier commemorates 50 years of atypical, world-renowned musical practices in the contemporary music filter.

He was electric guitarist with the Conventum collective in the ’70s, then embarked on a solo career that continues to this day. His album Fin du travail was released in 1984, and his solo discography now boasts 22 opuses, as well as dozens of collaborations. A revolutionary transposition of spoken language into music, his masterwork Le trésor de la langue won international awards and was performed on stage with eloquent narrations by Richard Desjardins and Patrice Desbiens. Le corps d’Étienne marked his work with filmmaker Pierre Hébert, a master of film etching. With multi-flute and multi-saxophonist Jean Derome, he founded the excellent duo Les Granules, and with British guitarist Fred Frith, he has recorded and performed many times. With clarinettist Robert M Lepage, he has also made some magnificent collaborations public. With the other Robert Lepage, he set to music the gigantic Le moulin à images installation in Quebec City in 2009. He has recorded with explorer DJ Martin Tétreault. He has also sporadically joined one of Fred Fortin’s bands, Gros Mené.

He’s also done songs, in short, the most variable of orchestral geometries. So, what do you think? No need to justify posting this interview with Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

Staff for the Ministry concert

René Lussier, guitares, saxophone

Luzio Altobelli, accordion

Hugo Blouin, double bass

Guillaume Bourque, clarinets

Julie Houle, tuba

Robbie Kuster, drums

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

“Be on the lookout, a sound is so quick to arrive!” we warn. Sound can become an aggressor, an annoyance, a source of mental pollution, and that’s exactly why Ensemble SuperMusique proposes here a musical pharmacopoeia whose aim is to devise real-time antidotes to the sound alarms that surround us, to toxic background noise, to tinnitus and other elevator or supermarket musaks. This Sunday, December 8, at the Espace Orange in the Wilder Building, six improvisers of all styles and generations propose to alarm the sound by planking on frequencies conducive to soothing and well-being, in order to bring peace back to the auditory canals. Co-founder of SuperMusique, saxophonist, singer, noisemaker, improviser and composer Joane Hétu suggests some elements of understanding before living the experience at the end of a Sunday afternoon. Alain Brunet met her virtually for PAN M 360.

Participants

Ensemble SuperMusique (ESM)

Adrianne Munden-Dixon, violin; Rémy Bélanger de Beauport, cello; Pablo Jiménez, double bass; Jean Derome, saxophones, flutes, objects; Eva Dannika Gekas, trumpet; Joane Hétu, voice, objects, saxophone

SuperMusique Program – presented in conjunction with Groupe Le Vivier

Alarmer le sonore (2024)

Rémy Bélanger de Beauport, Eva Dannika Gekas, Jean Derome, Joane Hétu, Pablo Jiménez, Adrianne Munden-Dixon Creation

Addendum (2023), 6:30 Magali Babin

Chutes et courants (2023)Danielle Palardy RogerCreation

INFOS AND TICKETS HERE

Released on October 25 on the Mothland label, En conversation avec…, Victime’s most recent album, will be embodied on stage by its atypical trio: Laurence Gauthier Brown, Simone Provencher and Samuel Gougoux will defend the material of this opus. Bruitism, rock, electro, primal poetry, vocals – these are the obvious sounds in Victime’s composite approach, to which are grafted a few mysteries of the psyche and other creatures arising from the unconscious. Laurence Gauthier Brown, who teaches a class in Quebec City, helps us get to grips with Victime. Alain Brunet interviewed her for PAN M 360, shortly before the launch of the album, which will be performed Friday December 6 at Théâtre Plaza, 7:30 p.m.

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

Jeanne Rochette is an author, composer and performer of French chanson, as well as a modern jazz enthusiast, with a career spanning France and French-speaking America. Her albums include Elle sort (2010), Cachée (2016) and La malhonnête (2021), as well as this album recorded at Le Gesù in 2022 with the Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, this time featuring jazz instruments as well as traditional European classical instruments (harp, oboe, horn, etc.). The arrangements for this opus, released last October, were devised by regular ONJ collaborator Jean-Nicolas Trottier. Between her many Montreal-Paris shuttles, Jeanne Rochette talks with Alain Brunet about the classicism of her songwriting signature and how to adapt it to the context of a large jazz ensemble.

In the late 2010’s, Lubalin reached the highest summits of TikTok fame with his viral internet drama videos: 260 million views, 36 million likes and 3.4 million subscribers around the world. That huge web success led him to be invited on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and The Kelly Clarkson Show, in the U.S. All US magazines and music or entertainement press wrote or talked about him – Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, The Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Mashable, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, not to name commercial partnerships and also an important production and songwriting involvement with Charlotte Cardin’s recent recording work – double JUNO Award-winning 2023 album, 99 Nights.

After almost 6 years of web famee and ghost composing, Lubalin finally came on stage for a first time during the Marathon M for Montreal Festival, after which he launches a first complete album: haha, no worries. On this new release (December 6th) he explores the nature of human communication we have those days and does it with a “wry sense of humour and a gleeful disregard for convention”. A few days afterhis first live show, Lubalin met Alain Brunet for PAN M 360, here his this video interview.

After 7 years on the Quebec music scene, Quatuor Cobalt announces the release of its debut album, Reflets du temps. Comprising Guillaume Villeneuve and Diana Bayard (violins), Clément Bufferne (viola) and François Leclerc (cello), the Université de Montréal-trained quartet was taught by Annick Roussin, Yegor Dyachkov, Guillaume Sutre, Laura Andriani and the Quatuor Debussy. In Quebec, the Cobalt Quartet has performed at festivals such as the Festival International de Lanaudière, the Festival International du Domaine Forget and the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, as well as in major venues such as the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City and Place des Arts in Montreal. Characterized by its eclecticism, the quartet explores both early music on period instruments and the contemporary repertoire, and is committed to the dissemination of today’s repertoire.

The album launch was a good opportunity for our contributor Alexandre Villemaire to chat with Guillaume Villeneuve about this release, as well as the ensemble’s many other projects, including their program of Schubert’s complete string quartets and their forthcoming indoor concert on December 18 at Jeunesses Musicales du Canada’s Salle Joseph-Rouleau.

Concert tickets HERE

You can pre-record the first extract from Reflets du temps at the following address: https: //gfn-classics.lnk.to/H277-Allegretto

The entire album will be available in January 2025

Photo Credit : Annie Éthier

Video direction:
Director: Charles-William De Melo – De Melo Productions
Director of photography: Antoine Benhini
First AC: Mathilde Lytwynuk
Electro: Pascal Chaumont
Best boy: Adam Panyachack
Editing: Charles-William De Melo
Colorization: Olivier Séguin-Dang – Color Division
Executive producers: Gabriel Felcarek, Francis Choinière & Nicholas Choinière

With the special participation ofAnnabelle Marquis

Since she first came to our attention in the early 2000s, Emilie-Claire Barlow has been in osmosis with Quebec audiences, so much so that she left her native Toronto to settle in Quebec, first in Montreal and then in Quebec City, where she followed her heart and made her home in Limoilou. Émilie-Claire has been celebrating the holiday season for as long as anyone can remember, offering a special program each year, with quartet, string quartet and trio of backing singers, and drawing on her two Christmas albums – Winter Wonderland and Lumières d’hiver, an anthology of Christmas songs taken from the Great American Songbook, as well as original songs to add a special touch to all that comfort food! This year, Emilie-Claire Barlow performs in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and New York. Before the sleigh set off, the singer chatted with Alain Brunet about the holiday season.

December at Théâtre Outremont, Montreal, December 6 at Palais Montcalm, Quebec, December 14 at Koerner Hall, Toronto, 20 and 21 December at Birdland, New York. TICKETS HERE

Publicité panam

The Paramirabo (Montreal) and Thin Edge New Music Collective (Toronto) ensembles perform contemporary works by Nicole Lizée (Montreal), Yaz Lancaster (New York), the late Louis Andriessen (Utrecht), James O’Callaghan (Burnaby) and the late Julius Eastman (New York). The spokesperson for this vast Toronto-Montreal program is Toronto cellist Amahl Arulanandam, who spoke with Alain Brunet for this concert presented at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, this Friday, November 29, 7:30pm.

BILLETS ICI

Programme

Participants

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