Interviews

You might not know the name Hauschka, but you have probably heard his music, that is the music of Volker Bertelmann. His name came up quite a bit last year after he grabbed an Oscar for Best Original Score for the German perspective World War One film, All Quiet On The Western Front. But outside of his work with film scores, Bertelmann makes his music under the moniker, Hauschka, experimenting with neoclassical, contemporary piano music.

For his latest album, Philanthropy, Bertelmann used prepared piano techniques; putting objects inside the piano for a different sound. The result makes the piano sound a bit more electronic and different than your standard piano album. As Hauschka, Bertelmann will bring his Philanthropy album to Montreal during MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE. We spoke with him briefly about playing the prepared piano and writing one of the most successful film scores in the last decade.

PAN M 360: Could you tell me about your musical beginnings, like Gods Favorite Dog, and then getting into film scoring, and then Hauschka?

Volker Bertelmann: I started learning the piano at the age of 9 after seeing a pianist playing Chopin. I wanted to learn to play that piece immediately. So I asked my mother if she could organize lessons for me with this pianist. I had piano lessons for over 10 years and formed my first band at the age of 12. I then played in a whole series of bands as a keyboard player. A few years later, I met my cousin by chance on the street in Dusseldorf and we decided to form the band God’s Favorite Dog. The music was inspired by bands like Cypress Hill or the Red Hot Chili Peppers and we got a record deal with Sony Music. But after a while, I realized that a contract with a big record company doesn’t mean that they are interested in you as a musician and we broke up our band. I continued as HAUSCHKA and through my concerts all over the world, internationally working directors came into contact with me. That’s how I started with film music and that was about 12 years ago.

PAN M 360: How do you separate your time? Are you working on Hauschka material, while composing film scores? 

Volker Bertelmann: At the moment I’m working 90% on film scores in the studio and cooking lunch for our family. I love being at home and making music, so it’s ideal to have a job as a composer and the freedom to release a record whenever I feel like there’s a new idea and I’m ready for a new album.

PAN M 360: What is your process of creating a soundtrack for a film like All Quiet on the Western Front? You must have to really get enveloped and consumed by the film?

Volker Bertelmann:  When I work on a movie, I want to immerse myself in the protagonists and understand their emotions and the story. I also want to understand the director’s intentions and ideas. All Quiet on the Western Front was a great experience for me because everything came together well and naturally without much effort. And I found the three notes (dun dun dun) the very first day after I saw the movie for the first time.

PAN M 360: So you know where you were when you came up with the “dun dun dun” for the soundtrack, which is almost dystopian and a musical motif throughout the film?

Volker Bertelmann: Yes, I was sitting in my studio at my great-grandmother’s harmonium working on recordings for the movie, trying to figure out how to make the harmonium sound like a rock instrument.

PAN M 360: The soundtrack for All Quiet on the Western Front, of course, won the original score Oscar, my question is did you know you had something special and Oscar-worthy before winning?

Volker Bertelmann: I received a lot of positive feedback for the music. At the Toronto Film Festival, after the first screening of the movie, people came up to me and complimented the music. Oscar-worthy is a very undefinable term for me because you can make music that is strong and potentially good for an Oscar, but the movie doesn’t even come close to a nomination.

PAN M 360: Did it take you a while to figure out what kind of musician you wanted to be? Was it a lot of parroting and copying others at first?

Volker Bertelmann: When I started making music, I wanted to be someone I couldn’t be. I tried to copy pop stars and write exactly the same kind of music as the bands I admired. It wasn’t until I was 36 that I saw myself as HAUSCHKA, and that helped me to develop my own artistic identity. But getting there, so all the copying and learning and dealing with different challenges, like teaching piano lessons, writing music for commercials, being a session musician or keyboard player in a band, traveling with a children’s theatre or producing folk musicians … all of which ultimately helped me learn and gain the skills to do and appreciate what I do today.

PAN M 360: Philanthropy isn’t a standard piano album, can you share a bit of your process to get all of those different sounds? Like putting materials in the piano? On the strings? 

Volker Bertelmann: Mostly all the sounds are made with the piano and the base is the prepared piano I started with. Sometimes I’ve added a synthesizer or a bass to get more dimension, but I always use materials on the strings of the piano to create bass drums, percussion, and all the rattling sounds. The materials I use are felt wedges, mutes from piano tuners, plastic light filters, erasers, magnets, bows from string instruments, etc …

PAN M 360: What are some of the weirder items you’ve used during this technique

Volker Bertelmann: I think table tennis balls, vibrators, and glass lenses.

PAN M 360: I find it kind of makes the album sound a bit electronic, and there might be only two pieces that are contemporary piano pieces.

Volker Bertelmann: Yes, that was my intention. On my last record, A Different Forest, I composed a lot of solo piano pieces. With Philanthropy, I deliberately wanted to go in the direction of an electronic, slightly clubby record but with two melancholy piano pieces that stand for a moment of reflection.

PAN M 360: On “Loved Ones” you are accompanied by strings, how did you decide that melancholic melody would be on, I think it’s a cello?

Volker Bertelmann: I recorded two cellos in addition to the piano recordings for “Loved Ones,” and I liked the melancholy because it sounded to me a bit like a melody from a French movie about a lost love. It’s great when a record can contain different emotional pieces and take the listener on a journey. For me, melancholy as an emotion is just as much a part of it as happiness.

PAN M 360: Can you tell me a bit about the live performance? Will you be using prepared piano techniques, will we hear some film scores?

Volker Bertelmann: At the concert you will hear pieces from the album Philanthropy, but not in the same way as on the album. It will mostly be improvisations based on motifs from the album. As I perform under my stage name HAUSCHKA, you won’t hear any film music. So you will hear the music of Hauschka, which is based on prepared piano and electronics. I’m really looking forward to it.

SARAH ROSSY (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal whose work blends jazz, experimental electronics, and visual projections into ethereal soundscapes that are both autobiographical and socially conscious. In our conversation with Sarah we spoke about her latest release, Seemingly Insatiable Waves, and the obstacles facing the musicians and artists of 2024.

PAN M 360 : Hey Sarah, a big congratulations on Seemingly Insatiable Waves! It’s easy to hear that a lot went into this EP, and I imagine it must feel good to finally let it out. 

Sarah Rossy : Oh it feels good, and it was a long time coming! I haven’t released music in a longer form since 2018! And this is the first of many things to come, it’s kind of like my first foray into releasing music again.

PAN M 360 : Well what a time to be releasing music in 2024. I’m finding that with more and more of the artists I speak to, they seem to be more and more uncertain about what a release actually means these days.

Sarah Rossy : Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. I think we’re all trying to answer it. I decided to release this EP one single at a time, but in a short time span. I think it was within over two and a half weeks that I just dropped a song every four or five days with different visuals, so people could see and hear a little taste of each song.
Things move so quickly these days; the algorithm pumps content down the pipe after like 12 hours sometimes. So by stretching it, I tried to get the most exposure online after all these months and so much money and time put into this. I don’t know if it worked, but it’s definitely scary to release music in the 2020’s. There’s no one way of doing it, there’s a lot of people telling you how to do it, and I just decided to start small with an EP.

PAN M 360 : Would you say then there’s a really noticeable difference in the release landscape between this year and just a couple years ago? All thanks to the algorithm-ification of social media. 

Sarah Rossy : Yeah, for sure. I looked at my Bandcamp stats from the last release. And even the number of purchases and streams directly on that app were so different than they are today. Nowadays, you drop releases onto a fast-moving treadmill of content and news and all these other important things that people are taking in. So how do you fit into that?

PAN M 360 : Especially with two ongoing wars these days, with tragedy unfolding every second, reconciling art with social injustice and social media. 

Sarah Rossy : It’s scary when the pool in which we’re dumping our art as “content” is a melting pot of algorithmic cacophony. All of the cat photos, all the propaganda, all of the very important global injustice… where do we fit into that? It almost feels inappropriate, but I also feel that mental wellness sourced from art is a radical tool for systemic resistance. I feel guilty for taking up space when major catastrophes and genocides are happening, but if we can’t take care of each other with art, we can’t fight, we can’t push back.

PAN M 360 : That’s a struggle everyone seems to be facing. But at least you seem to enjoy a strong presence in the local arts scene. That must be a good counterbalance to the digital side of things, having a community of artists and collaborators around you. 

Sarah Rossy : Oh, it’s essential to have in-person connection through it all. With this EP specifically, they began as songs that I produced with Ableton alone, and then I recorded some real drum/bass parts with real humans. But at the show, of course, we were playing all the parts live, and I adapted the songs to include everyone in the group. That was great, because at the end of the day, music is about connecting with others. We do all this creative, administrative, and marketing work, and it’s like, for what? For me it’s all about connecting with people from audiences to other musicians, and creating a shared experience. 

PAN M 360 : Generally themes of self-discovery, self-love, identity, and healing, seem to be a big part of your musicality. Have these themes always been aligned with your musical identity or is it something you’ve started to explore recently?

Sarah Rossy : Yeah, I think it’s been both recovered and uncovered in layers as I’ve grown. I think back to my relationship with music when I was a kid, which was probably universal in a way: I’d go to the piano or any other instrument with a sense of play and curiosity, and express whatever thought or mood was on my mind, and release. It’s always been like that for me, but pursuing formalised music education distorted that channel a little bit. My heart was somewhat swept to the side as I learned tools that stimulated my mind and intellectualised my main channel of expression. That environment sometimes prioritised the technique over the emotional impact or authentic alignment. I am grateful for that time, but it was also traumatic in ways. The process of making this EP was a much-needed return to a pure sense of play and catharsis.

I have also been doing a lot of therapy and a lot of self-work in recent years, which have opened up more channels for understanding myself. My art is a reflection of that. Themes of identity and self-love are very present, and have become very focal points in my lifelong quest to understand my little existence. I hope that doing this work and sharing it through music can offer healing perspectives to people who perhaps don’t have the resources or readiness to do it themselves.

PAN M 360 : Was the pandemic a big shake-up in terms of how it affected your songwriting? 

Sarah Rossy : Yes, I lived alone for most of the pandemic, in total isolation. It was me and my piano and my anxiety. And we had a big restructuring of our relationship, me and music. Because, you know, I was alone, couldn’t create with people, and needed to heal from a lot of misalignment from the aforementioned “creative institution” trauma. After many months of being too devastated to play any music at all, I returned to the songs and the songwriters that moved me the most in my lifetime: Joni Mitchell, St. Vincent, Bjork, Fairuz, Yebba… who brought me the deepest comfort and a renewed sense of creation. I also began a deep dive into Ableton and music production, and brought many songs that I had been writing for years into the production world of infinite possibility. I discovered the joy of layering vocals… Like 800 vocal layers are on my record. And they were all just done in my apartment, on the floor at 2AM with a cheap microphone. I also fell in love with sound colour, VST orchestration, and plugins that have now seeped into my live performance practise. The pandemic also forced a confrontation with the self; this space of hyper-solitude made me face a lot of major wounds and themes in my life, and I feel that my songs have reached a deeper level of honesty in the years since.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, well you always have such a lush and rich sonic palette in your recordings. It’s very layered, with a lot of moving parts, and it must help have such a strong community to help see your vision across!

Sarah Rossy : Yeah, I was thinking the other day that over the past six years or so, I’ve planted a lot of creative seeds in cities and communities around the world. And now, it feels like all those things are coming to fruition and there’s ripe fruit on the tree. The global network of creative connection and creation is alive and well! If I’m like “hey, I want an ethereal guitar loop!” I’ll call Kevin Lafleur. He’s also one of my best friends. Or, if I’m looking to produce some interdisciplinary films (not-so-subtle hint of what’s to come), I can ask Camille Huang to artistically direct some creative fusion between the dance and music worlds. Or if I want to book some shows in Europe (where I’ll be in May), I have so many kind friends made over years of residencies and workshops willing to help. Or my VIP collaborator, Jack Broza, who mixed and co-produced the record, whom I met at Banff Centre for the Arts in 2018. We just have fun when we work, playing like kids in his studio in Brooklyn. The EP is under my name on paper, but there’s such an important community of people that were involved in this who offered many shades of support.

PAN M 360 :  So as someone from Montreal, do you feel this is the best place to be for your art? 

Sarah Rossy : Culturally, it feels pretty aligned here. I really love Montreal, but then again, it’s like marrying your highschool sweetheart or something, because I’ve been here my whole life. But I love New York, and I go there often, but disturbingly, I could fly there once every two months and it’d still be cheaper than living there, and I feel that I even get a more concentrated visit with my time because I’m “off” work. So that’s kind of looking like what my strategy will continue to be. I like to travel a lot; I’m going to Europe two or three times this year, and I go to New York almost every month. So for me, the lovely community here in Montreal, the grants, the amazing creative opportunities, the healthcare… These things entice me to stay put and hop around often, but we’ll see where life takes me. 

PAN M 360 : So as an artist in 2024, what would you say your goals are with your art? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where things might go?

Sarah Rossy : I mean, once I restructured that my goals were to really connect with people above all else, it completely changed the landscape. I’m not trying to get famous. Obviously, fame can be a vessel to more connection. It can also be a vessel to more loneliness, you know? Selling your music can sustain you financially in a capitalist vortex, but who are you selling it to? Are they people who really care about your heart? So this album launch, playing a sold out show to all my friends and community members and people who I care about and maybe their friends one layer out, was so warm and fulfilling. I left the venue (Ursa, an amazing artist-run space) feeling good, and at the end of the day, feeling good is what matters. So like, I’m optimistic in the sense that I’m clear on that, but pessimistic about the overall state of industry. Each musician made $100 that night, and I worked non-stop for three weeks to pump the hell out of the promotion. But I’m trying not to put that financial pressure on my art.

PAN M 360 : I hear you Sarah. We wish you all the best and thanks again for taking the time. Let us know where we can catch you next!

Sarah Rossy : My next show is March 27th at Ursa for the first edition of the Anti-Jazz Police Festival. It’ll be a double bill with Claire Dickson, an amazing artist from Brooklyn, which will be an amazing show. Don’t miss it!

This year, PAN M 360 brings you Igloofest from a new angle  that of behind-the-scenes at the event, shining the spotlight on behind-the-scenes workers. After Stéphanie Cléroux, Production Director at Multicolore, we continue this pair of interviews with TiND, responsible for Igloofest’s VJing programming this year.

PAN M 360 invites you to dive into the creative world of Montreal-based VJ TiND, short for ” thisisnotdesign “. 

Active for over twenty years, collective TiND has collaborated with the SAT and  Moment Factory among others,  the organization has known how to evolve with musical and visual trends, forging a solid reputation in the Montreal art scene. We spoke to Francis Théberge, one of the collective’s co-founders.

PAN M 360 : Introduce us to TiND in a few words.

TiND : We founded the collective in the early 2000s, there were 3 of us originally. We started out at raves, which is classic. Then big industrial parties, experimental music. Our specialty was really visuals that were very rough, sampled from pop culture. The classic VJ of the late 90s and early 2000s. Later, in 2005, we officially formed as a collective registered as a nonprofit organization. Then we all became moms and dads, which diminished the group’s activities. At the moment, I’m the main active member, with my wife in charge of archives and organization.

PAN M 360 : How did the collaboration with Igloofest  come about?

TiND : If I’m not mistaken, we did the VJ booking in the third year, so that was over ten years ago. Then it was other great VJs, including Marion Carassou-Maillan aka VJ MA –  she really worked hard to get us a great spot. Then there was Marc-Olivier Comeau aka VJ Binocle, a veteran of big stages and U.S. tours. Then there was Catherine Turp of Moment Factory, who has been booking for years. This year I’ve taken over the programming, with the aim of keeping the spirit of the Montreal VJ scene alive. We take care of the B stage, the smallest stage, and with the Montreal music program, it really feels like a local scene.

PAN M 360 : How have VJing practices evolved over time ?

TiND : Headliners are increasingly coming with their own visuals. We started to feel it several years ago, I’d say even before the pandemic in festivals like ÎleSoniq, Osheaga that I did a few years. I don’t think the place of VJs has quite been won. We’re obliged to play the content given by the artists without having much time to prepare. This is happening more and more with the big headliners. The artist choices were perhaps more balanced with a better representation of the underground. Obviously, the visual field has evolved a lot, technologies are more and more accessible. For example, someone who knows a lighting console very well will be able to operate visuals quite easily. 

PAN M 360 : Do you have carte blanche for Igloofest ? 

TiND : Yes ! Igloofest gives us a lot of freedom. The programmer supports the artists’ applications, and then the choice is made on the demos, whether it’s a series of images or ideally a demo clip. Of course, there’s production validation, but I’ve never seen an artist turned down unless the content was really inappropriate. There’s a diversity of visual styles represented,  from the more experimental (like me) to stuff much more motion closer to the graphics you see in animated advertising. They’ve got a good eye, they know what they want, but it’s a really nice carte blanche. This year, we’ve made room for people who are just starting out, and we’ve taken them under our wing. I like the idea of including several generations of VJs.

PAN M 360 : In terms of content creation, how  do you strike a budgetary balance between your visual universe, your signature, your style and the artist’s style? 

TiND : There are VJs who are very good at adapting, creating or remixing visuals to make it work very well. On the other hand, there are VJs who have huge banks of visuals, who are also very malleable in general; they have a style that will stick with just about anything. It’s all a question of selecting the right clips, setting up the right set in the right software, whatever it takes. After that, it’s a question of feeling the music on site, and of craft. Sometimes you realize that the artist plays very differently from the sets on SoundCloud or MixCloud that you’ve been listening to in preparation. There are surprises. The primary role of the VJ is to have enough content to adapt to different styles and rhythms of music, and that’s important. Then you have to be able to improvise on the spot. In some cases, there are more specific mandates, where we’ll be asked to create visuals tailored to the artist, which requires collaboration between the labels and the artists, but unfortunately it’s very rare for us to be in direct contact with the labels or the artists.

PAN M 360 : What are the challenges for VJs at Igloofest ? 

TIND : It may seem strange despite Igloofest being a big festival, we’re so well supported by the technical team on site, it’s incredible. Honestly, it’s very easy. As much as you can play a simple signal that takes up all the space and becomes really immersive, you can also cut out each tile, play different layers of visuals or a color more to the left, more to the right… It’s extremely flexible. 

PAN M 360 : You emphasize the importance of the technical teams in enabling you to carry out your work. What is the dynamic like with the lighting designers with whom you collaborate very closely ? 

TiND : I’ll be very transparent with you: in many cases, it’s a love-hate story! (laughs)  Sometimes hate, it’s more because there’s miscommunication between the two artists. I’d like to stress that the lighting people, as much as anyone else on the technical team, even if you call them technicians, I call them artists. There’s no doubt about that. For example, the lighting technician on stage B this year is fabulous. He’s a young man of 19/20 who has already played for MUTEK. He’s very patient with us, calm, and communication is excellent. Despite me being chaotic and colorful, we manage to find a balance, and then at some point give each other more space. As soon as there’s good communication, it works really well, even if it’s improvised. Because these people are extremely good at improvising. In an ideal world, with more budget for preparation, there could be synchronization, which produces an incredible show for the audience.

TiND – Igloofest x SAT

TiND – MUTEK 

We’re all trying to make sense of this world as it gets more and more twisted and confusing. Living is almost to a point of reaction instead of planning and artists have been writing songs about this since they could walk. While you could generally categorize that as ‘songwriting,’ for Tom McGreevy the lead lyricist and rhythm guitarist of Ducks Ltd., it’s kind of his M.O. A Ducks Ltd. song usually sounds bright and full of life, with a steady momentum, as if finishing or overcoming a race or an obstacle, but the lyrics are nine times out of ten about the frailties of human relationships or straight up societal collapse.

This is probably the most present on Ducks’ newest release, Harm’s Way which will have an album release show this Saturday, Feb. 10 during Taverne Tour. We quickly chatted with McGreevy before the show to learn more about his artistic process and Harm’s Way.

PAN M 360: There is always this momentum with a Ducks Ltd. song. Especially on Harm’s Way. I kind of always feel like running when I listen to it…

Tom McGreevy: Haha yeah thanks. I definitely feel like we always have the innate impulse to make the song slightly faster. It always ends up going that way. There’s a pretty long process with the editing of the lyrics too. I tend to write the lyrics a little bit slower, but when it gets to the point of playing it out with Evan, we will always push it an extra 5 bpm faster or something in the demo. Historically, I think there have been only like two or three instances when we’ve had to slow down a Ducks song.

PAN M 360: And even though this album kind of pushes that Ducks jangle pop sound further, I feel like you’re one of the only bands where I can take a song and put it anywhere in your repertoire and it fits, almost as if they were written around the same time or place.

Tom McGreevy: That’s interesting and I’ve heard that a bit before. But the truth is most of them start in my bedroom and then we take them to the studio. For this album, some of them were written while we were on tour. I think I find personally that when I’m doing my kind of side of it, which is more in a sort of solitary space, it’s often that I’ll be working on a thing for a really long time. It will be like eight or nine months of just sitting on it. And it’ll come in pieces, and then the pieces will eventually be locked together and coalesce the way I want it to. Sometimes you just have to walk away and wait for that epiphany down the line y’know? I rarely write a song in one sitting. Usually, I’ll let the second verse hang for a while.

PAN M 360: So going off of that, I feel the studio process must be quite methodical and not very spontaneous?

Tom McGreevy: Yeah we are quite meticulous and there is very little spontaneity. The way we approach to stuff is definitely with rigour, but every now and then I will get stuck, but I need to get something down in the studio. So it will be like 11th-hour shit and we have to go with what I got. That used to be worrisome, but now I think we have more confidence. Of course, there’s always that one line that I hate right, or it annoys me. It’s a deadly struggle that I think I only notice.

PAN M 360: The music is very upbeat and feel-good. But if you read into the lyrics, they’re pretty bleak. The world is drowning, kind of a cynical take. Would you consider yourself to have like a bleak outlook on the world?

Tom McGreevy: I try to stay optimistic, but I think reality resists that (laughs). It always comes from me trying to process these difficult realities. And so I think that tends to be part of maybe why it comes through in that way. At the same time, it’s like, I think if I’m being honest, is a pretty accurate reflection of my worldview most of the time.

PAN M 360: There is something to that with the jangle pop kind of genre; depressing lyrics and upbeat music…

Tom McGreevy: I think it’s just in pop music in the broader history of like, you know, commercial music as a medium. Think of somebody like Smokey Robinson’s “The Tracks of My Tears.” Like, that’s a pretty bright-sounding song. I think that juxtaposition is sort of core to the appeal of a lot of music. And I think it’s like, sometimes less present in our current moment, but I think it’s, it’s interesting to me. Many of our influences are fthe guitar music from the UK and New Zealand in like 1980s, and that was something I was aware of, but I think it’s just one sort of element in the medium.

PAN M 360: You guys were really able to tour these songs, kind of road-test them. How did that tie into the recording process for Harm’s Way?

Tom McGreevy: I think it taught us about how the songs work. Not just live, but on a basic level. Historically, we would write the song, write the parts, and then never play them until we had to learn them for the live show. When I think the thing that was kind of different with this one was that because we did play it so much, we talked about it all the shows. I think we kind of got a better sense of like, how a Ducks song works and what a Duck song does. So when we were kind of making this record, it was a lot, almost easier to do because it was sort of like sort of knew innately what was going on and we didn’t have to think about it as much. It was a lot less sort of hitting a crossroads in a compositional process. It was like ‘Well, obviously, it will go like this.’

PAN M 360: I wanted to ask you specifically about the song “Train Full of Gasoline.” That might be my favorite track. I like it reminds me a lot of The Cure, but also that metaphor of this huge train of gasoline being like a volatile relationship … such a great metaphor

Tom McGreevy: Thanks. That’s in part about the train disaster in Lac-Mégantic and the one thing that struck me after reading about it and learning about the clean up in the community was there wasn’t like one, central mistake that was made that caused this to happen. It was like this series of small, like failures that like just compounded on each other. And I thought that was like, kind of compelling as a metaphor. Like, the description of most human folly is these things where it’s small things that pile up and don’t get observed and don’t get addressed. That theme definitely comes up in Ducks music all the time.

Photo by: Colin Medley

Ducks Ltd. Plays Taverne Tour w/ The Wesleys, and Dresser at Quai Des Brumes on Feb. 10

Internationally renowned soprano and specialist in the modern operatic repertoire, Canadian Barbara Hannigan is also a maestra. Now a respected conductor, this exceptional singer has developed a singular style of orchestral conducting that does not exclude her original artistic practice, this time in the service of Francis Poulenc and Richard Strauss. More specifically, she will sing and conduct La voix humaine, by composer Francis Poulenc and librettist (and celebrated author) Jean Cocteau. Prior to this, she will conduct a 26-minute work by post-romantic composer Richard Strauss. Joining us in Paris by videoconference, Barbara Hannigan discusses the complex issues involved in her planned double task with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the works on the program for next Wednesday, February 21 and Thursday, February 22.

ARTISTS

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

Barbara Hannigan, conductor & soprano 

Barbara Hannigan, Denis Gueguin, Clemens Malinowski, staging and vidéo

Clemens Malinowski, cameras in real time

WORKS

R. Strauss, Métamorphoses, TrV 290 (26 min)

Poulenc, La voix humaine, tragédie lyrique, FP 171 (40 min / Texte de Jean Cocteau)

With staging and projections

Concert without intermission

crédit photo: Marco Borggreve tirée de la page FB de Barbara Hannigan

For info, it’s HERE.

Since making his name with the garage-noise band Pussy Galore in 1984, through Boss Hog, Heavy Trash (with the Sadies and Matt Verta-Ray), a few rounds with RL Burnside, and, above all, the famous Blues Explosion, Jon Spencer has gone through several incarnations without ever really deviating from his unique guitar sound and his typical way of singing and imposing himself on stage. Blues, garage, punk, soul, and noise assimilated, crushed, and spat out with a class of its own and a lot of style.

Now, barely a year after his appearance at the Ritz with the HITmakers, the ever-charismatic Spencer is back to present a new project under his own name, accompanied by two young fearless musicians. With this new entity, the New Yorker revisits part of his repertoire, focusing mainly on his prolific Blues Explosion period, with a few new bonus tracks.

PAN M 360 went to meet him on his birthday, just before this mini-tour which will take him to Quebec, Ottawa, and Montreal, as part of the seventh edition of the Taverne Tour.

PAN M 360: You’ve had several incarnations since Pussy Galore, tell us a bit about this new one.

Jon Spencer: The two musicians I’m currently playing with, Spider Bowman and Kendall Wind, are both excellent players. We had a really nice tour in November and December, so I’m very confident. I think we’ll be able to pull it off and play some good shows. We’ve just spent the past five days mainly working on new material, which I hope to be playing in our upcoming shows over the next week. And when we’re done with this tour, we have plans to go into the recording studio.

PAN M 360: So in fact you brought in the rhythm section from the Bobby Lees.

Jon Spencer: That’s correct. I think the very first time I met them was when the Bobby Lees supported Boss Hog in Hudson, New York, maybe four or five years ago. And then I produced an album for the Bobby Lees a few years ago (Skin Suit, 2023), and got to know Kendall and Spider, more commonly known as Macky, a little bit better. And back last summer, I was offered some shows supporting Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton. Samantha and Jesse made a record (Death Wish Blues, 2022) that I produced. I wasn’t working much during that period; The HITmakers were sort of on ice because Sam Coomes was very busy with Quasi. So I wanted very much to play and wanted very much to work. That’s why I accepted the shows supporting Samantha and Jesse on their Death Wish Blues tour. It then made me think about what kind of band I would put together for that tour. And I really love Kendall, I love the way she played on that Death Wish Blues album.

Part of my job as a producer was to put together a band for those Death Wish sessions and Kendall was the bass player for that. As you know, I had experience working with her in the studio before when I produced the Bobby Lees. Kendall is such an excellent musician, she’s also super quick to pick anything up. She’s a great bass player. So I asked her if she might be interested in playing with me on these tour dates. And then it just kind of seemed obvious to get Macky, her drummer partner from the Bobby Lees, aboard. Since the Bobby Lees are on hiatus, Macky and Kendall were up for the challenge, and I’m very happy that they agreed to play with me. Just for now, it’s been billed under my own name. I’m trying to think of a band name, because it would be nice to have a better name. But yeah, these are just Jon Spencer shows. So we’re a power trio if you will.

PAN M 360: What I gather is that you mostly revisit some of your old songs with this new project?

Jon Spencer: With this new band, I think the focus is more on revisiting some of my greatest hits. The main focus of this new thing is the Blues Explosion. Most of the set is Blues Explosion songs, but we do play HITmakers songs and we do play Pussy Galore songs. And then it’s a real pleasure, real joy, to play with Kendall and Macky. I mean, Kendall had the interesting challenge of interpreting Judah Bauer’s guitar parts on an electric bass, and she’s really done a fantastic job. Things really clicked and so now we’re trying to make some new songs.

PAN M 360: How did you select the songs? Was it a difficult choice?

Jon Spencer: Well, you know, I guess most of the songs I’ve picked … it’s because I want to play them, I picked them for very selfish reasons. But there are some songs I’ve picked because I figured that’s what people would like to hear. And there were a couple of songs I wanted to try but they didn’t translate well, so we didn’t end up doing them.

PAN M 360: Did you rearrange the songs or you tried to stick as much as possible to the original versions?

Jon Spencer: A bit of both. Things are getting rearranged. Things are changing anyway with the addition of a traditional electric bass guitar. It’s neither the Blues Explosion, nor Pussy Galore, nor the HITmakers. None of these bands had electric bass.


PAN M 360: Did you miss playing these old songs?

Jon Spencer: Maybe I did… I wasn’t aware of it. It’s been really nice doing the shows with Kendall and Macky, especially playing these Blues Explosion songs, it feels really good. it was a bit of a strange process for me, you know, relearning this material, because I guess I’ve changed the way I play guitar and the way I sing, it changed not by a lot, but by some small degree. So at times, I had to really look for live video footages of the Blues Explosion and try to figure out how things were played; and try to remember what I was doing there on the guitar. In addition to that, it’s also trying to teach the songs to a bass player who’s trying to interpret some electric guitar parts. And also a drummer, you know, trying to have him get the finer points of what Russell Simins did on the drums. And it’s not just exactly what Russell played, but also a lot of his intensity. Russell is an extremely intense drummer.

PAN M 360: So getting Russell and Judah back on board was out of the question?

Jon Spencer: There are very real concrete reasons why the Blues Explosion does not play anymore. No, it’s not really possible. There are reasons why the band stopped. We’re still friends, but … it could not continue sadly.


PAN M 360: You were talking about some new songs that you will play on this tour. Can you tell me a bit about this new material?

Jon Spencer: I suppose it’s closer to Blues Explosion than it is to HITmakers or Pussy Galore, but ultimately I hope that it will be kind of its own thing. You know, I’m very enthusiastic about how this material will sound and evolve on stage. So far it’s sounding and feeling really good. But I think songs really mature and really come together when you’re playing them out at a club. So I’m looking forward to this week’s set of shows as a way to really figure out these songs. But I would like to think that this new material is using the strengths of this new band, you know, specifically the strengths of my bandmates Kendall and Macky, and that the new material we’re working on is designed for this trio.

I should make a point though, if I may. With the Blues Explosion, we wrote together, we would get together the three of us, me and Judah and Russell, and we would jam on, you know, we just played. And that’s how we wrote songs. It was a collaborative thing. But with this new band, I’ve written songs, and that’s what I was doing with the HITmakers as well, I would write songs on my own. That may change, you know, but that’s just how it works so far … Anyway, we will do our best on stage.

Even though we’re kind of freaking out people and bumming out some of these white blues crowds, you know, people saying “That’s not blues, that’s just punk rock!” which I take as a compliment, there were always people every night that would say to me “Holy shit! Where did you find these people? That bass player is amazing! That drummer is incredible!” They’re both excellent musicians and natural-born stars. It’s so nice to play with them. So yeah, I think it’d be a good show!

Photo Credit: Whit Lane

Jon Spencer plays Taverne Tour w/ Population II on Feb 9 at La Tulipe. Tickets Here

Renowned for his significant collaborations with Robert Plant, Tinariwen, Rachid Taha, and Juldeh Camarahe the distinguished English guitarist, Justin Adams, took the time to talk to us and shed light on his latest project with Italian folk-artist, Mauro Durante. Justin and Mauro play at Club Balattou on the 9th of Feburary at 2100

PAN M 360 : Hey there Justin, thanks for tuning in. Did I catch you in London?

Justin Adams : Well actually I live in a town about two hours away from London. I’m a Londoner by origin, but I’ve become a bit of a country man. 

PAN M 360 : I see. And so you’ll be starting your tour with Mauro pretty soon then. What exactly is this little circuit you’ve got going on?

Justin Adams : You know, it’s us dipping our toes into an ocean really.  We’ve been touring around Europe for a couple of years. On and off. And we’ve just done two gigs in the United States, but we haven’t played in Canada at all before, at least not as this duo. It’s very exciting. And although we’ve done things with people who are well known, we’re not necessarily ourselves particularly well known. So the question is, is anybody going to come up and see the shows?

PAN M 360 : When I saw you were playing, I was kind of stoked. I heard about you thanks to the TinyDesk x globalFest show, and as a guitarist myself I really like what you do. Very cool to hear the different guitar styles coming together in your playing. I saw that you have a diplomatic background, and I can see how that might have influenced your musicality from a young age. 

Justin Adams : Well, that’s a really nice thing to say. I mean, I suppose I’m kind of a guitarist for whom it’s not really about the guitar. I’m more interested in the overall vision of music and how I hear music as a music fan. And I guess, you know, my own particular history of listening to music was growing up with my parents in the States in the 60s.

That was the time of the Beatles, but also, you know, like Joan Baez and all of that. So that was very real. And I had elder brothers and sisters and I also felt that huge kind of generational change, and the role music played in all that. Then I got used to hearing some Arabic music as a child, and since I didn’t speak Arabic, you get used to really kind of listening to the emotion in music and really listening to the rhythms and the colours of the sound. I love the Arab idea of what they call Tarab, the enchantment that one gets from music, the catharsis. And I got to experience that when I got back to the UK but in a totally different way, now it was punk. The Clash, the Pistol, Patti Smith, television. I saw all those bands, you know. The lovely thing was the connection with Reggae. So I saw Bob Marley and Burning Spear and Culture and Black Uhuru. We used to go to Carnival in London and listen to the sound systems. My God. Yeah. Just incredible.

So when I look at the guitar I see the connections between Africa, the Arab world, you know, India, Pakistan, right through Europe to the States and Canada. I feel that I can see the history of this instrument as it travels from place to place. 

PAN M 360 : Do you find yourself treading new ground with this project specifically, getting out of your comfort zone? 

Justin Adams : In a way there’s always continuity, you know, because you try and sort of find your voice and the things that interest you. And the more I look back, I sort of think, well, it’s always the same, the same old stuff that I’m interested in. And yet it’s completely new. I’d never played in a duo before. And when we first started working together, we had no idea, we thought, well, we might need to get a bassist or a drummer or a singer. We started playing together and we started to realise that actually it had something quite different when you just have two people playing together.

One person locking with another. There’s something really cool and special about that. So when we make records, we don’t have any extra elements, you know, it’s just like the two of us just playing. So that’s a new thing. And I really am into the amount of space that you have and how big a guitar sounds when you don’t have a bass or a keyboard or a drum kit with it. The guitar is a massive sounding instrument, electric guitar, you know, like especially if you take your low E string down to D or C. Sometimes on recordings I do, I’m thinking, wow, did we put a moog on that? Just the bottom string of my Les Paul. And it’s because you haven’t got anything else in there. It’s got so much space. That’s new. And also, I really didn’t know very much about the traditional music of Southern Italy until I started this project.

I was interested in it because of its percussive nature and the idea that it’s a healing music that can be used for trance, and I was like wow, they have that in Europe? You know, I know I could tell you examples of drumming and trance and healing in Brazil, Cuba, but not so much in Europe. And I was like okay, cool, here’s a Southern European tradition that is clearly linked to North Africa. 

PAN M 360 : And how did you come to meet Mauro? 

Justin Adams : I got invited to this festival. They have this incredible thing, night of Taranta down in southern Italy. His band has been responsible for a huge revival in this kind of folk form of music, which was dying out. It wasn’t a professional form of music, it was like mostly peasants playing it in the village squares, and they were all aged 90 and dying. And his father, who was a teacher, started really recording things and going and making like recordings of old ladies singing songs. So, Mauro’s father was one of those 1970s leftists who was like, no, no, this is a valuable, popular tradition, you know, an oral tradition. So he started researching it. And then it’s become kind of like a really popular thing. So you like the first time I went down there, they had a free festival. There were 100,000 people doing the dance to the rhythm, you know. People were bouncing to it, young people, you know, which is cool and they’re into mixing it up with more music and they sort of dubbing it up and having heavy bass lines with it or whatever.

PAN M 360 : I had never heard of Taranta either, sounds really fascinating.

Justin Adams : Well, I think the legend is that women would be bitten by a poisonous spider and they would be knocked out by it. And this music is the thing that heals you. But there were no poisonous spiders. It’s like a metaphor for the hardships of life. Life is the spider, man. It was like life was hard, you know, life was hard for those people. So this music  was a way for the community to kind of raise the spirits of everybody.

PAN M 360 : So what was the writing process like for your compositions? I’m curious as to how you navigated all these different traditions and styles. 

Justin Adams : If you’re going to play music that has that hypnotic trance feel, the listener is a big part of that. So it’s not like a composed piece of music that exists outside of the listener because what you’re doing is you’re all together getting on something. It’s a bit more like the way that a DJ works, because for instance, if you suddenly feel that the audience are with you on a certain groove, you’re gonna play that groove a little bit longer. You might just give them a little bit more, you know, and so you might you’re really playing with the unit. So an improvisational element is really key.

For us, probably a song would be based on a groove, you know, a beat and and then a key or a mode, you know, and then that way it can and then it can change. I’m really interested in the way rhythms connect, you know, where one rhythm turns out to be related to another rhythm. It’s fascinating when, if I can be playing something that kind of is like a North Mississippi kind of repetitive riff, but it really is locking with the Taranta. And there’s a reason for that because all these things, they’re all based on the tension between three and four, syncopation.

PAN M 360 : I suppose after 12 beats it all works out anyway. Thanks so much for taking the time Justin, very much looking forward to the show!

Now that the days gradually start to become longer again, Taverne Tour comes back from February 8-10with a new colourful edition that celebrates the nightlife of the Plateau Mont Royal. Partnering with PAN M 360, Montreal artist Laurence-Anne will be performing at L’Esco on 8 February, before travelling to Mexico for a five-date tour at the end of the month. Blending dream/art/synthpop with coldwave and experimental influences, her latest album, Oniromancie, released on Bonsound last autumn, follows the path of an artist who has spent a long time contemplating the illusions of the night.

Hugely fond of David Lynch and Cocteau Twins, her music creates generous, dreamlike layers of sound to guide listeners through narrow doorways and to protect their hearts from the apparitions that haunt them. The night is hardly always merciful, which is why Laurence-Anne finds inspiration in both the gentleness of her reveries and the denser, darker side of her paralysing nightmares. In the darkness, the frightening appearance of a phantasmagorical entity trying to speak to her ended up being a salutary experience. PAN M 360 spoke to Laurence-Anne about her artistic journey, which constantly swings between reality and fiction.

PAN M 360: I’d like to start by looking back to your early artistic career. You’re known as a 2017 Francouvertes finalist or through your journey as a backing vocalist for Klô Pelgag, alongside N NAO and Lysandre. Your debut album Première Apparition made it onto the longlist of the Polaris Prize in 2019. When exactly did you start making music?

Laurence-Anne: I started singing when I was a child. I did my first singing shows in primary school simply out of passion, without taking any lessons or training. During secondary school, I started playing guitar and composing songs. Things got more serious in Montreal when I met other musicians. One thing led to another and I started arranging my own songs and being supported by a band. But in the end, music was always there.

PAN M 360: When did you move to Montreal?

Laurence-Anne: I moved here in 2012. After high school, I left for Mexico to do a gap year and then I came to study at the CÉGEP in human sciences in Montreal. It was also a good opportunity for me to meet other people who played music. When I moved to the Plateau, I started hanging out at Quai des Brumes and Esco, where I met other musicians.

PAN M 360: You’re playing at Esco on 8 February during Taverne Tour. I suppose it’s a bit like playing at home for you?

Laurence-Anne: Yes, I haven’t played at Esco for a long time. It’s kind of where it all began. I did one of my first shows at the old Esco, back when the bar was still very tiny. I can’t wait to play at home. I’ve got some surprises in store for you.

PAN M 360: Your albums Musivision and Oniromancie were written far away from the city, in the countryside, during getaways in chalets. Is it important for you to get out of the city to write music?

Laurence-Anne: Yes, it creates a creative bubble. I need to disconnect so that I can concentrate on creation. There are too many distractions in everyday life. Throughout the year, there aren’t many moments when I feel creative. But from the moment I decide to isolate myself somewhere with my instruments, I can lose track of time and nothing can take me out of this creative bubble. It’s really in those moments that I can compose without limits and create a whole album in a week!

PAN M 360: You’re originally from Kamouraska, a small town of 700 inhabitants on the south shore of the St. Laurent River. Can you tell us about the environment in which you grew up?

Laurence-Anne: It’s a fairly rural part of the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, mainly based on agriculture. There aren’t any big towns around. I grew up surrounded by fields, in Saint-Pascal de Kamouraska to be precise. It’s a rural area that’s a bit further inland. From my parents’ house, we had a view of the river and the Côte-Nord.

PAN M 360: You consider yourself to be a self-taught multi-instrumentalist (guitar, percussion, bass, synthesiser). You mention that you found more freedom with the synthesiser. What did you discover with the synthesiser that you didn’t find with other instruments?

Laurence-Anne: I love the range of sounds, tones and textures you can achieve with a synthesiser. There are no real limits. With a guitar, you can add effects pedals of course, but that work is easier to do on a synthesiser. When you don’t have any musical knowledge, it’s perhaps easier to find chords or sounds than with a guitar. The world of synthesizers has really helped me to push my creativity further, I feel I can let myself go more.

PAN M 360: Your artistic process is based on automatic writing. Can you explain how you use this rather peculiar technique?

Laurence-Anne: Lots of artists like to call it their ‘yoghurt’ (laughs). Basically, when you compose a melody, there are words that appear spontaneously. If you let these fragments of ideas go on a loop, something can start to emerge on its own. When I write a song, I don’t think about a particular subject. It’s by creating this ‘yoghurt’ that I can understand what I want to talk about. I let the subject appear instead of thinking about it.

PAN M 360: In your creative process, you give a lot of importance to dreams, which you see as a gateway to your subconscious, your anxieties, your desires and your ideals. Oneiromancy is actually a divinatory art that involves writing down your dreams in a notebook. How did you start this practice?

Laurence-Anne: Dreams have always been a source of inspiration for my music. At first, I used these themes unconsciously. I’ve always leaned towards creating poetry based on abstract imagination rather than tangible reality. I’ve always loved this freedom to create landscapes that don’t exist or to create images that take you out of reality. Throughout my work, I’ve noticed recurring themes, like night, space, the feeling of something bigger than ourselves that we can’t understand. In Oniromancie, I focused much more on what the dreams brought me. It’s an indefinable universe where the possibilities are limitless. I love drawing on this infinite source of inspiration.

PAN M 360: Apart from your artistic activity, is this something that helps you in your private life?

Laurence-Anne: Yes, particularly when I have recurring dreams. As I kept reliving the same situations, I started to ask myself questions. That led me to realise certain things that were mirrored in my life and to start making changes. It’s like having some kind of great connection with yourself if you can open your mind to that. It often appears as messages about things you don’t realise. They’re right there in front of you, but you can’t quite assimilate them. With dreams, things suddenly become clearer. I think it’s important to listen to them.

PAN M 360: Your videos give us a better understanding of your dream world. They are absolutely marvellous and well-crafted. We always find you in beautiful costumes, in a cocooned atmosphere, as if we were entering your bubble. Your album covers are also very well done. The Musivision cover, created by Montreal artist Aeforia (Alexy Préfontaine), gives the impression of falling into an endless labyrinth. The cover of Oniromancie, from a series by Bulgarian artist Mia Novakova, reminds me of the dreamlike atmosphere of Jean Cocteau’s film La Belle et le bête. Is it important for you to develop this visual world?

Laurence-Anne: I think it’s important to have visuals that go with the music so you can share it on networks or on YouTube. When you make ethereal dream-pop music, I think it’s even more important. It adds another dimension to the music so that listeners can absorb themselves in that world.

PAN M 360: In your song “Indigo” on the album Musivision, you say it’s your favourite colour of the rainbow. Why is that?

Laurence-Anne: I love dark purple colour palettes! I’m a very nocturnal person. The colour indigo reminds me of the colour of a starry sky, when you walk far away in the forest and there’s no light pollution. For me, it’s the colour of the night by excellence.

Laurence-Anne will be playing at the L’Escogriffe on 8 February as part of the Taverne Tour festival with Sun Entire.

Deli Girls was spawned around 10 years ago in the vibrant and rapidly growing queer, counter-culture, leftist, abolitionist scene in New York. The noisy rave punk meets digital hardcore group is now a flexible, rotating cast of collaborators, all under the artistic wing of founder, Dan Orlowski. Part of the same scenes as names like Dreamcrusher, Machine Girl, or even Show Me The Body, Deli Girls music is raw and powerful, feeling like a rowdy street fight in the middle of a rave; courtesy of the hair raising screams and vocal work of Orlowski. The lyrics are straight to the point, trading out flowery language for direct vocal bombs about grief, depression, apathy, injustice, and other topics to rightfully scream about. We spoke with Orlowski about the humble beginnings of the group, activism, and keeping healthy for those nail-biting screams, before the Deli Girls’ performance at Taverne Tour.

PAN M 360: What is the lineup of Deli Girls now? Is Tommi no longer part of the band? Is Hatechild now a core member of the live shows?

Dan Orlowski: Deli Girls is now a conglomerate, a flexible entity. I performed and collaborated a lot with Dani Rev, and Hatechild in the last 2 years. They have both been core members in that time, but I want to keep it open. We recently performed with John Bemis on live drums at Pioneer Works. I want to do more with live drums. Maybe guitar.

PAN M 360: You wanted to be a painter originally right? How did you fall into music?

Dan Orlowski: Kind of classic art school to musician pipeline. I became really disenfranchised with the art scene-the galleries, the white walls, the art hoes…the art market is basically just a money laundering front for rich people, right? You start to realize most of the people in the art world came from upper middle class/money. Bourgeoisie values. Music feels much more democratic when it can be. A crowd. The mutual release. Immediate, sweaty. 

PAN M 360: The latest self-titled album is pure madness and straight queercore arcane, what was it like to collaborate with that many talented artists?

Dan Orlowski: Honestly, extremely liberating and inspiring. It was great to get into a flow with other artists/their processes and keep it feeling fresh every track. Lots of possibilities. Hectic to coordinate all myself. New ideas, new directions for ideas. Getting to direct the project felt like a lot of responsibility, but creatively very worth it. My agency and self-realization has been emboldened by that project.

PAN M 360: And to call it Deli Girls is kind of a statement in itself? I know when bands do that it’s like “Here is our best and brightest concoction of songs that make us, us”

Dan Orlowski: Perhaps you are picking up on something there, haha. I wanted to make a non-statement with the title of this record, yet edify what the band IS now. 

PAN M 360: The first time I heard Deil Girls was during a trans march protest I was covering back in like 2015 or 2016 in Alberta. I’m sure you know this, but Deli Girls has been very important for the queer community in terms of empowerment and making statements against hurtful rhetoric… how does that make you feel? And do people tell you this?

Dan Orlowski: I’m fortunate enough to be able to say that people do tell me this. I’m really grateful to the activists who have included me in/around their work…there’s truly nowhere I’d rather be. One of the best things anyone has ever told me was this group of activists in London called Pissed Off Trannies who collected a bunch of trans piss and doused the entrance to the public health building there in order to protest gender markers on ID cards being needed in UK to use public restrooms. They apparently created a public health biohazard, had to lock down the whole building with government employees inside…police were apparently scared of getting piss thrown on them, hahaha. They used a DG track over the documentation footage of this protest, and were lovely to hang with at the show. That was iconic and really inspiring. Things like that make the project feel really worth it. Stories like that cancel out all the social climbers and cringe parts of being a musician. 

PAN M 360: Your screams are just so powerful, they sound like they hurt. Do you have vocal training/ do you have to warm your voice up before a performance?

Dan Orlowski: No warm-ups or training other than trying to build up the scream stamina/always stay active with it like a muscle. Doing it for a really long time. I’m constantly doing a lot of little things to take care of my body to make sure my throat is optimal (no dairy, exercise, gut care, no coffee, no smoking…boring but real).


PAN M 360: Do you have to ‘get into character’ so to speak to perform? Like screaming live, do you have to feel angry or remember your thought process when you wrote the song?

Dan Orlowski: I used to feel more like that, now I guess the process is more automatic/intuitive. I have always felt there is a bit of acting performance involved in vocals because you do have to ‘be there’ for it to feel genuine. It’s a challenge to constantly return to the same place I was in when I wrote the song for the first time.

PAN M 360: What kind of themes always seem to come back to you when writing the lyrics for Deli Girls?

Dan Orlowski: Whatever infuriates me in my bowels. Unfairness, injustice, whatever is hurting me the most at any given time. Sometimes sarcasm, criticism. More recently, grief. 

PAN M 360: I find the vocals very direct, like no real flowery metaphors, but just straight to the point “This country’s abusive / now we’re all abusers”…

Dan Orlowski: I try to be as economical as possible with words. I usually dislike flowery writing because it’s pervasive and often covers up a lack of content. 

PAN M 360: I heard from others at your past shows that your crowd is one of the best for moshing etiquette, y’know having a great time but being safe and having zero discrimination. Why do you think that is?

Dan Orlowski: I’m pretty sure most people who would be at a show we’re playing are already contentious of these things. Queer, leftist, abolitionist, etc. it’s really just a reflection of the excellent community I’m lucky to find myself in. We’ve never had to deal with TikTok or 4chan trolls, skater punks, etc. who might be on the cis/male/edgy end of the spectrum. That’s not who the music or the community is for. 

PAN M 360: Take me back to some of those first Deli Girls shows in little DIY halls in NY or shitty bars…
And now you’ve been able to play places like Berghain, Primavera, Unsound Fest, is it crazy to you how much you kind of exploded and now get these opportunities?

Dan Orlowski: It’s … absolutely crazy, haha. I’m thankful every day. But that’s how everyone starts right? Moshing in the club used to be such a wild concept and now it’s regular. There’s a lot that used to be avant-garde that’s standard now, and I’m thankful for those things (trans rights as a given within the scene, discussions of accountability, prioritizing BIPOC, ethics, criticality of gentrification, harm reduction to name a few). You have to appreciate the wins (while still fighting for a better world) or you will lose your mind. 

PAN M 360: Anything you’d like to add?

Dan Orlowski: Free Palestine.

Deli Girls plays Taverne Tour on Thursday Feb. 8 w/ Slash Need, and Alix Fernz at Le Ministere
FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE

This Sunday, 4 February, No Hay Banda will host a concert with Canadian cellist India Gailey at the Sala Rossa in Montreal. The programme includes a performance of Problematica, the independent artist’s new album, in which she plays compositions for cello/voice/electro by Fjóla Evans, Nicole Lizée, Julia Mermelstein, Andrew Noseworthy, Sarah Rossy, Joseph Glaser and Thanya Iyer. The first part of the concert will feature the world premiere of a work by Montreal composer Zihua Tan, what came before me is going after me. To find out more about Zihua Tan and his composition, listen to an interview with him here. 

I spoke to India Gailey. Here’s a summary of what she had to say:

PAN M 360: Hello India. It’s a pleasure to welcome you. You’re originally from Halifax, and you’re still based there, aren’t you?

India Gailey: Yes, but I studied at McGill for several years…

PAN M 360: You’ve got just the thing for the Montreal scene…

India Gailey: I love that scene! I know several artists there, and it’s always a great pleasure to meet up with them again.

PAN M 360: You’re in the middle of a Canadian tour with Problematica, which you’ll be performing on Sunday 4 February at the Sala Rossa in Montreal (with stops in Toronto on 31 January and Guelph on 1 February). What is Problematica?

India Gailey: First and foremost, it’s an album that will be released soon (at the end of February) on People Places Records. This album is the result of a series of commissions I made to several Canadian composers: Fjóla Evans, Nicole Lizée, Julia Mermelstein, Andrew Noseworthy, Sarah Rossy, Joseph Glaser, and Thanya Iyer.

PAN M 360: What is your main aesthetic?

India Gailey: The one I generally use in my concerts and in the choice of works I play. You could say a kind of post-minimalism that blurs the boundaries between indie pop/rock and contemporary music. 

PAN M 360: Where does this interest in contemporary music come from? From your youth? 

India Gailey: I loved the cello when I was very young, once I’d touched it. But I didn’t immerse myself in “classical” music straight away. I first played in rock bands, but it was during my further studies that I discovered a world of possibilities that had eluded me. And I enjoyed exploring it.

PAN M 360: Let’s get back to Problematica. What “problem” is there?

India Gailey: None (laughs)! Technically, according to the dictionary, it’s a substitute for taxon, used for organisms whose classification cannot be determined. In simpler terms, I’m interested in the notion of duality and, above all, in breaking out of it and going further in terms of identity.

PAN M 360: How does this translate into the music?

India Gailey: Through all sorts of contrasts and superimpositions between the voices in the scores. There’s the cello, of course, but also my voice (I have to sing!) and sometimes electronics.

PAN M 360: Playing the cello and singing at the same time! How much more demanding is that?

India Gailey: Oh, it’s very demanding! Even though writing for voice takes my vocal abilities into account, I still have to step out of my comfort zone here and there. What’s more, I have to prepare twice for each concert: the cello and the voice. I have to be careful not to talk too much, to protect my throat and so on. It’s unusual for a cellist.

PAN M 360: We wish you an excellent concert, and look forward to hearing all about it.

India Gailey: Thank you! It will be a pleasure to see Montreal again!

Every year, McGill Music students, graduate and undergraduate alike, come together to stage an opera. This season, Cendrillon, by French composer Jules Massenet, will take the stage at the Monument-National. This opera is remarkable in its scale: many singers are required. A notable challenge, that even professional opera companies rarely decide to take on.

At the source of this production are Stephen Hargreaves, Opera McGill’s director, and David Lefkowich, guest stage director. Having both many years of experience in directing and staging operas, both locally and internationally, both on the professional level and in university settings, they took on the challenge of Cendrillon. This was their first time working with this piece, which they however already knew and loved.

PAN M 360 had the chance to talk to them a few days before the opening night. We spoke about their work together, what makes this opera by Massenet so unique, and their common concern to create the best environment in which the students can learn and develop their art.

PAN M 360: Thank you so much for being here today! How are the last rehearsals going?

DAVID LEFKOWICH: It’s been fantastic! I think the students are really rising to the challenge that Massenet has presented us, it is really exciting to see them all sort of blossom within the last few weeks.

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: Yeah. In many ways, this is a stretch for McGill and Opera McGill. And it’s a good bit. It’s one of those things where it asks a lot of people to do a lot of things on stage. There are a lot of students for whom this is their first experience being on stage. I can’t imagine a better eye-opening experience in terms of what’s happening. We had our final piano dress rehearsal last night, and this evening, we added the orchestra, which had rehearsed somewhat separately in previous weeks. And now we have to add that new layer, which will be the last big piece.

PAN M 360: How did you decide that Cendrillon by Jules Massenet was the work you were going to do this year at McGill Opera?

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: At McGill, we try to tailor the repertoire to the students. And that’s a challenge, it’s a challenge for every institution. For example, we need to give opportunities to the graduate students in the master’s programme to be on stage, those students are only here for two years. And we have all these people coming in who are new students. And we had a large class coming in this year, also. So, I listed all the singers that we had, and I looked for a piece that would really feature many of these students and get them on stage, because I think that’s really the only way that the students can learn what is like what opera is. And this piece just came up, which I always wanted to do, it’s a fantastic piece.

PAN M 360: Massenet wrote many operas. What distinguishes this one from his other works?

DAVID LEFKOWICH: There’s a really lovely balance between realism and fantasy and magic. There’s always a bit of these elements within his pieces, but in this one, it’s a little bit more expanded. For example, when you look at Manon, you know, it’s a story and it plays out and it’s a beautiful story at that, but this one, it’s a classic story that we know. And so we have the sort of realism aspect where we have Cendrillon, we have her sisters and her stepmother and the father, things that we recognize. But when it goes into more of the world of the fairy, instead of making it like an afterthought, it’s like a major aspect of the show. And I think this is really unique. I haven’t seen it in a lot of his pieces. And so that fantasy aspect is magnified through Massenet’s lens. And it’s exciting to sort of juxtapose those scenes alongside more traditional court and palace scenes and with the ballet and the things we sort of come to expect with French grand opera. It’s awesome.

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: From a musical perspective, a lot of the magical aspects are present in the orchestration, the sort of lightness, the ephemeral, ethereal qualities. Sometimes, it’s just one little instrument doing a pizzicato and other times dancing flutes. There’s another moment in the third act where it’s almost like Steve Reich, where this sort of eerie minimalism is happening. And you hear the fairy godmother and the spirits singing various things and trying to help solve the problem of Cendrillon and the prince. And so, it’s interesting how that magical element is woven in, you know, the prince and Cendrillon are kind of touched by that magic, whereas everybody else is kind of somehow separate. It’s really just stunning storytelling.

PAN M 360:  This opera is a bit of a challenge, especially for students who will be on stage for the first time. Why is that so?

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: I think that the challenges in this piece are for everyone, not just one or two or three singers. The challenge is that you have to interact with each other, even with the relatively smaller roles. But also, it’s not a marathon for Cendrillon, the lead role. It’s an opportunity for them to really work on their craft and interactions with their colleagues.

DAVID LEFKOWICH: From a staging point of view, it’s also a challenge. When Patrick [Hansen] called me up and told me he wanted me to direct Cendrillon, I was like “Oh, how will we cast it? How will we do this? It’s impossible.” The Met can do it and Santa Fe can do it because they have very large budgets and lots and lots of singers. But it’s more difficult in a university context. And when it is a stretch, it’s a good stretch in the sense that it’s accomplishable and the students will find success and not sort of fall down on the job. That always can happen.

And what’s incredible about this program is that we don’t have one cast. We have two. The fact that a program that’s a university academic program could have two sets of all of these incredibly difficult roles is astounding. But it’s what I’ve come to expect at Opera McGill.

PAN M 360: Tell us a bit more about how your collaboration started.

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: So we had met briefly when David attended the auditions for the opera McGill students. And I have to say, I love working with David. He is a supreme collaborator. We’re aiming in the same direction. I feel like we have been on a great journey together and we’re absolutely in sync. I mean, it’s great to have somebody like David who has a wide range of experience in this repertoire for this this piece is new for both of us.

This allows us to do some level of exploration with the students. What works, and what doesn’t. How do we pull out these performances? I think many of the students are at a near professional level, and that this is an environment in which they can hone that energy and we can help them build the experiences that they don’t have yet.

DAVID LEFKOWICH: I find that these collaborations can be very scary for the first time because we’re sort of embarking on this journey. I had a lot of trepidation, not about working with Stephen, but just about sort of how this was going to happen. And on the first day, we sat next to each other, and it was like we had been doing this for years. And what’s been amazing is watching the singers, like one of us will give some instruction and the singers would try it and it may work. It may not. But then the other one of us jumps in and sort of brings something else to the table and suddenly there’s that “a-ha!” moment with the student and you see them rise to the challenge and that takes both of us sort of working together able to help craft this experience for the students.

PAN M 360: What should the public expect from this production of Cendrillon?

DAVID LEFKOWICH: Come ready to be joyful. I think that this opera has incredible music and a great story that we recognize. It’s told in a slightly different way. I think there are still some nice surprises along the way. But what’s great is that the scenes are short, so things keep changing, and this opera always brings surprises to the table. And so I think especially for a first-time opera goer, this is a perfect way to experience opera. It’s a very safe, very easy to listen to, and very easy to enjoy piece. And the impact at the end is quite strong.

STEPHEN HARGREAVES: I would add that I think it’s new for Opera McGill. It’s a large group of people on stage. And I think that you know, with both casts counted, there’ll be thirty-nine people singing on stage. There are thirty-nine orchestra members, and opera on that grand scale hits in a different way, you know, and it’s interesting because, as David was saying, you never feel like you’re stuck in one world. It dips into all sorts of different sides of things. And when we have that opportunity to just bask in the grandness of it all, it’s just thrilling. It’s an experience I would recommend not missing because they just don’t happen that often.

Cendrillon, and opera by Jules Massenet, with Opera McGill and the McGill Symphony Orchestra. Presented at the Ludger-Duvernay Hall of the Monument-National, on January 26 and 27 (7:30 PM) and January 28 (2:00 PM). TICKETS AND INFO HERE!

In the third row of New York’s Beacon Theatre, Mahnoosh Arsanjani is on her feet, singing in unison with her idol. She and her friend Bita Zavari have flown in from California to see Iran’s greatest pop singer, Googoosh, on stage one last time. “I couldn’t miss it,” says Mahnoosh. My family came to the U.S. when I was seven, and Googoosh’s songs accompanied my childhood. Even if it’s a bit of our parents’ music, it’s ours too!”

For several months now, the artist has been bidding farewell to the stage as part of an emotional world tour, entitled The Last Chapters, after 70 years (you read that right!) of a career rich in songs, films, and bans. Pan M 360 caught up with her on the eve of her last ever New York concert.

Every nation has its diva. We in Montreal have Céline Dion. The U.S. has Barbara Streisand and Diana Ross, the Lebanese have Fairuz, and the Italians, have Raffaella Carrà. The Iranians have Googoosh. Born in 1950 in Tehran, Fāegheh Atashin was put on the stage by her father at the age of three, and rose to fame at a very early age, before becoming the propeller of cultural Westernization in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In the ‘70s, she sang disco and pop hits such as “Talagh” (Divorce), “Makhlough” (Creature), and “Pol” (Bridge), songs that today can often be heard remixed or sampled for the dancefloor. While some consider her too commercial, a majority of Persians have elevated her to a living goddess status.


In her suite on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, the 73-year-old singer, with hair and make-up done to perfection, looks petite, a contrast with the powerful, humorous persona she portrays on stage. The tour is scheduled to run until 2025. It’s her way of thanking and saying goodbye to her beloved public, a relationship she’s nurtured since childhood. After New York, Dusseldorf awaits her later in January, followed by Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and London.

Time to wrap it up

“I think it’s time to wrap it up,” Googoosh says. “After 70 years of singing and acting, with the exception of 21 years in my life. I have many other projects, I’m working on a book, I have a foundation, called Pol Foundation, which aims to support young artists in their artistic education.”

After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women’s voices in Iran were silenced. Googoosh was condemned to isolation for over twenty years until she left the country for good in 2000. Since then, she has lived in Los Angeles (except two years in Toronto between 2000 and 2002), resumed touring, and has released about a dozen albums.

On stage at the Beacon Theatre, the day after our meeting, she shows great generosity towards her older audience, who saw her grow up, as well as her younger crowd, who consider her a bit of an endearing godmother. The 2600-seat theater is packed with people of all ages and social classes. People dressed up, taking photos as if to say “I was there.” The vast majority are of Iranian origin, and the diva speaks only Farsi on stage. The concert opens with a heartfelt rendition of “Talagh,” accompanied by images on the screen of Iranian women fighters and photos of Mahsa Jina Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish girl murdered by morality police in September 2022 for allegedly wearing an inappropriate headscarf.

Googoosh has never hidden her support for the Women, Life, Freedom movement, and the LGBTQ2S+ community. In 2014, the video for her song “Behesht” (Paradise) featured a gay couple being the victim of repression. While she doesn’t verbally condemn the mullahs’ regime, she never ceases to celebrate those who resist it.

Celebrating freedom

She knows what she’s talking about. Her 21 years away from the stage represent a dark period for the star. Most of her colleagues and friends in the entertainment world had already fled. “It was very hard for me,” she recalls. “They took away my art, my profession, my love, my life, everything. From the age of three, I was on the stage. Somehow, I was born for the stage and then, it was taken away from me. I thought I was finished forever, I thought nobody wanted to hear me sing at that point.”

She was wrong: during her isolation, her songs and films remained in demand on the black market and among the diaspora. Thanks to new technologies, such as the Internet and clandestine satellites, she saw that her love from the Iranian public never died. When she left Iran in 2000, she embarked on a world tour, entitled The Comeback Tour, a real reunion with fans. “In 2000, I was excited, moved, and happy. I was reunited with the public that I love. In contrast, this tour today is full of sorrow. I cry a lot on stage, and I have to learn to control myself. Saying goodbye isn’t a pleasant feeling. It’s bittersweet.”


The context has changed since her departure. Women are still not allowed to sing alone on stage in Iran, unless they perform in front of an all-female audience or are accompanied by a man. On social media, a new generation of artists defy these prohibitions, sharing their music with the world. “I am so happy and excited to see these new faces, Googoosh says. “I forget their names, I’m bad with names, but I hear their voices. I have access to these fantastic singers through social media and I am grateful for what they’re doing, what they’re trying to show. They show that women can sing very well, even better than me. Because they are the new, the future. I’m part of an older generation. I’m so happy that they are rising.”

A stage cannon

On stage, the sadness the star says she feels is transformed into a genuine connection with the crowd, who sing along, laugh at her jokes, cry, and shout words of love. She knows what her fans want: the great pop and disco hits of the pre-Revolution era. The diva sings “Pol”, “Hamsafar,” “Kooh,” “Mano To” and “Jaddeh,” among others. Her ten-piece band; (keyboards, flute, two guitars, bass, drummer, backing vocalist, violin, percussion, and electric double bass) reproduces the sounds of the 1970s with a contemporary flavour. On the giant screen behind her, nostalgic images of the young Googoosh merge with the concert broadcast.

After a long intermission, the artist returns to the stage. She has changed from her long crystal dress to an olive-green pantsuit with sequined fringes. She goes on with “Hejrat” and “Maah Pishooni.” At the first recognizable notes of “Makhlough,” her smashing hit, the penultimate song, the room erupts in tears and cries as people rush to the front to cheer her on and blow kisses.

According to Mahnoosh Arsanjani, the California fan, there are some nasty rumors going around: Googoosh might be now too old for the stage. Mahnoosh disagrees. “But you see what she can do. The voice is there, her power is still there!”

Photos by Siavash Rokni

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