Interviews

It is on Friday, November 7 at 5 PM, in the Agora of the Judith-Jasmin Pavilion of UQAM, in downtown Montreal, that Field of Vision by American composer Michael Gordon will be performed for the first time in Canada. The latter, a master of the contemporary post-minimalist school and creator of several imposing works for percussion, wrote this vast piece of about sixty minutes in 2022 for 36 percussionists, and which is supposed to be performed outdoors. Since Montreal in November is, let’s say, rather uncertain in terms of weather, it was decided to offer this gigantic score in a large indoor space. This will be the first time this has been done and, for the occasion, the composer may even be present! The opportunity to rub shoulders with a true living legend, because that’s a bit what Michael Gordon is, founder, among other things, of the famous Bang on a Can festival in New York. In addition to Sixtrum and their French colleagues from the Percussions de Strasbourg and the Architek ensemble (from Montreal), to reach the number of 36 required by the score, the organisers also called on the EP4 group and percussion students from McGill University, the University of Montreal, UQAM, and the Montreal Conservatory! Imagine the joyful racket that will make in the Agora of UQAM! To talk about the work and the composer Michael Gordon, I met with the Deputy Artistic Director of Sixtrum, Fabrice Marandola.

INFOS

PAN M 360: Tell us about Michael Gordon. Who is he and what does his music represent?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Gordon is a composer from New York who founded, with Julia Wolfe and David Lang, the Bang on a Can festival about forty years ago. He is a representative of the new stylistic school associated with New York, a school of thought that relies heavily on pulse, beat, in contemporary musical creation. It’s a school that has a significant resonance in contemporary music, and Michael Gordon’s contribution is particularly notable, especially for percussion, as he has created several works for percussion ensembles. For example, Timber, an extraordinary score for six 2×4 wooden beams, the kind you can find at your local hardware store, quite simply. It’s crazy what he manages to create in terms of tones and sounds.

He is someone who is making a very strong mark on the contemporary percussion landscape. And the piece we are going to play, it has already been performed several times around the world.

It means it’s someone who attracts percussionists and who, at the same time, has a way of writing that makes programmers want to program this kind of somewhat crazy stuff.

PAN M 360: Is he part of the repetitive, “minimalist,” American school?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): I would say yes and no, actually. It’s perhaps more what we now call post-minimalist. There are differences with, for example, the original “repetitive” artists such as Steve Reich, who are in the exact repetition of the same cells, with gradual and subtle modifications. With Gordon, we are dealing with something that is in repetition but also in constant, more marked evolution. I’m going to make a big caricature: we’re perhaps somewhere between Steve Reich and Xenakis.

Why do I mention Xenakis? Because the timbres he uses are in wood, metal. Gordon really likes resonant metals, especially wood for Timber, where he explores this in depth. Xenakis liked that a lot too.

And then, there is a very interesting energy due to these large waves that rise and fall, which are quite typical of his writing.

PAN M 360: What is Field of Vision? Describe the music to us.

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Field of Vision is a large one-hour piece for 36 musicians (percussionists). And it was originally designed to be played outdoors, in parks.

The idea is to go into a large space, and have the musicians move from one place to another with their instruments. There is a somewhat ritualistic aspect to it. It’s a piece made up of four movements, of different lengths, and which notably begins with resonant things. Then there is a moment when we are with stones and with bundles of wood. There, it’s the ritual side where everyone moves around in a circle with the stones. Those who have the bundles of wood raise them above their heads, etc.

At other times, we use 24 brake drums in two circles of twelve.

PAN M 360: Brake drums?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Yes, yes, the stuff for car brakes! It has a metallic tinge with a tiny bit of resonance, but not much. And then, it doesn’t cost much… We add bass drums and tam-tams in a circular arrangement.

Then we move again. There is a lot of movement. The spectators, on the other hand, are free to wander wherever they want. The idea is that there is no specific place to listen. We can walk, we can evolve, we can move around, since it was designed for the outdoors.

Since we’re in Quebec and it’s early November, we didn’t want to take the risk of being outside. And so we’re going to be inside. And it’s the first time it will be played like this. UQAM welcomed us in its Judith-Jasmin Pavilion. When you get out of the subway station and go into UQAM, there’s this atrium that’s about four or five stories. We will be downstairs, on the first and second floors, while moving around. The spectators will be able to be downstairs, they will also be able to go to the second, third, and fourth floors. We will be able to see everything that happens, all the action.

Entry is free. So, whoever wants to can come, stop, enjoy. And then, if they like it, they stay. If they don’t like it, they are free to continue on their way. The idea is to bring the music where the people are.

As soon as there are humans gathering, there is often a ritual aspect. There is always a more or less conscious organisation of how we interact with each other. And so, Gordon, he ritualised the piece with movements 1, 2, and 4 that are very rhythmic and the third one that is very open with big breaths, big crescendos, and decrescendos.

At the end, we will have 36 suspended blades, with a dozen gongs facing each other on the other side, and bass drums. It will be like a very powerful, energising final ritual.

PAN M 360: Perhaps this is the beautiful quality of Michael Gordon, that he manages to offer avant-garde music, contemporary music that is quite rigorous, demanding, but at the same time very accessible… Is this the first time you’ve played his music?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Yes. We wanted to do Timber, but our colleagues from Quebec, EP4, ended up taking care of it. Since then, we were looking to do another piece by Michael Gordon and at the same time we were looking for works to do outdoors. I was flipping through and I came across Field of Vision. I said to myself, OK, this fits exactly with what we want to do. I then contacted the composer. This will be the first Canadian, and moreover, the first indoor performance. For these reasons, Gordon might be present! I don’t know yet.

And on top of that, we will have the Percussions de Strasbourg with us, for whom it will also be the first interpretation of Field of Vision. Imagine the honour and quality that will bring! With students from McGill, UQAM, the University of Montreal, and the Conservatory, plus colleagues from Architek and EP4, it will be the entire classical percussion community of Montreal, maybe the whole of Quebec, that will be there.

PAN M 360: What does it feel like to play with a legendary ensemble like the Percussions de Strasbourg?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): It’s fantastic, of course. We went to play with them in Europe, and they showed us their instrument reserves. I think there’s six or seven meters of instruments on shelves! The number of instruments they have is absolutely incredible.

We are lucky to have them in North America this time because they are coming to play for the 50th percussion convention in the United States called PASIC, Percussive Art Society International Convention. And it’s the first time they’re going to play at this festival, which is the largest gathering of percussionists in the world. It’s 6,000, 7,000 percussionists who gather for 3 days.

They will arrive in Montreal directly after. And so, we were lucky to have a small window to be able to have them with us.

Music lovers will have the great chance to enjoy them because they will give a concert at McGill on November 5 with music by Steve Reich, notably (Mallet Quartet among others). And then, on the morning of the 6th, they will give a masterclass at McGill.

And on the 7th, we’re having a concert at UQAM.

PAN M 360: Let me go back to Michael Gordon. What is the difficulty in playing his music?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): It’s music that is deceptively simple. It’s very rhythmic, so that, already, is reassuring. But it’s very precise in the way we “pass the baton,” actually, from one musician to another with the changes in speed. Each individual line has to be completely flexible and give the impression that they are very simple speed changes. But at the same time, we can’t afford to take a little bit of liberty on those changes because the next person follows on our speed. There are many, many details in the game. You have to be extremely precise for it to work.

Also, it’s an hour non-stop. You still need to stay focused for an hour.

The advantage, on the other hand, is that we get immediate pleasure from playing this music.

PAN M 360: There has long been snobbery displayed by the contemporary scene towards this musical aesthetic….

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Yes, especially from the European point of view. But that’s changing.

PAN M 360: Gordon participated in a certain democratisation of contemporary music with Bang on a Can, which we talked about earlier. A festival of non-dogmatic, relaxed creation, in which we could hear artists coming from scholarly academicism, jazz, rock, electro, free improvisation, etc. Can we dream of a Montreal Bang on a Can?

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): That would be great! Yes, it would be entirely possible! The colour would be different, as Montreal has a more European personality, but the diversity of artistic creativity here is fantastic and would lend itself perfectly to that.

PAN M 360: The indie-rock portion of the city would also bring something original and unique…

Fabrice Marandola (Sixtrum): Ah yes, indeed, that would be fantastic!

PAN M 360: We can dream about it. In any case, PAN M would be present!

The Orchestre symphonique de Laval’s (OSL) 2025-2026 season begins Wednesday, October 29, with its new artistic director and principal conductor, Adam Johnson. A native of Laval, Adam Johnson was conductor-in-residence at the OSM before taking on this important role in Laval, a role he shares with other conductors in Guelph, Ontario, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Very happy in his new role, he reviews the OSL’s various programs for its 2025-2026 season. Meet Adam Johnson, interviewed by Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

TICKETS AND INFO HERE

At the end of my review of Adrianne Munden-Dixon’s album Vision Mantra, released a few weeks ago, I said how much I wished this innovative artist was 100% Montreal-based (at that time, I still believed she was split between New York and Montreal). That’s how highly I think of her. You can imagine the pleasure I had during the interview I conducted with the young woman from the United States when she told me that she had recently obtained her Canadian permanent residency and that she is now, indeed, 100% Montrealer! Moreover, her French learning is progressing well, and she even conducted part of the conversation in Molière’s language (the majority was done in English to facilitate fluency).

READ THE REVIEW OF ADRIANNE MUNDEN-DIXON’S ALBUM VISION MANTRA

It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to introduce her to you, hoping that you’ll make a wonderful discovery, because the young lady is brilliant and always at the forefront of the most stimulating creations on the contemporary scene of our city. Here is this interview, divided into multiple sections.

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Love for Baroque

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Use of Electronics in Vision Mantra

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Getting good in French (en français!)

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – ”I’m greedy!”

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Love for Montreal

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – From Georgia to NYC to MTL

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Surf competitor!

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – What about the title of the new album, Vision Mantra?

Interview – Adrianne Munden Dixon – Who is Adrianne Munden-Dixon?

Rau_Ze is a singer-songwriter duo composed of Rose Perron and Félix Paul. Together, they blend their worlds—Félix’s Cartesian rigor and Rose’s poetic intuition—to create vibrant, heartfelt, and irresistibly danceable neo-soul R&B.

Their debut album Virer nos vies, released in 2024 on 117 Records, sincerely addresses romantic relationships, mental health, addiction, and invisible work. Combining influences from jazz, funk, hip-hop, trip-hop, and Y2K pop, the duo unfolds an authentic writing style, carried by warm grooves and a great humanity. The album, which has accumulated nearly two million streams, was celebrated to sold-out audiences in Montreal and Quebec City, and earned them numerous notable accolades.

Rau_Ze presents today Re;;;Virer nos vies, an expanded and expanded version of the first opus. With two new eclectic tracks, Félix Paul and Rose Perron once again demonstrate their versatility and their desire to reinvent themselves, without ever betraying their distinctive musical signature. The rhythmic warmth of Brazilian music from the 60s and 70s permeates La dérive, while the cyberpunk energy of Travaille toute la nuit brings back the raw passion of their stage performances.

Accompanied by Henri Bouchard (bass), Juan Espitia (drums) and Julien Fillion (saxophone), they offer an electric and sensitive show, where Rose’s intense voice and the group’s complicity transport the audience between gentleness and explosion.

Rau_Ze performs at Coup de Cœur Francophone on November 6 at 9 p.m. at Rockette Bar.

Rodolphe Mathieu (1890-1962), Lionel Daunais (1901-1982), André Prévost (1934-2001), Claude Vivier (1948-1983), Rachel Laurin (1961-2023) and also the (very) living Denis Gougeon, Ana Sokolović, Louis Desjarlais, Francis Battah and others Pascal Germain-Berardi, without naming them all, have this in common: composition for choral singing.

And this is why, in the context of its 60th anniversary under the theme of intergenerational dialogue, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) presents the program Au Chœur du Québec at the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, on October 30th.

Under the direction of Pascal Germain-Berardi, who has a background as a choir conductor, combined with other practices in contemporary music and even prog metal as well, a choir of 24 singers will be brought together to illustrate many generations of Quebec composition dedicated to choral singing. And that is why PAN M 360 presents this interview with Pascal Germain-Berardi.

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PAN M 360: How was this program designed for 24 performers instead of 16, as originally planned?

Pascal Germain-Berardi: When I provided all my production information to the SMCQ, we were working on a scenario of 16 performers. Since then, we have obtained additional funding, which allows us to do the concert with 24 singers, which has expanded our deployment.

PAN M 360: Are these arrangements of works adapted for choral singing?

Pascal Germain-Berardi: These are not arrangements, they are compositions for choral singing, works by composers who have marked the history of Quebec, or by younger composers. It’s true that Lionel Daunais, for example, has made many choral arrangements of traditional music. But we will be performing Sous le pont Mirabeau, an original work he composed on a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire.

PAN M 360: Does it seem like this is not the very beginning of this project?

Pascal Germain-Berardi: This project dates back to 2018, when it was called Au choeur de Montréal. And this is the first time we’ve done an iteration of it. In 2018, I had chosen exclusively Montreal composers. What gave me this idea was the 375th anniversary of Montreal, which had taken place shortly before. Afterward, we managed to schedule a tour of the Maisons de la culture. We also received a nomination for an Opus Prize. From this adventure emerged the idea of ​​a more global project on Quebec to broaden the palette. Rachel Laurin, for example, grew up in Mirabel, André Prévost in Saint-Jérôme. So that allowed us to embrace the entire Quebec territory. Since the beginning of this project, we have given around twenty concerts in Montreal, Laval, Drummondville, Beloeil, Sorel-Tracy, etc. We even performed in Chile. And here is this occasion with the SMCQ for its 60th anniversary.

PAN M 360: Is there any added value for this anniversary program?

Pascal Germain Berardi: I decided to offer the widest possible range of new pieces that I had never performed before. Some of these works were impossible to perform with smaller choirs. André Prévost’s Soleil couchant, for example, was conceived for six voices, which is difficult to do with 12 or 16 choristers. With 24, it works very well.

Nature, the piece by Rodolphe Mathieu that we’re going to do, was the first movement of what would become his last work, Symphony for Human Voices, which he was unable to complete before his death. This movement is presented for a double six-part choir, so 12 voices at certain points. Obviously, it works at 24, which is a multiple of 6.

PAN M 360: This program is therefore part of a continuum and is currently being renewed. Still a motivation?

Pascal Germain Berardi: I noticed that there was too little effort to defend what we might call our musical historical heritage. That’s why this project was born and continues. From one year to the next, this project does not lose its relevance. I have the opportunity to renew the repertoire while maintaining the same concept, the same title that embodies this idea of ​​defending our musical history.

PAN M 360: Can your Temps Fort choir rely on a stable core to carry out its missions?

Pascal Germain-Berardi: Temps Fort is the production organization I founded, with which I carry out my projects. When we started, it was limited to choir concerts. After a few years of activity, I managed to lead other projects with instrumentalists and build a reputation. In fact, we are currently in a crowdfunding campaign to help us finance our next album. But I have a core group of artists who have been there since the very first concert we did in 2014, at a time when we were still students, and no one was getting paid. We were young people who were hungry!

PAN M 360: And appetite comes with eating!

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According to the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, Jericho was the first city in the land of Canaan to be conquered by Joshua and the Hebrews. On the seventh day after the siege began, the walls of Jericho were said to have collapsed by the will of God, following the procession of the Ark of the Covenant and seven priests blowing seven shofars (trumpets). The procession is said to have paraded around the city seven times over seven days, after which Jericho was completely destroyed and its inhabitants exterminated.

This is the source of the title and form of a concerto for trombone and orchestra composed by Samy Moussa, originally from Montreal and living in Berlin, where PAN M 360 contacted him a few days before the performance of his work by the OSM, his principal trombone James Box, under the direction of his principal conductor Rafael Payare.

The viewing (below) of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Yericho, Trombone Concerto, allows us to virtually experience what will happen on the stage of the Maison symphonique, on Wednesday 22 and Saturday 25 October.

Samy Moussa offers us several other keys here to help us understand his work.

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

PAN M 360: How did you construct this work around the trombone?

Samy Moussa: I’m going to start with the instrumentation angle because that’s where I started.

PAN M 360: Already, the trombone is an instrument that is rarely used as a soloist in a symphonic context.

Samy Moussa: The trombone as a solo instrument does indeed pose certain problems. One of them is its history and repertoire. Indeed, there are very few trombone concertos. In general, the way the trombone is used doesn’t always convince me. I tried to do something different with the trombone, that is, to restore all its facets, that is, its strength. Also, it is an instrument capable of vulnerability. It is also an instrument that can be extremely virtuosic.

PAN M 360: Absolutely. It’s precisely an element that is very little exploited in the classical world, whereas in jazz, solo virtuosity has been so for the trombone for a long time.

Samy Moussa: Naturally, I speak from my expertise.

PAN M 360: You are absolutely right to say that in the classical, modern or contemporary repertoire, there are very few solo works for trombone.

Samy Moussa: That’s an important element for me. Obviously, there’s the heroic aspect of the instrument that also manifests itself. That’s for the trombone. Then, it had to be given a setting. And there, the usual orchestra, whether classical or romantic, didn’t suit me either for questions of timbre, questions of color, to be more precise. I didn’t want an orchestra that was too colorful. I wanted an orchestra that had fewer colors. I told myself that it wouldn’t be more monochromatic overall, but I didn’t want extremely distinct, extremely particular timbres. I wanted a sound mainly in brass and strings. There are also percussions (timpani) and the organ, an organ that isn’t a soloist but is very much part of the orchestra. Obviously, there’s a certain depth.

PAN M 360: So, an organ that blends into the orchestra. How many players are required in total, behind the trombone?

Samy Mousa: It depends. There are strings. It varies. There are two trumpets, four horns, the organ, two timpanists, and a solo trombone. It’s small but very powerful.

PAN M 360: It’s not an intimate work at all, indeed. And how many strings?

Samy Moussa: Strings vary. It depends on the orchestra. It depends on what we can do where we are. For example, we can play a Mozart symphony with eight first violins, but we can also play the same symphony with six, or with 12, or with 14. That’s what varies. Obviously, it won’t be tiny either, but what I mean is, it’s not a huge orchestra.

It’s a fairly small orchestra, but very powerful. Especially since the soloist plays a powerful instrument in its own right.

PAN M 360: It’s an instrument that has long been used to give power to the orchestra. And now, it becomes a soloist. And increasingly, it will become more so because you won’t be the last to compose for solo trombonists, I imagine.

Samy Moussa: In any case, there are several concertos that have been created before me, and there will be more after, for sure. But I still insist on the fact that it is an instrument capable of vulnerability and inner feelings. So, the trombone is not simply a fanfare instrument.

PAN M 360: The way you use it, we’re far from that! That is to say, you have nevertheless developed a complex melodic discourse. The motifs that the trombonist has to execute are difficult, very demanding.

Samy Moussa: I would like to point out that when I write this piece, regardless of the works I consume, virtuosity is not such an important element for me. It’s not an element I think about. Obviously, it’s a virtuoso work, but it’s not an end in itself.

PAN M 360: Of course, it’s not the spectacular aspect of a work or composition that guarantees its quality. Virtuosity, technical efficiency, and the acrobatics of a great musician are certainly no guarantees of good music.

Samy Moussa: Yes, that’s it. There is virtuosity, but this virtuosity is born, let’s say, from the necessity of expression. I hope it’s quite organic.

PAN M 360: It is. There are many elements in this speech, it’s very varied. In this regard, how did you script your own compositional speech for trombone and orchestra?

Samy Moussa: In terms of its overall form, there are seven movements that follow one another. There is, however, a moment in the middle of the work where there is a pause. So, it’s a work that is in two parts divided into seven movements. This is important because the seven movements are inspired by biblical symbolism. What the orchestra does at the beginning is transformed throughout the work.

PAN M 360: I’d like you to quickly go over how the trombone work was done specifically. Because there are some extremely interesting note clusters that are served up. But you could explain it much better than I can.

That is to say, motifs return and are expressed in an upward spiral. And we arrive at a certain apotheosis towards the end.

Samy Moussa: Obviously, there’s a trajectory. It’s a piece that I unified and didn’t separate. It’s still, let’s say, a single piece. Let’s say that the purpose of this work manifests itself in several ways. And that’s important to me. So, from that point of view, it’s not a classical work. Generally, there are very contrasting things in a classical work, whereas, in this case, it only stops once in the center and then starts again in a slow movement, which very quickly picks up the elements from the beginning. So, we find ourselves in the same movement, in the same space.

The work begins with a descending semitone, quite violent, quite insistent. And this motif metamorphoses throughout the piece, adopting different facets. Even in the slow movement, we find it again, it loses its aggressive side, becomes insistent, becomes supplicatory, becomes something else in any case.

And at the end, this descending semitone element that slides, we find it a little faster. And it seems new in a certain way. It’s very technical, I don’t know if it’s interesting.

PAN M 360: Yes, it’s interesting! We’re fed up with cultural journalism that says nothing about forms.

Samy Moussa: Okay! (laughs) The first movement, or the first two, I don’t remember, well the beginning to be sure I’m telling the truth, is based only on chords that are neither major nor minor, and which are still chords with thirds, but the thirds are neutral. Which means that these thirds are between major and minor, it’s really between the two. It’s a quarter tone lower than a major third, or a quarter tone higher than a minor third.

PAN M 360: Could we say that this choice is close to the scales of oriental music?

Samy Moussa: No, I have no expertise in these things. Quarter tones are found all over the world, and they are found here too. I’m currently studying American folklore, and if you listen to children singing nursery rhymes, for example, they will often use neutral thirds. So, there will be quarter tones by instinct as well. So, it’s not something exotic at all.

PAN M 360: But why are they neutral thirds?

Samy Moussa: Because there’s a trajectory where we go from neutral thirds at the beginning of the work and become major or minor, and major at the end. So, it’s a completely neutral color, to arrive at an affirmative color at the end. We’re in C-sharp major. And at the beginning, we’re in D-flat E-major/minor, let’s say. So, it’s a bit of a parallel we can make with pre-romantic composers like Beethoven, whose Fifth Symphony in C minor makes the progression between a C minor and a C major, the triumph at the end. It’s a bit of that kind of trajectory.

PAN M 360: You speak of seven movements inspired by biblical writings. Could you explain this structure inspired by the number seven, and which bears an absolutely biblical title. Yericho recalls the famous trumpets of Jericho, mentioned in the Old Testament, which bring down the city’s palisades.

Samy Moussa: It inspired me a lot. Inspired isn’t the right word, actually. It allowed me to activate my imagination, let’s put it that way, because inspiration isn’t a word I normally use. And what interested me was the idea of ​​ritual.

PAN M 360: And how does this idea resonate in your music?

Samy Moussa: Ritual is an integral part of classical music anyway. It’s always a ritual, the concert, but mass is certainly a ritual, and theater is also a ritual. Yes, there are all kinds of rituals. Some are sacred, some are not. And so, that’s very interesting, very important to me, the idea of ​​ritual. And of intensification.

PAN M 360: And in the context of this work?

Samy Moussa: So, it’s this ritual where we surround the city of Jericho for 7 days. So, it’s a 7-day ritual, hence the 7 movements. And so, on the first day, we surround the city once, with the army, second time… On the 7th day, we surround the city 7 times, with a horn and a shout. And this shout brings down the city. And what’s interesting is that there are 7 horns, so I also have 7 horns: solo trombone, 2 trumpets and 4 horns, that makes 7.

PAN M 360: The Maison symphonique will resist, all the same!

Samy Moussa: We hope so! (laughs) And there’s an optional chorus that I wrote. At the very end, it’s 8 notes, it’s almost nothing. It’s symbolic, it’s not at all necessary, but it’s still in the score, if we want to do it eventually. That won’t be the case in Montreal, but it’s an option for other performances.

PAN M 360: Do you have any spiritual convictions regarding the Old Testament, or is it strictly a choice that lends itself well to this evocation of ritual?

Samy Moussa: I don’t really know how to answer this question, it’s a bit private… yes.

PAN M 360: It’s your choice, it’s everyone’s choice.

Samy Moussa: Let’s just say that what interests me is the idea of ​​ritual and everything that comes from it. Symbolically, it’s a form of obedience too. Ultimately, why does the wall fall? It’s not the ritual that brings the wall down, it’s obedience to God. But here, we’re moving a little outside the musical realm…

PAN M 360: Your aesthetic refers to several overlapping eras. You’re not concerned with the era of references. It comes out, and you’ve chosen to combine different stylistic references.

Samy Moussa: I don’t work at all with what you might call references or referents; I don’t have that post-modernist approach. I don’t think about it. One of my teachers, José Evangelista, told me, “We write the music we can.” At the time, I found it quite simple. I finally understood. Obviously, there’s always the question of decision, because the artist is constantly deciding. That’s what’s exhausting about this work. The bases on which we rely to make these decisions can only be aesthetic, in my opinion. They are not political decisions or historical questions.

PAN M 360: You are nevertheless part of a historical continuity.

Samy Moussa: Yes, what’s important is continuity. It’s about continuing the tradition, doing your bit as best you can. And that’s it.

PROGRAM

Rafael Payare, conductor

James Box, solo trombone of OSM

Brian Manker, solo cello of the OSM

Œuvres

Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser : « Ouverture » (12 min)

Samy Moussa, Concerto pour trombone « Yericho » (25 min) 🍁

Entracte (20 min)

Ernest Bloch, Schelomo, Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra, B. 39 (20 min)

Richard Strauss, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, op. 30, TrV 176 (33 min)

Electroacoustic percussionist and composer Sébastien Forrester creates music that is simultaneously emotional, kinetic, and intellectually explosive. Through his choice of instruments, he explores the recesses of a repressed imagination, linked to rare materials—in this case, minerals and stones. In this interview, he explains the unfolding of this exploratory process, and why the Satosphère represents its ultimate culmination.

Les Yeux Fermés invites the imagination to fully embrace space through sound. This acousmatic experience will reveal the Satosphère as a cinema for the ear, where two renowned artists unveil the fruit of a spatialization residency. December explores a new musical territory in an ambient style composed for the image, while Sébastien Forrester develops his hybrid practice, at the crossroads of percussion and electroacoustic composition. An experience not to be missed.

Les Yeux Fermés at the SAT, October 23. Info and tickets HERE

PAN M 360: You will be doing a residency at the S.A.T. this week. Are the pieces being presented next Thursday new creations composed for the occasion, or are they reinterpretations of your existing works?

Sébastien Forrester: I hesitated at first, then I realized that adapting pre-existing works – especially some of my latest pieces, which are very dense and relatively orchestral – would take me a considerable amount of time and energy. So I preferred the first option!

I was fortunate enough to experiment with a small lithophone a few months ago. Having worked extensively with the vibraphone, metallophone, and marimba in recent years, I was struck by the purity of the stone’s resonances. I extracted the body of this new work from it: all the harmonies that listeners will hear come from it.

I have also accumulated a huge amount of mineral and geological field recordings, made between Brittany, Auvergne, Morocco, Reunion Island and Iceland since 2017. I regularly extract patterns, textures, and sometimes even rhythmic sequences from them. With all these elements, I have created a series of sound environments that will serve as a basis for improvising live with a drum kit at the SAT. I wanted to create a dialogue between stone and percussion.

PAN M 360: What do you hope to accomplish during this residency?

Sébastien Forrester: My goal is always essentially exploratory. I work on instinct, I let my emotions guide me and I try, afterward, to extract a concept, a direction or a narrative arc. In the case of this new commission at the SAT, the objective is simply to bring new musical ideas to life in three dimensions and in a limited time, while ensuring that they can be deployed appropriately on the 93 speakers of the dome. I am very much looking forward to confronting them in space.

PAN M 360: In such a unique location, there can be a learning curve with the tools. How do you think you balance this technical learning while maintaining a creative sensibility?

Sébastien Forrester: The vast technical possibilities offered by the SAT’s sound system are proving to be much more stimulating than restrictive at the moment. I’m more focused on projection than execution, as I won’t be going there until next week. However, they have forced me to be much more methodical than usual: to organize the sound sources by layers, by locations, by clusters; to think about their coexistence with the live percussion as well. To establish a real architecture, a precise mapping of the sound. I’ve even drawn placements, trajectories, which had never happened to me before.

PAN M 360: The listening experience you’re offering is unusual. How accessible is it to a wide audience, and how would you recommend preparing for it?

Sébastien Forrester: All forms of sound art are inherently accessible to everyone, insofar as we have been producing sounds, shaping them, and sharing them since the dawn of time. I recently discovered that lithophones have existed for several thousand years. Being able to listen to a work in a place like the SAT represents the height of this sharing approach, because the place offers the optimal conditions for listening, feeling, immersing oneself, and letting oneself be carried away. I would advise the public to come curious and open-minded, in search of discoveries.

PAN M 360: Where do you think this feeling of immersion lies? Is it more sensory, imaginative, or emotional?

Sébastien Forrester: I would spontaneously say all three; they are, moreover, intimately linked. The senses create the first impression, the apprehension of the environment and the experience, then the imagination anchors it in memory and makes it palpable.

PAN M 360: How does total darkness and the ban on phones fundamentally change the audience’s relationship with music, compared to a traditional concert?

Sébastien Forrester: Darkness increases the perception of surrounding sounds. When you’re deprived of one sense, the others are only reinforced. I remember experiencing sounds inside a cave in the Lot region; during the visit, the speleologist briefly deprived us of light. It was then that I truly became aware of the complexity of the sound environment, the richness of the sources, the frequencies, the reverberations, the sounds of our bodies. Being plunged into darkness is immensely revealing.

PAN M 360: The G.R.I.S. spatialization software used at the S.A.T. was designed by composer Robert Normandeau, who is also, coincidentally, one of the pioneers of “cinema for the ear.” What do you think of this strong link between spatialization and sound narration?

Sébastien Forrester: Splitting sound sources, distributing or locating them, moving them, making them evolve in space naturally tells a story. It’s a process that allows us to recreate a certain familiarity, or even to play with it, alter it, distort it, and create a variation that defies understanding. In our daily world, the situations and moments we experience, sounds constantly surround us; they are never distributed across a stereo band like when we listen to WAV or MP3 files. Spatialization allows us to restore this natural arrangement while augmenting it with an infinite number of wonderful possibilities. It’s an extremely inspiring mode of composition, and to be confronted with it for the very first time at the SAT is an incredible opportunity.

Tomas More, also known as December, explains how he found the perfect creative process: accepting that there isn’t one, but despite this fact, having fun. He expresses with conviction that for him, tinkering is vital. But this looseness isn’t reckless; rather, it’s a nuance he brings to a refined and delicate practice. His latest album, released in September, I Stumble, I Walk, attests to this fact. A free but structured music, familiar textures renewed by a powerful emotional current. I wanted to interview December to expand on this sometimes elusive idea of ​​creativity, but I came away with a completely different perspective.

“Les Yeux Fermés” invites imagination to take the place of the image and listening to fully embrace space. This acousmatic experience will reveal the Satosphère in cinema for the ear, where two renowned artists unveil the fruit of a spatialization residency. While December will explore this new musical territory in an ambient style composed for the image, Sébastien Forrester will develop his hybrid practice, at the crossroads of percussion and electroacoustic composition. An experience not to be missed.

Until you experience that, here’s that conversation with December.

DECEMBER 23, UNDER THE SAT DOME. TICKETS AND INFO HERE

PAN M 360: In your artist statement on the album Stumble, I Walk, your vision of experimentation is to “hold on to creation as a movement.” I’d like to expand on that a bit: Was there a time in your creation where you tended to get creatively stuck? How did you learn to keep moving forward?

December: At the heart of the December project is this story of blockage. I have no academic training; I didn’t go to a conservatory, I don’t know music theory, I didn’t play an instrument when I was little. Electronic music attracted me because it allowed people who didn’t have classical training to be able to tinker; to test things with a lot of spontaneity, in a self-taught way.

Before using the name December, I had another alias, and the creation of the December project came precisely from a fairly long period of blockage during which I… It’s not that I couldn’t make music, but I couldn’t be satisfied with it, let’s say.

I wasn’t very excited or inspired by what I was producing and I wanted to change musical direction. Making music is one thing, but making music that feels personal is very different, and that’s important to me. For a good year, let’s say, I struggled with this idea.

So I was doing things, but I found that it wasn’t unique, not original enough, not different enough perhaps from what was being done today.

For a year, I really wasn’t very satisfied, I was doing things that I didn’t really like. And one day, there was the beginning of something that wasn’t at all finished, but there was a lead, you know, the beginning of something that excited me again, that I liked again.

And even the name December came from there, that is to say, I was looking for a new name, which I couldn’t find. When I made this first piece that excited me a little, it was the first day of December, and I said to myself, well, we need something simple, and that’s where it came from.

PAN M 360: It’s curious that this December appearance happened a bit suddenly, you could say. Can you tell us a bit about what happened? Any tools or just a passing thought?

December: The title of this album refers to that. I think it’s quite mysterious; why, for a while, we can’t do what we want to do, we do things we don’t like and then suddenly it happens. It’s inexplicable. And the desire to change the name was more linked to a kind of boredom.

Sometimes, in fact, when we are performing, especially in interviews, we use promotional or journalistic formulas, we are all a little tempted to sell an ideal version of what the creative process is, when in fact, there are plenty of moments where we are disappointed, where we don’t succeed, where we are blocked, where we are bored. And for me it is important that this is not made invisible.

PAN M 360: It may seem like a silly question, but why is it important for you, in your music, to experiment, to renew yourself?

December: So, I think there are several things to answer. First of all, I want to say that experimentation or experimental are words that annoy me a little sometimes, because it can have a bit of an arrogant side when you say about yourself that you make experimental music. Experimentation? I would say yes and no. I do try to avoid formulas and comfort zones. At the same time, I don’t want to make people believe that I’m constantly experimenting.

I think it’s a bit of a cross between the two. It’s about being yourself, being consistent, and making sure there’s a line. It’s important to me in records that things aren’t constantly revolutionary, that they have both a guiding principle and a renewal. So, it’s neither experimentation nor formula, as you say.

It’s a bit of something that’s quite intangible, quite mysterious between the two. How do you avoid reinventing yourself to the point of no longer being recognizable? It happens between redundancy and renewal. It’s a balance. Inevitably, our creations reflect our innermost functioning. I think I have a relationship with music. I say it often and I really mean it, that I wouldn’t like music to become something too serious for me. That is to say, I wouldn’t like to over-intellectualize it. For it to become something too conceptual, too cerebral, too stuffy.

I want it to be a space where I’m a little free because life outside of that is already difficult enough, full of rules, codes, and other things that limit you. Earning a living, managing to survive, living in a world that’s becoming more and more reactionary, even fascist. Having little places where you can feel free to tinker isn’t that common, I think. And it’s very important. I think it’s almost vital, in fact. It rebalances other areas of life where we can do it less, and it keeps us going. I feel like it keeps me going.

PAN M 360: How do you feel about a residency at the S.A.T.? How do you see yourself tinkering in this space?

December: I’ve never been there, it’s the first time I’ll be going to Montreal and Canada. From the outside, it seems like the quintessence of something extremely precious, a very sophisticated, very complex technological screen, which doesn’t seem at all conducive to tinkering. My little pleasure is because I only know how to make music like that.

I wouldn’t be able to invent myself and suddenly become a technician. I’m going to tinker with something that will be, in my opinion, much less sophisticated, much less technical or purely mastered than what many other people, musicians, who perhaps come with the baggage of having done this many times, do. For me, it will be the first time that I’ve done a piece for an acousmonium, at least for spatialization. I’m going to do it in my own slightly tinkered way.

PAN M 360: Earlier, you were telling me that for the SAT project, you have new musical ideas that you wanted to propose, a bit like the beginning of a project moving away from what we hear in your music, which can be more “club”. Can you tell us a bit about this new approach?

December: Since I was a kid, my dream has been to make film music, soundtracks. And despite having this job for about fifteen years in the cinema, I never wanted to force this practice. I always wanted to wait for the right moment, especially because I’m annoying, I have rather annoying tastes in cinema, quite specific. And I wanted to wait for people whose films I really like to eventually suggest a moment to do this kind of exercise. And it turns out that for the past year or two, some friends around me have been making films and have asked me to write the music for their films.

And so, this piece that I’m going to play at the SAT is part of a kind of evolution over the last year and a half, two years, where I’ve been working on music for images. Maybe next year I’ll have a new alias that will really be dedicated only to more ambient things, without rhythm. There, it will be something where there will be very little rhythm or none at all, much more ethereal, much more minimalist and which has, let’s say, the particularity of stepping back a little and leaving space for the image. And what interested me in the approach of the SAT concert, which Guillaume Sorge invited me to play, is that there, it’s an evening where there will be no image. We will be in this magnificent room, a dome with screens everywhere, but which will be turned off.

I think that often, when we listen to music, we imagine shapes, images, even when we don’t have any images in front of us. When we listen to records that we like, that was a bit of an exercise that I wanted to try.

PAN M 360: It reminds me of cinema for the ear. Music composed visually, without images. You now work in the film industry, composing soundtracks. How would you describe the relationship between sound and image?

December: I find that we underestimate sound, in a society of omnipresent images, we underestimate the power of sound. And what you describe, I didn’t know, but it interests me, to imagine that almost the best way to evoke cinema is not to show images, it’s to just listen to music that would make you think of cinema, or of scenes, or of images.

For me, there’s nothing purer. And in the history of cinema, there are multiple examples of films that, for example, don’t have music, but are nevertheless very musical in their own way. Or film scenes where there are no images, only sound. And yet, they are extremely powerful from a formal point of view. And the relationship between image and sound, I find that it’s always like that. One is always linked to the other, even when it’s not present. Especially when things are minimalist.

I find that minimalism is very powerful for that. So, for example, I’m going to play this music that I’m going to call ambient because I don’t have any other words and language is annoying because we don’t always have the precise words, but we have to use it. So I want to say ambient to be quick, but it will be mixed with field recordings that I recorded in different places, notably during a residency at the same time last year.

Exactly a year ago, I was lucky enough to receive a grant from the French Institute to go to Hong Kong for six weeks to record a sound project. And I recorded sounds in different neighborhoods, including a completely crazy neighborhood that was destroyed in the 90s. When the British colonial administration handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese regime, they destroyed a neighborhood that was crazy, that was very, very unsanitary, but that was quite fascinating, in West Kowloon, the Kowloon citadel.

And I recorded in this place where now there’s a park and everything, a lot of sounds, and I’m going to play some of it at the SAT. So there will be a mix of field recordings: street noises, kids, people playing basketball, and very ethereal ambient music. And I think the field recordings are really powerful too. You really feel like you can feel things more sometimes when you just have the sound of a street. Focusing only on the sound is sometimes more powerful as a truth.

PAN M 360: Yes, there is a beautiful tradition of concrete music with recordings, Luc Ferrari is a good example.

December: A fairly modest example, yes.

PAN M 360: What would you say are some cinematic references, in terms of sound and image, that have had a big impact on you?

December: In terms of imagery, it’s Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which is really a film about someone who hears a sound. It’s almost a film without music, you see, it’s a film that has the courage, the intelligence to think of sound as something other than this often hackneyed idea that music is orchestral compositions, stuff that’s always hyper-melodic, hyper-demonstrative.

There, it’s someone who hears a sound and doesn’t know where it’s coming from, who goes looking for it. What is this almost visceral relationship with sound? It’s a crazy film for that. There’s a scene for me that is really incredible at the end, when Tilda Swinton meets this man who scales fish along a river and who talks to her about things a bit like often in Apichatonga’s films, about ghosts, past lives, previous lives, things that are a bit crazy, a bit psychedelic.

She follows him into a house, they sit down at the table and they have a rather long discussion where he tells her about past scenes that he is supposed to have experienced in previous lives. And at one point, he describes a scene that we don’t see and the sound of their discussion, the sound of the scene we are watching disappears. And it is the sound of these stories that just appears like that.

Honestly, it’s something technically super simple. It’s been around since the Lumière Brothers, since the invention of cinema. It’s almost a basic trifecta in the history of the invention of cinema, but it’s incredibly powerful. When I saw it, I said to myself, damn, but in fact, all the 3D, CGI, 4DX in the world will never have this power of simple things when they’re done, of seeing a scene and having the sound of something else. And for a few seconds, you say to yourself, what the hell is this? It’s something physically super powerful. Really, really, it’s very powerful.

The scene in the studio too, where she’s trying to get a producer to find the sound she’s hearing, and he’s playing her samples of kicks, percussion and everything, it’s great.

PAN M 360: I imagine you can relate to that feeling.

December: It’s a pretty common feeling to hear something and not know what it is. You think, but wait, what was that noise? Especially a sound, though, that doesn’t exist. There are a lot of concepts in this film that are fascinating.

PAN M 360: Thomas, thank you very much for this discussion. Very interesting!

December: Thanks, Loïc. It was great.

Three nights in a row this week, Chants Libres presents Fantôme de Roy, a musical theatre inspired by a medieval confrontation between the King of England, Henry II Plantagenet, and his chancellor, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Nearly a millennium ago, this confrontation culminated in the assassination of the archbishop in 1170: four knights who supported the king executed Thomas Becket near the altar of the famous English cathedral. The “turbulent priest,” to use the term used by the king, who was exasperated by his former friend’s ambitions, was eliminated while attempting to strengthen Catholic power in England, something Henry II strongly opposed.

An artistic evocation of this mythical conflict between royal power and clerical power, Fantôme de Roy raises the intrinsic fury and violence of human power, “in a dramatic fresco woven from medieval and contemporary texts”.

Grand organ, electric guitar, electroacoustic score, choir and solo voices, this is the musical configuration of this Fantôme de Roy, to which is juxtaposed a libretto made up of texts from the 12th and 13th centuries. The texts of the medieval author Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence have been taken, adapted and rewritten by the Austrian author Thomas Ballhausen and the composer Thomas Cornelius Desi. The performers of this musical theater will be the guitarist Jonathan Barriault, the organist Olivier Saint-Pierre as well as the mezzo-soprano Marie-Annick Béliveau.

The latter being the artistic director of Chants libres which presents this production with the support of Vivier, she is the perfect interlocutor for this interview.

Fantôme de Roy is playing from Thursday, October 23 to Saturday, October 25 at Sacré-Coeur de Jésus. Tickets and information are available here.



PAN M 360: How, roughly speaking, is the plot of this “dramatic fresco woven from medieval and contemporary texts” drawn?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: We tried to keep a formula that could refer a little to average French, to the French of that time, because the essential text of the booklet is written in French from the 12th and 13th centuries. So, we tried to make a compromise so that it would still be readable and speak to today’s audience. But it’s an expression that we took directly from the langue d’oïl.

PAN M 360: What was the primary motivation?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: For me, it’s mainly this interest I had for this language, also because it tells the story of the assassination of Saint Thomas Becket which took place at the end of the 12th century. And we take texts that tell, that relate the events. These texts were written shortly after his murder.

And what I found fascinating was to see that Thomas Becket was completely bilingual. When he was in his circle, he spoke English, but when he was at court, he spoke in French. And I found that it was very similar to my reality today: in one day, I will have as many activities in English as in French, I have French-speaking and English-speaking collaborators, I work and I live in both languages. Like Thomas Becket! In almost 1000 years, in fact, it has changed very little. We were already in the Bonjour, hi! at the time.

PAN M 360: Haha! Compared to the Montreal reality, it’s indeed comparable. And where does your own participation come from?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: This show premiered in Vienna in 2023. Composer Thomas Desi asked me to create this show here, which was originally given on the occasion of an anniversary of the Chapel of the Imperial Palace in Vienna. And so, it was in the context of these festivities that the show premiered in Vienna and that composer Thomas Desi composed this score.

What I found quite sweet was that Thomas contacted me and said, “I thought of you to create the role of the narrator – who sings a little bit – because it’s in 12th-century French and it’s quite close to the language you speak in Quebec. I laughed at this observation, then I said to myself, “Well, still, we have to do it!” I wouldn’t say I was insulted, but…

And when I started working on this old French with a professor of medieval literature at the University of Montreal, with whom I studied the texts in question and their pronunciation, I had to admit that, in fact, this language is surprisingly familiar to us. You listen to La Sagouine again, then you read the text as we can imagine it was pronounced at the time, and frankly, the similarities are astonishing.

PAN M 360: So yes, there is a part of truth in this medieval component of American French.

Marie-Annick Béliveau: And that means that Thomas Desi wasn’t entirely wrong. But what’s also very surprising is that in the French we speak here, the way we use anglicisms is actually not like in France where we say “parking” and “week-end”; anglicisms here are more diverted, intrinsically linked to our vocabulary. In fact, we share that with the langue d’oïl, which is very particular and really very amusing.

And so, the show includes this whole aspect that is sung or narrated, recited in the langue d’oïl. But there is also modern English, there is also modern French and then there are even little bits in German because, all the same, I wanted to preserve a little bit of the color of the original creation in Vienna.

PAN M 360: Tell us about the text, first that of Guerne de Pont-Saint-Maxence.

Marie-Annick Béliveau: It was a monk who wrote this immense work in the 13th century, the biography of Saint Thomas Becket. And this text is also used a lot. The entire play is based on the illuminations of Matthew Paris, illustrated about a century after the murder of Thomas Becket.

PAN M 360: And Thomas Ballhausen?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: He’s an author and professor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. He collaborates with Thomas, which he’s also done on other projects. So everything in modern English and German in the show is written by him.

PAN M 360: And where does Thomas Cornelius Desi come from? Who is he?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: Actually, he’s a composer I met a long time ago at the Abbaye de Royaumont, when we were both participating in the Voix Nouvelles Academy workshop. He’s based in Vienna, and he’s very active on the European scene of what they call Musiktheater there. It’s a form, I would say, in the making here in Canada, in America, that we’re starting to see emerge a little more. So, it’s not a musical, it has nothing to do with Broadway, it could also be related to musical theater. We’re moving away a little from opera to move into more theatrical forms, which are also something that’s a little more performative. Initially, Thomas is a composer of contemporary music, very well-versed and particularly in the lyrical repertoire. I am thinking of one of the creations he made last year, based on Puccini’s operas, based on the composer’s correspondence.

In addition, Thomas worked extensively with musicologist Eric Salzman, and together they wrote a book that is very important for the history of the development of opera in the 20th and 21st centuries, called Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body. Yes, a reference work, very important for the development of opera in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And as a little anecdote, the cover of the opera is a photo of Pauline Vaillancourt!

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the musical performance. First, Jonathan Barriault is the guitarist who accompanies the singing and narration.

Marie-Annick Béliveau: Yes, electric guitar. I’ve been collaborating with Jonathan for years, both as an electric guitarist and a classical guitarist. And then Olivier Saint-Pierre plays the great organ at the Sacré-Cœur Church. Because the Church is a crucial element here. While the Imperial Chapel in Vienna was the starting point for the project, we really wanted to adapt the piece to the Sacré-Cœur Church on Ontario Street.

It’s a very interesting church because, first of all, it has retained its community character. In addition, (choirmaster) André Pappathomas has taken over the artistic direction and encourages creativity. In this church, creative artists coexist with the local community. The parishioners, we can also call them that, feel very involved in these creative projects.

PAN M 360: Living paintings are also part of the production, but what else?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: It’s a very important part of the show. In Vienna, we worked with children who embodied all the living paintings, those who personify the historical figures, and were also the choristers. Here in Montreal, I chose to play on proximity and on the anchoring in the Centre-Sud neighborhood to make it a community project. So we have amateur and volunteer choristers, some of whom come from the Grand Chœur du Centre-Sud, others from the neighborhood or elsewhere in Montreal. It’s the same for the actors who embody the living paintings.

PAN M 360: How did you create these tableaux vivants?

Marie-Annick Béliveau: We chose eight medieval illuminations by the English monk Matthew Paris that tell this story. These illuminations are literally a comic strip, because at the time, people were illiterate. Since the monks addressed the people, and since it was the life of a saint, we wanted everyone to have access to it. These illuminations are a real comic strip that tells the different episodes of this dispute, this anger. Thus, the show is built around this succession of illuminations, actors personify these living paintings. I narrate while they mime the actions described in the text.

PAN M 360: All we have to do is go to the church!

CREATORS

Thomas Cornelius Desi
Thomas Ballhausen
Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence

INTERPRETERS

Marie-Annick Béliveau
Jonathan Barriault, guitar
Olivier Saint-Pierre, organ

This is precisely the meaning of Ségui Sô, the title of the most recent album by Donald Dogbo, the Ivorian drummer and percussionist based in Montreal since 2014. He chose this term in Bambara to mark a return to the ancestral origins of African rhythms while blending them with contemporary jazz. With a percussionist grandfather who passed on his passion for this instrument to him, today, it is his turn to pass this on to his son Ziya, who can be heard on the track “Ségui Sô.” Donald Dogbo considers himself a mentor to young artists arriving in Montreal and serves as their guide, having received the same welcome from more established artists upon his arrival in Quebec. Sandra Gasana spoke with him for PAN M 360 a few days before his launch show at the Ministère, on Saturday, October 25.





Big weekend for Bozzini! The Montreal quartet will perform twice in collaboration with Le Vivier. On Saturday and Sunday at Espace Orange du Wilder, we are treated to two packed programs, extending the quartet’s 25th anniversary celebrations until the twilight of 2025. Cellist Isabelle Bozzini and violinist Alissa Cheung help us dissect the material presented in the two concerts.

PAN M 360: So, first up, on October 18, at the Espace Orange at Wilder, at 7:30 p.m., there’s the Brook, Di Castri, Miller concert, featuring, of course, the three Canadian composers who are on the program. Their works this year are 2025: Vinetan Songs by Taylor Brook, Delve by Zosha Di Castri, and Three Songs by Cassandra Miller. So, ladies, tell us about the basis for this program.

Isabelle Bozzini: These are three artists we have known for a long time. They are three artists who have lived in Montreal, studied in Montreal, and worked in Montreal. In Cassandra’s case, we worked together, even at the Bozzini office. We’ve known them since the mid-2000s, a good twenty years. Emerging at the time, they are now established composers, you could say.

We have a long-standing relationship with Cassandra Miller in particular. We worked with her at Composers Kitchen in 2009, then another quartet in 2011, another in 2016. And now this is the fourth. We also have a recording of her music. She is truly a collaborator we greatly appreciate, who is also very close to us in our work.

PAN M 360: How did you work on this particular piece?

Isabelle Bozzini: For Three Songs, she had us sing. We’re together in the same studio where we are for this interview. We were with Cassandra, and she asked us to sing songs from our youth, or songs we sang to our children. She often asks us questions like, what kind of music do we like? What was the first concert we ever went to that made an impression on us? These questions are very personal, they encourage sharing. I think that’s also reflected in her music.

PAN M 360: How do you approach this piece as a performer? What are the challenges? Any examples?

Alissa Cheung: In the first movement (Angel), the second violin dialogues with the other three instruments. The second violin is somewhat of a soloist.

PAN M 360: In that case, who is the second violin?

Alissa Cheung: That’s me. In the second movement (Claire), it’s mainly the cello and viola that play the melody.

PAN M 360: You vary your roles from one work to another, don’t you?

Isabelle Bozzini: Yes. In Brook, Clemens (Merkel) is number one. In DiCastri, it’s Alissa. It’s very folky music, based on songs. It’s in Cassandra’s style: she treats the material in a slightly folk way, but the form is treated in a contemporary classical way. It’s interesting where she goes with that.

These are often works that require a little patience and development. For us, therefore, the challenge is to bring this music to life, within the calm or length that it imposes on us.

Alissa Cheung: I find Cassandra’s music very accessible because the material is very melodic, very lyrical. The way she works with the material is very clear; you can hear it. So there’s nothing hidden, nothing mysterious in her constructions. In the third movement, for example, the two violins and the viola are in canon. Then the cello becomes like the lead guitar, all pizzicato.

PAN M 360: Let’s move on to Taylor Brook’s work.

Isabelle Bozzini: Taylor Brook is also someone who did Composers Kitchen around 2010, I can’t remember exactly. In any case, he’s in the same vein as Cassandra. But it’s a bit of a coincidence that he also wrote a series of songs, Vinetan Songs. He’s into science fiction, and his works evolve in imaginary worlds. This time, he started with this kind of mythology of Vineta, an underwater city in the North Sea, something like that. And then he wrote us a series of songs inspired by this imaginary world.

PAN M 360: And what about Zosha Di Castri?

Isabelle Bozzini: We didn’t commission songs from anyone; it’s a coincidence. In the case of Zosha Di Castri, it was a series of tableaux in which she plays with the timbres of different mutes. It’s veiled, muffled, then comes back very open at the end. In a way, it’s like a series of tableaux, it’s also like a series of five movements—four with mutes and one without a mute.

Alissa Cheung: But there are also different materials used in each movement, so it’s hard to say exactly how many sections there are. So at first glance, it’s less segmented. With Zosha, it’s our first commission. We’ve wanted to work with her for years, but it was never the right time. Then she became a professor at Columbia University, and her work is being performed all over the world, especially her orchestral pieces. We think she has a truly unique voice. And she has a very collaborative way of working. And for me personally, we come from the same city—Edmonton.

PAN M 360: Why call this specific program the 25th anniversary program when all your 2025 programs are called that?

Isabelle Bozzini: Because the very first concert we gave in a Montreal series was on October 20, 2000. So, since our programs are presented on October 18 and 19, we thought, well, this is an opportunity to mark the occasion. The 25th, yes, because of October 20, but also because we have three major commissions that we co-commissioned with Le Vivier and international partners—Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Time:Spans, Earle Brown Music Foundation, Soundstreams, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Gaudeamus. With Bozzini, there are seven of us who commissioned these same works.

PAN M 360: So it is a pool of organizations that jointly finance the commissions for these works.

Isabelle Bozzini: Yes, absolutely. Miller’s play was premiered in Darmstadt. Then we did the premiere of all three, the first official premiere in New York in August, and then we revived it in Zosha Di Castri at Gaudeamus. So this is the third time we’ve performed Cassandra and Zosha, and the second time we’ve performed Taylor. These are the Canadian premieres. These works are only three months old. It’s exciting!

PAN M 360: There is still a risk involved in the results! Even if we like the composers in question, that is no absolute guarantee of success.

Isabelle Bozzini: That’s true, but we’re lucky, these compositions are really interesting and very varied, making for a well-balanced program. The first performances went very well, in any case.

PAN M 360: On Sunday, October 19, at 7:30 p.m., in the Orange Room of the Wilder Building, you will present the Composers Kitchen program. The program includes works by Julia Mermelstein / Brush, Nikolaus Schroeder / Freeze Piece, Lucie Nerzi / Pour Quatuor Bozzini, and Corie Rose Sumah / We, To Be So Transformed. Remember that Composers Kitchen is a springboard for young composers, and here’s another batch!

Isabelle Bozzini: Yes, it’s the 20th batch. So, we’re celebrating 25 years of QB, but we’re also celebrating 20 years of Composers Kitchen, and 5 years of QMP (Québec Musiques Parallèles) this year, so we’re celebrating multiples of 5! And in this case, it’s in exchange with Gaudeamus. For over 12 years now, we’ve been doing an international exchange around Composers Kitchen. So, two Canadians and two others from the host country. This year, the two composers live in The Hague in the Netherlands, even though they’re not Dutch nationals—Nikolaus Schroeder is American and Lucie Nezri is French. It’s always one of the highlights of our season. It’s always a stimulating discovery for us.

PAN M 360: First, Nikolaus Schroeder.

Alissa Cheung: He writes a lot of multimedia pieces. So this piece is another example of his work. In this case, there is a tape and a video. He wanted to comment on the history of string quartets. So he used images and quotes from classical music for string quartets in his work.

Isabelle Bozzini: Julien Mermelstein is someone we had already worked with at Bozzini Lab about ten years ago. She comes from the Maritimes, lived in Toronto for a long time, and now lives in Sutton. She is a composer who is really into sound exploration. And she has a certain amount of experience, having written pieces for several ensembles in Canada for 12-15 years. I don’t know how to describe it, but I really like her approach. There’s a certain calmness in her way of working, but I sense a maturity there.

Alissa Cheung: Absolutely! As the title suggests, Brush in Air and in Resin is really an exploration of textures, of subtle sounds. And the quartet will be amplified, in fact, to bring out some sounds that are very soft and gentle. So that was her approach, because the first quartet she wrote for us was more conventional. Since then, she hasn’t written a lot of chamber music. She was doing more orchestral compositions, so she wanted to return to chamber music, either with an ensemble like ours that likes to work with sounds, that likes artistic research. So that’s why she applied to Composer Kitchen.

PAN M 360: Let’s move on to Lucie Nezri.

Alissa Cheung: Her piece is based on an Arab-Andalusian mode. It’s her native music. It’s part of her memories. When she presented her sketches to us, they were melodic fragments evoking Arab-Andalusian modal scales.

Isabelle Bozzini: These fragments become distant echoes, like Nubat. It’s quite fluid, microtonal. It leaves a lot of room for communication between us; it’s a fairly open piece, so we can add something of our own to it.

Alissa Cheung: It’s also a very melodic piece.

PAN M 360: And then there is Corie Rose’s play, We, to be so transformed.

Alissa Cheung: It’s based on Marlen Haushofer’s book The Wall (Die Wand). I don’t know how much the book inspired her. Maybe we’ll find out more during the pre-concert talk on Sunday. Corie Rose is a composer I’ve wanted to work with for years. The quartet number 2 she wrote at the end of her bachelor’s degree was so powerful. There was an awareness of the materials used. There was lucidity in her ideas. So we were so excited, and this year we’re working with her.

PAN M 360: You’ll be working hard this weekend!

Isabelle Bozzini: Yes, we’re going to work hard, but it’s like rehearsals for us. It’s already underway. It’s becoming very enjoyable to play, because we’ve mastered the pieces even though they’re still new, still fresh. At the same time, there’s room to mature a little. To get started.

INFO AND TICKETS FOR SATURDAY

INFO AND TICKETS FOR SUNDAY

To launch its upcoming season, the Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal invites audiences to the Festival Vibrations for a journey into the heart of Romantic brilliance, featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major, Augusta Holmès’ symphonic poem La nuit et l’amour, Lalo’s “Ouverture” from the opera Le Roi d’Ys, and Strauss’ Horn Concerto in E-flat major. Winner of second prize in the Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal (OUM) concerto competition, young horn player Noah Larocque will be the soloist performing this flagship work from the repertoire. In an interview with Alexandre Villemaire of PAN M 360, he discusses his attachment to the horn, the technical challenges of the instrument, and the transition from playing in an orchestra to performing as a soloist.

PAN M 360: Tell us a little about your background. What inspired you to pursue a career in music and, above all, to choose the horn as your instrument of choice?

Noah Larocque: I started playing this instrument in high school. It was the only instrument left in the bunch when all the other students in my class had chosen theirs. I had no idea what a horn was at first. So I was kind of forced into it at first, and then it was really difficult at first to understand how it worked. But eventually, I think I was charmed by the challenges the instrument presented. Towards the end of high school, I decided to continue studying music at CEGEP, where I fell in love with orchestral music. It was then that I decided to pursue this path at university.

PAN M 360: So it was pure chance that this instrument ended up in your hands. What attracted you to it, and what were the initial challenges you faced when you started playing it?

Noah Larocque: The horn is a truly versatile instrument that plays with all kinds of instrument families in the orchestra. Often, we play very loudly with the brass section and trombones, which can sound almost aggressive or violent. Sometimes, it’s much more contrasting. It almost sounds like a woodwind instrument at times when we play with the flutes and clarinets. Sometimes it’s more rhythmic with the strings. I think it’s that versatility that really drew me to this instrument. The challenge is that with a single fingering, with a single range of the instrument, you can create several notes. So it’s very easy to hit the note next to the one you want to play and therefore “crack” and make mistakes, as the notes are so close together. It requires a good ear and a lot of work.

PAN M 360: For the OUM’s first concert this season, as part of the Vibration Festival, you will be performing Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto in E-flat major, a piece that earned you second prize in the OUM concerto competition last March. What can you tell us about this work and its place in the repertoire?

Noah Larocque: First of all, it’s a piece that’s very much part of the horn repertoire. In fact, it’s the most frequently performed romantic piece for solo horn, often accompanied by piano. Performing it with an orchestra is really great. It’s a piece I started playing in college, and I would say it’s very accessible. It’s Strauss, but it doesn’t wander harmonically like Strauss’s later works. It’s an early work. He was 18 when he composed it. It’s still very straightforward and well-defined, while being the Strauss we know, with moments of great intensity and moments that are very majestic and heroic.

It’s a piece that all young horn players who are seriously studying the instrument will perform at some point or another. I never imagined I would perform this piece with an orchestra. It requires a different kind of listening when you start working with an orchestra. Having this platform to perform it is really great.

Since it’s such a classic, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. It’s really great to have this platform to play it on.

PAN M 360: You are orchestra musicians, playing notably in the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, but this will be your first experience as soloists. How are you approaching this moment and what preparation have you had to do as soloists?

Noah Larocque: When you’re an orchestra musician, you’re used to following the conductor and listening to your colleagues around you to play with the other musicians around you. When you’re a soloist, you really have to have your own tempos in mind, your own speeds, and have a lot of leadership in those speeds and in your musical intentions. I would say that I have focused even more on this element, on how to convey my own musical ideas while being clear with the orchestra so that others understand me, so that the conductor understands me, so that my other colleagues in the orchestra understand me.

It’s really a different job in the sense that you become the leader of the orchestra and the musical ideas, the tempo, whereas in an orchestra, you follow much more and listen to your colleagues around you.

PAN M 360: How did the OUM concerto competition contribute to your development as a musician? Was it important for you to try this experience?

Noah Larocque: I really saw it as an experiment at first. I had only played in orchestras before, so for me it was really an attempt to try something new and set myself a personal challenge. My goal was to step outside the orchestral framework and explore other things. It seems that trying to be a soloist allows me to develop other skills and a different way of listening.

Honestly, I was really surprised to win the award. I was super happy, of course, but I guess I never saw myself as a soloist. I think it’s a great string to add to my bow. It’s a big personal challenge, but I see it as a personal challenge to try something new and gain more experience.

PAN M 360: What did you discover when you made this paradigm shift from the perspective of an orchestra musician to that of a soloist?

Noah Larocque: I would say that I discovered that versatility as a musician is extremely important. I had to do a different kind of work to prepare myself for all of this. When you study music, you often realize that it’s the orchestra, playing in an orchestra, that shapes what you learn in your classes. But we don’t really talk about what to do as a soloist. I think I discovered that in myself: this versatility and desire to innovate in my practice, to try other things. I really discovered that with the concerto competition.

PAN M 360: Besides Strauss’ horn concerto, what other favorite piece from the repertoire would you like to play during the rest of your time at university?

Noah Larocque: Strauss wrote two concertos. The first and the second about ten years apart. It would be a dream come true to play the second concerto with an orchestra. It’s completely different from the first. Once again, it brings together the heroic and very powerful themes typical of Strauss, but they are longer with a more elaborate harmonic progression. It’s really different. Having the chance to play it with an orchestra would be a great achievement.

Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal 
Mathieu Lussier, direction 
Noah Larocque, horn (2nd prize in the OUM Concerto Competition) 
Édouard Lalo 
Le Roi d’Ys – Ouverture 
 
Augusta Holmès 
La nuit et l’amour 
 
Richard Strauss 
Concerto pour cor no 1 en mi bémol majeur, op. 11 
I. Allegro 
II. Andante 
III. Allegro 
 
Antonin Dvořák 
Symphonie no8 en sol majeur, op. 88 
I. Allegro con brio
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. Allegro, ma non troppo 

Saturday, October 18, 3 p.m. at Salle Claude-Champagne

Billet HERE

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