Interviews – Page 26

Palestinian revelation Nai Barghouti, Montreal rapper Narcy in tandem with his Arab-American friend and colleague Omar Offendum, the Mediterranean-inclined Compagnie Rassegna, the ultimate living legend of Algerian chaâbi Abdelkader Chaou, singer Dorsaf Hamdani and the Deus Ex Machina choir, whirling dervishes Tawhida Tanya Evanson, Shraddha Blaney and Crow, jazz-Moroccan singer Malika Zarra, immersive opera Sainte-Marine, Palestinian troubadour Abo Gabi, hypnotic songs by Franco-Egyptian oudist Mohamed Abozekry, soloist singers Oumaima El Khalil, Lila Borsali and Raoudha Abdallah in the service of liberation songs, oud supravirtuoso Naseer Shamma, Algerian Kamel Benani and his malouf music, Tunisia’s rising star Nour Kamar, the list goes on.

The 25th Arab World Festival of Montreal takes place over more than a month, with the infernal conflict between Palestine, Lebanon and Israel seemingly far from over. Despite this, the AWFM is still held in Montreal, and persists in nurturing dialogue between cultures and opposing hatred and division. Joseph Nakhlé, the event’s founder and artistic director, explains to Alain Brunet the background to the AWFM and outlines its programming under the theme Méprises: 25 years of colorful dreams. That’s saying a lot…

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For its fall season, Montreal saxophone quartet Quasar becomes an octet, sharing stage and repertoire with the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet. The Quebec ensemble is currently playing in Europe with the Swedish quartet, before returning home to continue this tour built for 8 saxophones. Reached in Sweden in the middle of their tour, saxophonists Marie-Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard, the tender half of Quasar (they’re also a couple in life) tell PAN M 360 users about their return to Quebec, which will take them first to Montreal on October 24 at Salle Bourgie, then to Saguenay and Quebec City. Alain Brunet interviewed them.

INFOS AND TICKETS HERE

INTERPRETERS

Quasar
Marie-Chantal Leclair, saxophone soprano
Mathieu Leclair, saxophone alto
André Leroux, saxophone ténor
Jean-Marc Bouchard, saxophone baryton

Stockholm Saxophone Quartet
Mathias Karlsen Björnstad, saxophone soprano
Jörgen Pettersson, saxophone alto
Theo Hillborg, saxophone ténor
Linn Persson, saxophone baryton

PROGRAM

José EVANGELISTA Saxoctet (1985) for saxophone octet
Gordon WILLIAMSON Création (2024) for saxophone octet
Martina TOMMER Création (2024) for saxophone octet
Jenny HETTNE Swirls and Shades (2019) for saxophone octet

Malasartes, a music production and distribution company, presents its Autumn Concert series on November 1, 2, 7 and 8 at Sala Rossa, featuring Cordâme, Ompé, Noubi, Dumaï Dunaï, Kleyn Kabaret, Damian Nisenson/Siestas , Amichai Ben Shalev, Gran Milonga Gran and more. Although Malasartes has been around for almost two decades, its under-mediatization requires us to update our knowledge of this highly dynamic community of musicians from diverse backgrounds, from native Quebec to Argentina, Eastern Europe and West Africa. Damian Nisenson, saxophonist, singer, multi-instrumentalist, progressive activist and founder of Malasartes, presents this selection of autumn concerts and sums up his own trajectory, from Buenos Aires to Fribourg to Buenos Aires to Montreal. Alain Brunet met him for PAN M 360.

Photo Credit: Denis Martin

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Directed by Nathalie Deschamps, the opera Albertine en cinq temps was composed by Catherine Major and the libretto written by Collectif de la lune rouge, based on Michel Tremblay’s famous dramatic text. The play features the heroine recalling crucial periods in her life. This first opera expressed in joual, whose recording was released in 2022 by Atma Classique, has already come a long way on stage, with the next stop on December 5 at Théâtre Outremont. Catherine Major explains the journey from studio to stage, interviewed by Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

INFOS AND TICKETS HERE

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Ludwig Berger is a soundscape artist and composer from Switzerland. He has lived and worked in Zurich and Milan, and is now based in Montreal. As part of the Akousma festival, on October 18 at Usine C, he presents an enchanting work entitled Garden of Ediacara, in reference to the geological period of the same name, 600 million years ago. At that time, there was a peaceful underwater ecosystem inhabited by soft-bodied, eyeless and boneless creatures. I caught up with the artist to talk about his music, but also about a whole host of other things, including his interest in what he calls “musical eco-fiction”.

AKOUSMA FESTIVAL PROGRAM DETAILS

LUDWIG BERGER’S BANDCAMP PAGE

Since her electroacoustic beginnings in the late 90s, Monique Jean has never ceased to unearth “a penetrating, rough and energetic sound material, with the idea that the materiality of sounds gives access to sensation, and generates both the sensible and the sensible”, to use her own words. Her research involves spatialization with an orchestra of loudspeakers, and she likes to exploit the continuous metamorphoses of sound flow, betting on unpredictability and imperfection in the image of life. A specialist in the no-input technique, here she refines her approach by exerting greater control over the sounds she gathers in complete unpredictability. Tumultes, an original piece she presents this Thursday, October 18 at Usine C, is the result of careful listening and circumspect gathering of sounds “that cut through the horizon of the everyday” and attempt “to make their way to you – here or elsewhere, near or far.” Tumultes was inspired by the works of Palestinian author Adania Shibli (Un détail mineur) and Belgian writer Antoine Wauters (Mahmoud ou la montée des eaux).For the first time at PAN M 360, Monique Jean grants this interview conducted by Alain Brunet.

Crédit : Monique Bertrand

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Akousma is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Estelle Schorpp will be performing at Usine C on October 16. Sound artist, composer, researcher and teacher at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Music, Estelle Schorpp is active in the field of experimental music. Research-creation enables her to develop an elaborate, reflexive design process.

Drawing on sound ecology, sound studies, media theory, the history of science, acoustics and psychoacoustics, her polymorphous approach combines performance, installation and algorithmic composition. Celebrating the art of creating music using a set of pre-established rules, the Franco-Canadian determines a strict framework while allowing random phenomena to intrude.

Her work has been performed or exhibited at Sporobole in Sherbrooke, Mutek Montreal, La Nuit Blanche with Eastern Bloc, the Biennale du son in Le Mans, France, ISEA22 at Barcelona’s Centre Culturel Contemporain, and in cities such as Stockholm and Helsinki.

For PAN M 360, Salima Bouaraour spoke to Estelle about reconciling the artist’s absolute freedom in algorithmic composition, her performance at Akousma and possible ways of popularizing and even democratizing so-called “scientific” music.

Photo Credit : Andrea Avezzù

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A student of digital music/electroacoustics at the Université de Montréal, talented young Montrealer Vivian Li is driven by a fascination for the therapeutic and temporal properties of sound. Her music beautifully integrates sound frequencies that can be described as hypnotic, soothing, with field recordings of everyday life, intimate or public. Vivian Li is also host of LoSignal on CKUT, where she broadcasts the product of her research in a radio art approach. We also know that her piece Éclipse, composed in concert with Thomas Augustin, made its way to last spring’s solar eclipse.

In this case, this Wednesday Vivian Li presents Memory Playback, an album that “explores the potential of sound to preserve and resurrect memories”. The recordings that make up the raw material are intended to be autobiographical, “fragments of intimacy and memories that resurface, distorted, almost distant, teetering on the edge of total disintegration. “For PAN M 360, Alain Brunet interviewed Vivian Li to discover the foundations of her nascent work.

Photo Credit : Aidan McMahon

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1Q84 is the title of a famous surrealist novel by Haruki Murakami, set in 1984. It’s also the title of an album by cellist Sahara von Hattenberger, who takes advantage of the reference to transport music lovers into a parallel musical universe richly inspired by the equally offbeat symbolic thread of the literary work itself. From the romantic-gothic cover, a nod to the Robert Doisneau/Maurice Baquet photographic collaboration in the 1980s, to Claude Bolling’s Suite for Cello and Jazz Trio (premiered in 1984), to a Kate Bush hit written the same year, to the socio-political context of the Reagan years and their present-day parallel in 2024, the young artist offers here a discographic opus full of meaning. She tells us all about it in this interview.

READ THE 1Q84 ALBUM REVIEW

The Molinari Quartet is no stranger to recording complete works devoted to the quartets of some of the most important composers of the 20th century. The most recent release from the Montreal-based ensemble is a double album on Atma featuring all five string quartets, plus a Trio, by Giacinto Scelsi. One of the most original and distinctive composers of the last century, Scelsi has created a fascinating universe from often extremely limited sound and musical material (a single note, for example), in which, as a microscope would with a drop of water, he reveals millions of unsuspected details. I spoke to Olga Ranzenhofer of the Molinari Quartet about this unique music.

READ THE PANM 360 REVIEW OF THE ALBUM

THE MOLINARI QUARTET IN CONCERT OCTOBER 22 AT SALLE BOURGIE – DETAILS

Toulouse-born composer, electronic producer and sound architecture researcher Olivier Alary has been living in Montreal for the past 23 years, unknown to many, exploring the “gray areas between music and instrumental composition, between music and noise”.

Over the past ten years, he has composed the soundtracks for several feature-length and short films. Alongside his film work, which earns him a respectable living, Olivier Alary has recorded several albums, notably on the Rephlex, Fat-Cat Records and 130701 labels.

What’s more, he was involved in producing or remixing tracks by well-known personalities, starting with Björk (album Medulla, including the song Desired Constellation). Cat Power and Lou Barlow (Dinosaur JR) collaborated on one of his albums.

His work as a composer and sound design researcher has led him to write a variety of instrumental and electronic music inspired by several musical genres and subgenres, from European electroacoustic to noise, indie rock, no wave, punk, techno and contemporary music.

In the context of Akousma, he presents a work resulting from his recent research into artificial intelligence in composition at Usine C on Thursday. Présences imaginées attempts to map what would remain of human sounds after their disappearance, a kind of sonic capture of our civilization, documented and mapped by artificial intelligence.

For PAN M 360, Alain Brunet met Olivier Alary virtually. Let’s get to know each other!

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INFONS

After a cancelled concert in May, Céu will be back in Montreal this Thursday, October 17, to share her latest album Novela, but not only. We’ll also be treated to an overview of her other albums, much to the delight of her fans. The São Paulo-born Brazilian singer-songwriter has a career spanning two decades, seven albums to her credit, one Grammy nomination and three Latin Grammys. Our collaborator Sandra Gasana spoke to her for PANM360 just a few days before her eagerly-awaited concert at the National.