Interviews

Celui qui se dit avant tout un musicien s’est aussi révélé comme un des paroliers les plus poétiques de la musique québécoise.

Pierre Flynn commémore ses cinquante ans de carrière en effectuant une tournée québécoise en solo jusqu’en 2024. Le 3 novembre, il sera de passage au Gésu, à Montréal, dans le cadre des Coups de Coeurs Francophones. 

Pierre Flynn est le chanteur et compositeur du groupe Octobre, de 1972 à 1982. Il a réalisé quatre albums sous son nom, a écrit des chanson pour aussi bien Louise Forestier, Pauline Julien ou Renée Martel, il a écrit des musiques de films. 

Pour ma part, j’ai suivi attentivement l’évolution de Pierre Flynn.

Cégépien, boutonneux et chevelu, j’ai assisté au concert d’Octobre, en première partie du groupe britannique King Crimson, au capitole de Québec, en 1973. Par la suite, j’ai revu Octobre à plusieurs reprises et j’ai assisté à tous les concerts de monsieur Flynn à la sortie de chaque album. 

Il a créé une œuvre vraiment distincte et originale. Avec des arrangements musicaux extrêmement soignés et léchés. En toute transparence, C’est un travail que j’admire, avec de minuscules bémols. 

Ce concert solo nous fait revivre tous ces épisodes de la carrière de Pierre Flynn, avec parfois des accompagnements surprenants. Le spectacle est aussi rempli d’anecdotes qui contextualisent les chansons, non sans humour. Nous n’en dirons pas davantage pour vous préserver des surprises. 

J’ai passé une heure avec Pierre Flynn pour faire le tour de cinquante ans de carrière. Voici notre échange.

PAN M 360 : Pierre Flynn, cinquante ans de carrière , ça donne une sorte de vertige?

Pierre Flynn : Ça m’a donné envie de me demander: « Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait? ». J’ai eu un parcours un peu chaotique . Je n’ai pas toujours été le meilleur navigateur dans les eaux tumultueuses du show business. Je suis un auteur compositeur qui travaille extrêmement lentement, mais au bout de tout cela, j’ai le sentiment d’être toujours là et d’avoir des choses à dire. Au cours de la dernière année, un ami dans le monde de la culture m’a dit: « Pourquoi ne pas faire un spectacle pour commémorer ces cinquante ans? » Et j’ai décidé de le faire.

PAN M 360: Partons du début de votre carrière avec le groupe Octobre, dont on entendra deux pièces dans le concert, qu’est-ce qui reste de l’empreinte de ce groupe qui a été très important dans les années 70?

Pierre Flynn: Certaines chansons d’Octobre mériteraient peut-être d’être effacées aujourd’hui, mais il y avait une prise de parole audacieuse, si on pense entre autres à La Maudite Machine. Je voulais toucher des enjeux sensibles. 

Je dirais aussi qu’il y avait un énorme appétit pour l’intensité, nous voulions exprimer une tension, un côté exacerbé. Il fallait que le son soit fort! Des gens qui trouvaient qu’on se prenait trop au sérieux. A cette époque, on voulait vraiment expérimenter. Nous écoutions Gentle Giant , King Crimson et Yes, mais moi je préférais Charles Mingus, James Brown et Léo Ferré. Le Sacre du Printemps  de Stravinsky, c’était du rock pour moi. Alors nous mélangions toutes ces influences disparates . 

PAN M 360: Sans vouloir trop divulguerla matière de  votre concert solo, il s’ouvre sur une chanson d’Octobre , qui est Le Vent se Lève, une pièce que je trouve particulièrement forte. 

Pierre Flynn : Il y a quelque chose de très mystérieux dans cette chanson . Je ne me considère pas forcément comme un poète, mais certaines chansons, comme celle-ci, ont une dimension plus poétique. Les paroles vont puiser dans l’inconscient. Il y a des images qui ne sont pas rationnelles. 

Par exemple: « Regarde les enfants aux yeux sertis d’étoiles et les hommes vieillis d’amertume . (…) Entends ce blues qui réchauffe l’hiver des passagers du vendredi soir . Ecoute l’Espagne en guitares amères ». Je ne comprends même pas comment j’ai réussi à écrire ça. 

PAN M 360:  Pour moi, vous êtes un des paroliers québécois le plus influencé par la poésie et par la France. Je me trompe?

 

Pierre Flynn: Je le dis toujours: au départ je suis musicien. Mais il fallait bien mettre des paroles sur la musique autre que des « lalala ». Étudiant au cégep en littérature, j’ai entendu Léo Ferré chanter Les Poètes de Sept Ans d’Arthur Rimbaud. J’ai été époustouflé par la puissance de ce texte avec la musique. Ça m’a probablement aiguillé vers ce genre de dimension. J’ai eu ma période Antonin Artaud, Rimbaldienne. Mais également Félix Leclerc. Au-delà des chansons les plus connues , il y a un Félix très poétique, presque mystique, qu’on peut écouter. 

Neuf fois sur dix, mes chansons commencent par la musique. Puis après, je creuse un peu comme un mineur pour arriver au texte. Et parfois, ça nécessite du temps. Pour la chanson Ma Prière sur l’album Mirador, ça m’a pris plus d’un an. 

Il est vrai également qu’une performance en solo fait ressortir davantage les textes. Ceux qui assisteront au spectacle s’en rendront compte en écoutant Possession, de l’album Le Parfum du Hasard.

Avec ce spectacle, je veux aussi transmettre la passion de l’écriture. Pour moi, c’est très important. 

PAN M 360 : Le Parfum du Hasard est le premier disque solo que vous avez fait paraitre en 1987. Un disque qui résonne encore ?

Pierre Flynn: Je n’ai jamais été vraiment un artiste populaire. Mais ce disque s’était assez bien vendu. Il y a eu plusieurs succès à la radio , comme Possession, Sur la Route, Catalina. C’était aussi les débuts de la musique numérique avec les multiples synthétiseurs. 

Avec le recul, la chanson L’Ennemi me semble la plus achevée. Au niveau musical, au-delà des synthèses, il y a un fond de blues organique . Au niveau du texte, elle a pris une « twist » dans sa pertinence.

« Il (l’ennemi) est là, le doigt sur la gâchette, il guette la planète (…) veut voler ton regard farouche, les yeux de ta bouche , tes souliers de liberté. Il veut voler ton envie de rire ». 

Dans le contexte actuel, les tensions géopolitiques, j’ai l’impression qu’elle vibre différemment. 

J’ai toujours fait attention d’aller au-delà de l’actualité politique immédiate, pour que les chansons ne se démodent pas. 

PAN M 360 : Quatre ans plus tard, paraît Les Jardins de Babylone, le deuxième album. Il y a beaucoup de chansons qui parlent de voyages. La route, les voyages, il me semble, c’est une des constantes de votre travail. 

Pierre Flynn: Il est aussi beaucoup question d’amour avec Savoir Aimer , qui traite de l’engagement dans une relation, ou En Cavale, une tentative de chanson plus simple, car parfois , pour moi, la complexité est plus facile que la simplicité. 

Mais oui, sur ce disque, il y a Les Splendeurs et Lettre de Venise, qui racontent mes expéditions en Irlande, en Grèce et en Italie. Je deviens comme un reporter, je suis fasciné, j’observe et je partage mes émotions. 

PAN M 360: Dix ans plus tard arrive Mirador, en 2001. Nous sommes dans un contexte social et politique totalement différent.

Pierre Flynn: La première chanson de Mirador, La Romance du XXe Siècle , raconte ce tournant. C’est le XXe siècle qui bascule et où s’en va-t-on après ? J’ai aussi essayé le « spoken word » . Je demande à ma fille : « Auras-tu la paix et la douceur de vivre? » Je poursuis la réflexion avec Ma Petite Guerrière, dédié à ma fille unique. C’est un album sur la force de la vie et ses étapes jusqu’à la mort. Il y a bien sûr la chanson Croire, qui est un hommage aux poètes Gilbert Langevin et Gaston Miron, que j’ai eu la chance de connaître un peu. Avec cet hommage, je voulais en même temps me détacher d’eux, muter dans le nouveau siècle. Je suis très fier de cette chanson, une de celles que je préfère dans mon modeste corpus.

PAN M 360: Et on arrive à 2015 avec Sur La Terre. 

Pierre Flynn: C’est l’album dont je suis le plus satisfait. C’est une espèce de chronique de ma vie, de mon ressenti, dans ces années-là. Vous savez, je n’ai aucun plan de match quand j’amorce la création d’un album. Les chansons arrivent un peu par hasard. L’unité ou le manque d’unité se ressent à la fin. Le dernier homme est une chanson sur la solitude. Si loin si proche est une continuation de Ma petite Guerrière, qui est maintenant une jeune adulte au moment d’écrire la chanson. 

PAN M 360: L’album- et votre concert solo aussi- se termine par Capitaine ô Capitaine, une chanson à multiples sens.

Pierre Flynn: C’est une chanson folk à trois quatre accords. C’est la métaphore du bateau qui navigue à la recherche de quelque chose. Mais c’est aussi une métaphore sur l’avenir de la planète . « Capitaine ô capitaine, nous avons perdu le nord . Capitaine ramène le navire à bon port ». Il y a quand même une ouverture vers l’espérance.


PAN M 360 : La question qui tue: y aura-t-il un autre album de Pierre Flynn?

Pierre Flynn: Oui. Mais je ne sais pas quand(grand éclat de rire). Les gens connaissent ma lenteur, ma réputation est faite. Je me bats tous les jours avec la tentation de la passivité. Mais j’offre une nouvelle chanson dans mon spectacle. Il y en aura d’autres. Je suis toujours vivant, j’ai encore une bonne voix, alors je vais essayer de ne pas trop niaiser avec la puck.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary is the eloquent embodiment of the virtuoso musician of our time.

Discerning on stage despite the extreme concentration demanded by her repertoire, open to different musical styles, the young French trumpeter proves herself a model interpreter of the classical repertoire but also a luminous improviser. The classical side of her career seems to prevail in our perceptions… until further notice, as this twenty-something also excels in modern jazz.

This Thursday, November 2, she performs at the Maison symphonique alongside organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez, titular of the great organs of the city of San Diego. Together, they will perform works by Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Maurice Ravel, Frederic Mompou, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alessandro Marcello, Astor Piazzolla, Modeste Moussorgski and George Gershwin. A program that speaks volumes about our interviewee’s openness and eclecticism.

PAN M 360 : We know that you’re a young trumpeter who’s very much in the spotlight on the European scene. We also know that you’ve already been to Montreal a few times, since your professional debut in 2018.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Exactly. And I’m back for a third time with this duo concert with organ.

PAN M 360: In classical music, the trumpet is mostly associated with the Baroque repertoire, but you obviously draw from far beyond this period!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes. I’ve done Baroque, I even made a Baroque album when I was 13, and I’ve done a lot since then. I continue to do so, and it’s true that we don’t have a huge repertoire for the trumpet. We have two great classical concertos, Hummel and Haydn – which I played in Montreal. I also like to steal repertoire from other instruments and transcribe it, because I was a bit frustrated at not having much repertoire for my own. So I do a lot of transcriptions, but not everything fits with the trumpet. You still have to make a selection.

PAN M 360: Who makes the transcriptions? How do you go about it?

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: It depends on the project. As far as jazz is concerned, when I did my album on the United States and France, I called on Bill Elliott, an American arranger who also works with Barbara Hannigan – who is truly remarkable. Jérôme Ducros did some great arrangements for me too, and I’ll be working with others on future projects. I like to change because I love working with different people because everyone has their own style.

PAN M 360: As you say, not all transcriptions are feasible, and transposing the trumpet to pieces composed for other instruments or the human voice is no guarantee of success.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, in general, the repertoire for the voice works quite well, because the trumpet is similar to the voice. Afterwards, I really wanted to transcribe pieces for violin, but in the end, I find that it doesn’t work at all on the trumpet. You don’t have the bow strokes, you don’t have the bows that bite the strings, you don’t have that with the trumpet. What works on the trumpet is melody, the more lyrical pieces.

PAN M 360: When you play Gershwin, for example, it works well.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, because in Gershwin, there’s this jazz side that works really well with the trumpet.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about classical trumpet and jazz trumpet. Since the early days of Wynton Marsalis, i.e. some 40 years ago, classical and jazz trumpets have become increasingly complementary. We imagine you’re very aware of this trend, which is becoming increasingly important these days: more and more classical trumpeters are practicing both written and improvised music.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : That’s true, and it’s not great to insist on putting artists in boxes, wishing they belonged to a precise style. For example, I made an album of pieces by Astor Piazzolla, whose style is unspeakable. Obviously, it’s tango, but it’s also classical, improvisational and jazz-like. Take Leonard Bernstein, too: he can’t be pigeonholed either.

PAN M 360 : Needless to say, you improvise in public or for yourself!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : Of course, I do classical and jazz, I started both at the same time. Yesterday, for example, I was in a jazz concert, it was improvisation from A to Z. I have a quartet made up of guitarist Hugo Lippi, pianist Vincent Bourgeyx, bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummer Franck Agulhon.


PAN M 360 : Needless to say, you improvise in public or for yourself!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary : Of course, I do classical and jazz, I started both at the same time. Yesterday, for example, I was in a jazz concert, it was improvisation from A to Z. I have a quartet made up of guitarist Hugo Lippi, pianist Vincent Bourgeyx, bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummer Franck Agulhon.

PAN M 360: So, you’ve developed both techniques at the same time – you have both classical and jazz trumpet models.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, of course, it’s always been part of my life, I’ve always needed to do both, because it brings me so much. It’s completely different, the demands aren’t the same at all. At the same time, it’s still music and I see it as a global thing. As long as the music’s good, I’ll take it, whatever the style.

PAN M 360: However, the first perception people have of you on this side of the Atlantic is that you’re a classical trumpeter. Obviously, you’re also a jazzwoman, so we’d like to know more about this side of your career.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, I do more classical concerts. I’ve done a few springboards like the Jazz à Marciac festival. I’m trying to develop that more and more, but it’s true that I do more concerts with classical orchestras. But even when I play with classical orchestras, I like to do an improvisation on a theme as an encore.

PAN M 360: Which is a fair return because, anyway, improvisation existed until the XIXᵉ century and now we’re bringing it back.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, that’s right. And then anyway, even, I mean Bach improvised, Mozart improvised, Beethoven improvised. And then the composers separated from the performers.

PAN M 360: So, you really see yourself in both. Your personal perception of yourself is that you don’t have a fundamental stylistic box.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: No, I don’t feel like it at all.

PAN M 360: For many composers and performers, sticking strictly to one type of repertoire may no longer correspond to their idea of advanced music.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Of course. To attract people to classical music and jazz too, I think we need to open up to a whole range of styles. I don’t know about you, but in France, several classical festivals are starting to do just that.

PAN M 360: It’s the same here, it’s opening up more and more. The two approaches are gradually coming together. One day, it will become normal to do both, and you’re an excellent example of this growing trend.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: It’s richer, too, so why deprive yourself?

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the Montreal duo concert with Raúl Prieto Ramírez, presented by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. You’ll be playing works by Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Maurice Ravel, Frederic Mompou, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alessandro Marcello, Astor Piazzolla, Modeste Moussorgski and George Gershwin.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: I told you about my eclecticism and my desire to mix many styles. And this is really what we’re going to do. I’ve never played with the organist, but I believe, after having exchanged many suggestions with him, that the program reflects our personalities. So we came up with this program. It’s great because it also means the audience never gets bored, and gets a sort of global view of the music.

We’ll be playing Viviani, Ravel and Rachmaninov, two of whose arias we’ll be playing, as well as a lovely piece by Mompou, which isn’t very well known and isn’t at all made for the organ… and which sounds incredible with the organ. We also have this baroque concerto by Marcello, which I really like. We have Liszt and Moussorgski for solo organ, and we also have Piazzolla and Gershwin. These are pieces that are very close to my heart, and I think the same goes for the organist.

PAN M 360: You conclude with Gerswhin’s The Man I Love, a well-known ballad. Was this an editorial choice?

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Maybe… and then I can improvise. All in all, I don’t think we should put up any barriers. That’s how I feel about it. And that’s how I feel free.

PAN M 360: Free in an act of communication!

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: The main thing for me is the relationship with the audience. For me, a concert must be a moment of sharing.

PAN M 360: Another interesting thing about you is the way you present yourself on stage. You’re definitely not into austerity! You’ve got that showbiz side, which is great, and you’re not the only one. Many virtuosos of your generation, moreover, are less stuck in classical decorum than previous generations.

Lucienne Renaudin Vary: Yes, but it’s not really calculated in my case, it’s a bit in spite of myself, so I don’t ask myself too many questions about it. It’s natural, it’s who I am. Anyway, you have to move with the times!

PROGRAM :

Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Trumpet Sonata No. 1 in C major (7 min)

Ravel, Vocalise-study in the form of a Habanera (3 min)

Frederic Mompou, Damunt de tu només les flors [Above you, only the flowers] (4 min)

Franz Liszt, Valse de Méphisto no 1, S. 514, for solo organ (transc. Ramírez)

Rachmaninov, 6 romances, Op. 4: IV. Georgian Song (4 min.)

Rachmaninov, Fourteen romances, Op. 34: V. Arion (3 min)

Intermission

Alessandro Marcello, Concerto for oboe in D minor (10 min)’ Piazzolla, Ave Maria (Maria)
Piazzolla, Ave Maria (5 min)

Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition, excerpts, for solo organ (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov, transcr. Ramírez)

Baba Yaga
The Great Gate of Kiev

Gershwin, The Man I Love (4 min)

THIS PROGRAM IS PRESENTED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 7:30 P.M., AT THE MAISON SYMPHONIQUE.

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

Freed for a time during the pandemic, pianist Marianne Trudel soon returned to her lifestyle immersed in an insatiable passion for music, matched by the workaholism she’s known for : this autumn she’s releasing 3 albums that she visualizes as a triangle : solo À pas de loup, duo Dédé Java Espiritu with the excellent drummer and professor emeritus John Hollenbeck, Trio Time Poem : La joie de l’éphémère with the same percussionist colleague and bassist / double bassist Rémi-Jean Leblanc. The great and full nature, the total fragility of existence, loss, the celebration of life are the pieces of the pianistic and compositional engine perfected by the 46-year-old jazzwoman, composer, improviser, arranger, bandleader, producer, undoubtedly one of the most dynamic on the Montreal scene.
 
PAN M 360 : Commemoration, therefore. 

Marianne Trudel: It’s a bit of a pretext, because these three albums were conceived in the same period, the famous pandemic. I was waiting for the concerts to start up again. A series of concerts with John (Hollenbeck) had been postponed three times, a series of trio concerts had also been postponed a few times. In short, I was teaching online, waiting for activities to resume. At the same time, I set out to finish a doctorate I’d started ten years ago, but had put on hold because I was too busy with concerts and teaching. I’d been given a final ultimatum (after ten years, you have to file), and it was getting on my nerves.

PAN M 360: If we understand correctly, several factors delayed the release of these albums.

Marianne Trudel: It might have been a good idea to release them a few months apart, but at a certain point, I said to myself “It’s so three”, I really see them as a triangle, as three important points in the same patent. It’s three facets, three complements, I’m not sure. But they go together in my head, even if they’re very different. They’re all very nature-inspired, with John as the linking element between the duo and the trio. I said to myself, “If I’m going to go into debt, I’m going to go into debt for real, let’s go! I normally only release one at a time, but here I thought, “Here, this could be fun.”

PAN M 360: So there’s a duo, a trio and… À pas de loup

Marianne Trudel: A solo album, yes. I wanted to dare something with slowed-down, enveloping music, a little less jazz. It’s not a full-blown jazz album, these compositions are at the crossroads of classical music, contemporary music, jazz of course and other patents. It was important for me to do things this way, because I felt I was being bombarded from all sides. I needed a shelter, and I wanted to share that shelter.

PAN M 360: Minimalist, calm, this album is indeed a refuge on the borders of silence.

Marianne Trudel: I’m in love with silence, maybe it’s a paradox. Ever since I was a child, I’ve needed silence, I love silence. Sometimes it’s confronting as a musician: you want to create, to contribute something, and at the same time, you already find the world quite noisy. So you need this reset. The title of my solo album is À pas de loup and the subtitle is Quiet sound for a loud world. It’s really in a spirit of calm, gentleness and delicacy. I wanted something that vibrated on a different frequency. We slow down the engine and listen to ourselves think.

PAN M 360: There’s mostly piano in À pas de loup, but there’s also harmonium.

Marianne Trudel: The instrument was in Pierre Marchand’s studio. Usually, harmoniums are much smaller, maybe three octaves, but this one was really 88 notes, I’ve never seen such a harmonium. I sit at this instrument with the pedals, the bellows system and all that. The feeling I got after three seconds! I just started pedaling on it and let the sound come out. It was so enveloping, so reassuring. I said to the sound engineer, “Let’s go, get your mics out!

PAN M 360: And then the piano-percussion duo with John Hollenbeck, Dédé Java Espiritu, whose material is being played these days.

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Marianne Trudel: There’s a lot of improvisation in our music. It goes in all directions. There’s super melodic stuff, there’s super groovy stuff, there’s noisier, freer, more experimental stuff. John and I have developed a great musical complicity together.

PAN M 360: And then there’s the trio: Time Poem: la joie de l’éphémère.

Marianne Trudel: It’s with John Hollenbeck, drums, who’s a bit of a binder for my projects, and Rémi-Jean Leblanc, double bass and electric bass. With me, he’d always played only double bass, but this time, I wanted both, and it’s super fun too, super bright.

PAN M 360: This album is the first to be released from this triptych. Born under what circumstances?

Marianne Trudel : During the pandemic, I was musically paralyzed for the first time in my artistic life. As someone who normally writes every day, I couldn’t get out a single note. Without the concerts, it lost all meaning. One day, I came face to face with a sound engineer I adore, Rob Heaney, while recording a piano track for a Vancouver artist. Rob had recorded several of my previous albums, and he’s a guy who’s passionate about music and in great demand – Cirque du Soleil, Patrick Watson and so on. “I said to him, “Look, Rob, I haven’t written a note in a while. He says, “Come on, that’s not like you at all! Call me and we’ll book a studio session. You’ll have no choice but to get back to work.” Just what I needed!

PAN M 360: And how did work get back on track?

Marianne Trudel: It was the summer of 2021, and I left the next day for Gaspésie for my vacation. Here I am in the mini-cottage I’d rented to go hiking for a week. Before going to bed, I go on Facebook and see messages on Facebook. “Rob, why did you leave us?” My heart is pounding and I can’t sleep all night. Very early the next morning, I call François Richard, a close friend of Rob’s. “He died at the wheel of his car. Cardiac arrest.” It gave me quite a shock. So I locked myself up in the little cottage, hardly ever setting foot outside. And I wrote nine pieces in nine days for my trio. I slept maybe ten hours in all, and collapsed at the end. I’ve never had a trip like that, it was day and night, it was very exhilarating.

PAN M 360: The tragic death of this sound engineer was therefore a powerful trigger!

Marianne Trudel: The album is called La joie de l’éphémère because I’ve always been very sensitive to the fragility of life. And here, I had it right in my face. It was a way of celebrating my good fortune to be alive. And then there’s the whole ephemeral thing that I love about improvised music: you can have a magical moment, it goes off into space and it’s over, it won’t be touched. So a tragic event was transformed into light. I dedicated this record to Rob. I called John, Rémi and Jean: “Listen, I’m writing music, I want to do this quickly.” That’s when it happened. We went into the studio, did it in two days, and then started playing gigs. It all fits together.

PAN M 360: So you’ve fully regained the momentum you lost during the pandemic. And so quickly repaired this small crack in this edifice you’ve been building since the early 2000s!

Marianne Trudel: About six months ago, someone asked me how long I’d been in the business. I realized then that I’d been playing piano for 40 years, and that my first album came out about 20 years ago. Even today, I put in 60-hour weeks with school, my booking and my productions. Why not underline that? Solo, duo, trio: three facets of the pandemic, a testimony to this period with their different and complementary colors.

crédit photo: Michel Pinault

Born in Côte d’Ivoire and originally from the “land of upright men”, Burkina Faso, Dramane Konaté masters the djembe like a heart that beats to the rhythm of the world. With his opus Touman (Disques Nuits d’Afrique), due for release on November 3, 2023, the born traveller invites us into a West African immersion for a melodic pause anchored in the perfect moment of listening. His program: twelve songs rich in emotion and rhythm for this undisputed master of Faso.

Read Frédéric Cardin’s Review of Touman on PAN M 360

PAN M 360: First of all, congratulations on your album, Dramane!

Dramane: Thank you, thank you.

PAN M 360: I listened to it this morning and it put me in a great mood. How does it feel to be about to release this album to the world?

Dramane: I’ve got goosebumps. Because for me, it’s a very important album. And it’s also about my personal life. And I also think that this album can resonate with the public and allow them to learn and discover new things.

PAN M 360: Is this your first album?

Dramane: Yes, it’s my first album and I put a lot of work into it. I had to double my efforts because that period was a really complicated time in my life. I was lost and didn’t know where to start. I didn’t really have any hope in music, but in the end, it was a lifesaver: it helped me a lot to express all my pain, all the things I kept inside me, in order to free myself. In the end, making this album turned out to be beneficial and helped me get to know myself better.

PAN M 360: It’s interesting to hear you say that. When I listened to your album, I felt a real sense of catharsis at the end. I can imagine you’ve been working on this album for a long time?

Dramane: It’s been a long time in the making. I did it on my own with everything I earned. Nobody helped me. I did it alone and I was the one looking for artists. I arranged everything. I paid the studios, I paid the artists. I did it on my own because I know that in Africa, back home, artists don’t make a living from that. So you can’t tell an artist to come and make your album or you do rehearsals and then you give them nothing. They need to eat, it’s like their job. So for me, before I did that, I tried to prepare myself a bit for the concert I was doing. I took a bit of money, I put it aside and when I was ready, I called the musicians, we did some rehearsals, I called the studios, that’s it, then that’s it.

PAN M 360: And how did the composition process go? As a djembe player, the rhythm was the basis of all the songs?

Dramane: Yes, but there are songs that aren’t my own compositions. There are melodies, very old ones, that my grandparents would have known, and I’ve added layers of rhythm to them. I tried to really arrange them according to how I react to these melodies, and really understand how I feel about this music.

PAN M 360: Can you tell us a bit about your history with the djembe?

Dramane: I started playing when I was very, very young, at the age of seven, in 1983. My mother sings she loves music and she has a beautiful voice. But in the village where I lived in Côte d’Ivoire, there were no musicians. So you see musicians at weddings, christenings and annual celebrations, and that was my first introduction to music and the sound of the djembe.

As the only musician in my family, I met with a lot of resistance. Especially from my father. He didn’t want his son to play music. Back then, if you said you wanted to be a musician, you had no future. No parent would allow their son to become a musician. He yelled at me, he hit me, he bad-mouthed me in front of people to discourage me from pursuing music, and I knew what music made me feel because my father is a tailor.

Do you know why I gave the album that name? Because every choice has its time. My father wanted me to become a tailor. That was his dream. He did everything he could to make me a tailor. But a problem came up because I can’t see myself very well. I have very serious eye problems. At the workshop, it became obvious that I couldn’t see the needle and thread very well, and my father didn’t help me either. He had the option of getting glasses so I could see or simply sending someone to help me, but he never did. From then on, he wanted me to do something else, and I decided to do something else with my life. My logical choice was music. Because for me, music gave me love. For me, music was love, for me, music was my life. I let all these emotions escape on the djembe.

PAN M 360: You’re from Côte d’Ivoire, but you play music from Mali, is that right?

Dramane: It’s Mandingo music.

PAN M 360: Is it your tradition, in fact, or do you love this musical genre?

Dramane: Yes, that’s my tradition.

PAN M 360: Who or what were some of your inspirations?

Dramane: Do you know Salifou Keïta? He’s from Mali. Salifou Keïta, Toumani Diabaté. There are a lot of artists who inspire me and then there’s a great artist too, Amadou Sodia, who inspired me a lot.

PAN M 360: Have you experimented with other types of music, such as fusion or pop, or is it really traditional music that speaks to you the most?

Dramane: I do a bit of everything. I accompany groups, contemporary dance, modern music, jazz and blues. Yes, jazz inspires me a lot. Jazz is music, and it really brings a lot to me.

PAN M 360: And is there a lot of improvisation in the music you play, like jazz?

Dramane: When I do solos, I take a lot of inspiration from jazz music. Ok. Jazz afro, a bit, everything. Of course I do.

PAN M 360: You speak with a lot of passion, and I imagine your show will be really exciting. For your concert in Montreal, will you be performing the whole album?

Dramane: Yes, I’ll be playing the whole album with a great band. I’ll do my best for November 4. I’m really looking forward to it. Thanks so much for talking to me.

PAN M 360: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Dramane: I’d like to say thank you. I really salute Papa Touré, Touré du Balattou, he’s really a father who’s given me a lot of advice, I often have advice, I go to him and he’s always taken me as his son, he’s considered me as his son, he’s given me advice and I’ve always felt like my father and I really really wish him all the best again. He really is the baobab, the baobab of all Africans, all Quebecers, all the people here. Really, we hope that God gives them a long life, that artists always manage to express themselves, to give everything we feel, everything we want to come one day, Inch’Allah. We really do. And I salute you too. It’s been a great, great pleasure to “free” myself too. So thank you very much and I also thank René Pierre. Thank you very much.

PAN M 360: Wishing you an incredible show Dramane. Thanks again for taking the time.

Jeanne Laforest is a singer-songwriter from Quebec City. She presents a sophisticated pop style in which choir and strings make her compositions shine. Her album released last year, Puisque les heures nous manquent, is a striking work that blends the intimacy of the lyrics with the serious tone of the rich arrangements. With a musical and academic background that crosses the ocean – from McGill in Jazz to Finland – the artist has much to offer and fuses her different horizons into a harmonious vision.

Jeanne Laforest will perform at Le Verre bouteille on November 6 as part of Coup de cœur Francophone, a showcase festival highlighting new forms of francophone creation across Canada.

PAN M 360 took the opportunity to speak with her. On the menu: her solo career, Nordic folklore and the strings on the latest Radiohead album.

PAN M 360: How long have you been making progress in the musical field?

Jeanne Laforest: Yes. I started playing piano as a child. I was immersed in classical music. My father, who was a musician, taught me. I also did a lot of choir. When I got to high school, I started wanting to do popular music, and I was very attracted to improvisation. That’s why I wanted to take a little detour into jazz. So I went to CEGEP in jazz pop and then to university in jazz, with a student exchange to Europe. In university, I was able to dabble in a lot of other things, like contemporary music and more improvisational stuff, and it gave me a great mix to sit with when the pandemic arrived.

I was able to delve deeper into songs I’d been writing since I was a teenager. Because I’ve always had a dream, or a need, to write songs and have a project of my own, and the pandemic made that possible. And that led to the album I released a year ago.

PAN M 360: You studied Nordic folklore at the Sibelius Academy of Music in Finland, among other things. What does this background bring to Quebec?

Jeanne Laforest: My relationship with the choir has always been omnipresent. In Finland, traditional music is vocal music, sung exclusively by women. I took lessons there because I was interested in this tradition. There’s this sound that I really wanted to learn more about. I also discovered that there are a lot of similarities between folk songs over there and here. In general, too, life in Europe made a big impression on me. So it’s all these interests that came across on the album.

PAN M 360: After studying music for a long time, you’re now doing concerts, playing at festivals and winning awards. Is this a logical progression for you? Do you see this as something that “begins”?

Jeanne Laforest: I’d say it’s starting for my own project. But I’ve been working in music full-time for several years, so it’s also something that adds to the diversity of other things I do. But it’s true that a solo project is different. There’s something more intimate about presenting your texts and having to take responsibility for them. This debut has been a learning experience. Compared to a year ago, I’m more relaxed, and above all happy to be able to get my band together. I’m going to cherish every opportunity I get to do so, and I feel grateful to have a small place in this very rich amalgam of Quebecois chanson.

PAN M 360: Have you always wanted to do a solo project?

Jeanne Laforest: Initially, I would have liked to have had a band, to write with several people. But it’s hard to find the right people to do that with. During the pandemic, the need to do something and release something took over. But it was a slow decision because for a while I wanted to have an artist’s name, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to put my name forward. But in the end, that’s what happened, and I don’t regret it, it’s going well.

PAN M 360: Listening to your music, we notice the importance of string arrangements. Do you have a particular reference, or a favorite string piece that inspired you?

Jeanne Laforest: One album that really stood out for me in terms of string treatment was Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool. When I discovered that album, I listened to it over and over for months. It was from that album that I wanted to learn how to write for strings.

PAN M 360: This album fascinates me too. “Glass Eyes” and “Burn The Witch” in particular, for the strings.

Jeanne Laforest: Yes! And it’s a bit of a fly-by-night approach. They’re not just pretty, harmonious sounds, and that’s good because it shows the aggressive, violent side that the instrument can have.

PAN M 360: Because it can say a lot about the artist, and it’s fun to think about, what would be your greatest dream musical career?

Jeanne Laforest: God… I really wouldn’t hate to do shows all over the world. For my project or for someone else’s project, if I could go and play in Japan, in Germany, in faraway countries, I really wouldn’t hate it. That’s my unattainable dream! (laughs) And it would be interesting, through that, to measure myself against the different receptions people have to live music around the world.

PAN M 360: Finally, what can we expect from your concert at CCF? Are there any surprises in store?

Jeanne Laforest: I have a tendency always to want to do lots of things and complicate my life. I was wondering if I should keep it sober, a show that does the first album… but I’m thinking of tweaking a few things, inviting someone, adding a little fly touch, yes. It’ll still be a surprise!

PAN M 360: Certainly! Thanks, Jeanne!

Jeanne Laforest will be performing on November 6 at 9pm at Le Verre bouteille as part of Coup de Coeur Francophone. Tickets are available HERE!

Somewhere between classical opera, musical and cinema, Ariella is inspired by a novel of Ariella Kornmehl and a libretto by Thomas Beijer. This novel and libretto follow the path of a young woman who mourns her mother after she died in a tragic accident, then falls in love outside of her Orthodox Jewish entourage and has to deal with the mental health of some of her closed ones. In a Jewish context, this is a classic story of love and loss.

Conducted by Francis Choinière, Ensemble Classico-Moderne is performing Jaap Nico Hamburger’s ARIELLA, on Saturday at the Maison symphonique.
Born in Amsterdam in a Jewish family, Jaap Nico Hamburger is the composer in residence with Mécénat Musica in Montréal where he lives now. His body of work includes commissions for orchestra, opera, chamber music and solo works. His Chamber Symphony No. 2 ‘Children’s War Diaries’ was nominated for the Matthijs Vermeulen Award (2021) and received a JUNO nomination for Best Classical Composition of the Year (2022). In addition, he contributed work to an album nominated for ‘Best Classical Album of the Year’ (JUNOS 2023).

Hamburger started his musical education at the age of 3, he graduated from the Royal Sweelinck Conservatorium of Music in Amsterdam, with a soloist degree in piano. At the same time, he became a cardiologist and worked at many places in the world before emigrating to Canada in 2000.

PAN M 360 : So you’ve been reading a novel from this Dutch author and you thought at that time that was an ideal material for an opera ?

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Jaap Nico Hamburger : Yes, actually, the book was published around 2000. Reading the book, I felt this was an opera, because it was a very dramatic story. And so I started thinking about recreating that novel or a similar story into an opera.

PAN M 360 : How did you manage to translate this into an opera?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Ariella Kornmehl is one of the team of script writers for the opera. She’s sort of an artistic advisor on the process and Thomas Beijer is the librettist. In addition to that, we have collaboration with Lucas van Woerkum , who is the film director for Symphonic Cinema, a European program that recreates stories on traditional scores and reworks them into film. The four of us wrote out the story.

PAN M 360 : Why did I think this story had operatic qualities ?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Because there’s a lot of drama in this story. I think that the main plot is two things. First of all, it’s a coming of age story. We see the transition of Ariella as a young girl at home, as a daughter, to being an independent woman in her own right. So we see the growth of a young girl into an independent woman. So it’s a typical coming of age story in that sense.The other aspect that I try to highlight in the adaptation of the novel and through the opera is the fact that early on in the story, the mummy in the family dies of a tragic accident.

And what we will visualize in the complete version of the opera is that everybody who’s alive in the family, so mainly the father, the two children and the lover of Ariella and a girlfriend, everybody who’s alive is on location in Montreal and Saint-Sauveur and surroundings, etc. But the soul of mummy is live on stage with the orchestra.

PAN M 360 : So the actual outcome is not a traditional opera.

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Exactly. It’s 90 minutes of film with everybody filmed on location in Montreal and surroundings. So there are 90 minutes of film and 90 minutes of music with a live orchestra below the screen. And the soul of mummy is live on stage and she comments on what happens and she advises the family. And when they plead for help and the memory and the grieving over the loss of Mummy, she’s actually there. So what the audience gets to see is a double reality of the people who are alive on film and the soul of Mummy, who’s actually life with the audience in the hall.

PAN M 360: Opera was the total experience on stage 200 years ago, but now we have other means to create this total show.

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Totally. So what we are blending, what we intend to blend here is modern cinematography, like Hollywood style movies, but with a live orchestra, so it’s the combination of film and a live concert.

PAN M 360 : Was it thought this way since the beginning?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : No. I created a first version and I thought we were ready. But it’s always like that in our lives… we plan something and God does something else. So I thought I had a complete version to go into theaters, but then COVID happened. And during COVID there was no way that we could actually achieve the original version. So that gave us the time to sit back; rethink it gave us the time to rewrite the story and develop this concept of using cinematography and blend that with a live concert, a sort of operatic cinema.

PAN M 360 : You’re talking about Hollywood style movie. What do you mean by Hollywood style?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : I mean actors with dialogue, filmed on location. And the only thing that is different in this film is that sometimes the actors who play out the drama will also sing a song at the same time that the orchestra score of the music is always there.

PAN M 360 : So it’s a sort of blend between musical and opera?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Yeah, in a way.

PAN M 360 : As a composer, how could we describe your style ?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : That’s a difficult question to answer for me. Let me put it this way: the reason I write music, or the reason I do mostly anything in my life is to communicate with other people. I do it because I think the essence of humanity is communication. And so my formal education in music was as a concert pianist and I had a completely different type of career as a cardiologist.

PAN M 360 : It happens more and more often, science and music are clearly suitable!

Jaap Nico Hamburger : For me, those two things basically have a common denominator because helping other people as a doctor is also mostly about communication. There’s a technical part to it but to really help another person going through a phase of disease, it’s all about communication. So when I write music or when I publish what I write it is deliberately intended to be a vehicle for communication of a story, or of an opinion, or of a situation.

PAN M 360 : Have you been trained in composition?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : My education in music was as a pianist, not as a composer. I never studied composition at the academy It was totally instinctive in a way. I’ve been self educated by reading scores of the masters. So I did not go through formal training of this technique or that technique or this style or that style. So, depending on the story I wish to convey I use a certain musical technique. So that can be tonal, it can be romantic, it can be post-romantic, it can be atonal, it can be modal. It very much depends on the ingredients of the story needs. So I don’t know how to label my style.

PAN M 360 : That’s fine! When we don’t know how to label it’s a very good sign because labels are sometimes an easy and lazy way to try to understand music.

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Particularly this piece, because of the format, because of the use of film, because of the style of the libretto might come across very much as very romantic because it’s very emotional. I wish it appeals to the emotions of the audience. I think the ingredients are easy to identify with and so the language in Ariella is maybe late romantic.

PAN M 360: So you use any tools from any period of music history if they’re relevant.

Jaap Nico Hamburger: There’s another probably important musical influence with all the classic stuff in my life and that’s that for about ten years I had an R&B band! For example, with Ariella in the story, her younger brother starts when he’s ten and ends when he’s about 18 and I couldn’t imagine an 18-year-old struggling with anger and depression singing a Puccini aria. So his big aria is a rap song.

PAN M 360 : Have you been composing through your cardiologist career?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Yes, kind of. I started my formal music education at the age of three which resulted in a situation where I could read music scores before I could read ABC. So my first reading was music reading. At the same time in Amsterdam, I went through the Royal Music Academy for piano and Medecine school. I did both studies at the same time in Amsterdam.

Then throughout my subsequent training as a cardiologist I was still a performing artist with concerts on stage when I transitioned into interventional cardiology, which is minimally invasive heart surgery. That’s when I stopped performing because then it became uncomfortable to do recitals and heart surgery. That was not really doable. That’s when I changed to composing, which I had been dabbling with in my R&B band.

But I was also composing serious art music, then at some point I thought I had done enough with medicine and I was very privileged in the sense that with my medical work I ended up working all over the world. I’ve done heart surgeries everywhere but the North Pole and the South Pole. So I thought I had done enough with that and I realised I definitely had not done yet enough with what I want to do in music. So I closed my practise to compose and make music full time.

PAN M 360 : Where you in Canada when you closed your practice?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Yes. I came to Canada in 2000 by invitation of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (UBC). And so I practiced there for 18 years, 2018. Then I closed my practice, focused full time on music as of then, and moved to Montreal.

PAN M 360 : How come have you moved from Vancouver to Montreal ?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : Two reasons : a personal one and a professional one. The personal one is I actually in 2017, I met the love of my life, she has a big job in Montreal. So that’s the most important reason. Together we raise five children.The professional reason is that from a classical music or an art point of view, Montreal is just amazing. I can’t say anything negative about Vancouver, but the art scene in Montreal, and especially also the classical music scene, are amazing!

When I announced I was making this transition, I was offered a position of composer in residence with Mécénat Musica, which gave me access to this huge community of top professional musicians and ensembles. I’ve been very lucky in that sense because that allows me to create for my community here and with the musicians here. And it’s been fantastic.

PAN M 360 : We can imagine it is so gratifying to achieve your musical dream after having served for humanity for such a long time. Now you heal people in another way now.

Jaap Nico Hamburger : I hope so !

PAN M 360 : With this cinematic opera and through this Ariella story, what is the message do you want to share with your audience ?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : You know, I worked all over the world. I met people from all different cultures, different traditions, different languages. And at some point it developed in me the impression that as human beings and in essence, we’re all the same. And beyond being all the same, I think we’re actually like if we go into quantum physics point of you, which I won’t do now, but from a quantum physics point of view, the energy that is at the base of our physical existence is actually shared. And so it’s not that we are all the same, I think we’re all one. And I think there is an eternal aspect to us which some people in some cultures call a soul.

PAN M 360 : In that sense, if you chose this novel and worked on it and transformed it, why have you chosen this specific story and what does it mean to you?

Jaap Nico Hamburger : The final message of this story and opera is that as you see this double reality of the living people in one corner and the soul of mummy in the other corner, but always being present, not really gone. If you’re quiet enough and you listen well enough, you can always feel the presence of the people you loved and lost.

ARIELLA IS PERFORMED BY ENSEMBLE CLASSICO-MODERNE, CONDUCTED BY FRANCIS CHOINIÈRE, MAISON SYMPHONIQUE, SATURDAY OCT 28, 7H30 PM. INFOS & TICKETS HERE

TOUR DATES

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2023      TORONTO, CANADA

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2023      MONTREAL, CANADA

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2023           QUEBEC CITY, CANADA

CONDUCTOR Francis Choinière

Three years after winning “Revelation of the Year” at the Gala de l’ADISQ, pop artist Eli Rose returns this Friday with Hypersensible, her second career album. In this emotionally charged, introspective new chapter, the Montrealer offers a more mature version of the sound that has set her apart in the past. PAN M 360 spoke with her about her life over the past few years, the birth of her son and the creation of her new opus!

After several years as part of the duo Eli et Papillon, the Quebecoise had made a good impression with her homonymous album, notably with the track Carrousel. Then came the pandemic, preventing her from meeting her public on the various stages of Quebec and, like most artists, putting her career on hold. Since then, the 36-year-old singer has become a mother and spent a great deal of time in the studio, giving birth to her second album.

For Hypersensible, Eli Rose collaborated with lyricist Gaële to write the lyrics, and the productions are signed by the best in the business, such as Ruffsound, RealMind and DRMS, the trio she worked with on her first project. We hear more instruments than on Eli Rose, giving her music a more organic feel. Her vaporous voice blends extremely well, her choruses are catchy and it’s easy to identify with what she’s saying. Mission accomplished for this comeback.

PAN M 360: You’re back this Friday with your first album in four years. What state of mind are you in right now?

ELI ROSE: I’m very serene, and I think that’s because I’ve matured since my last project. When I launched my first solo album, I was really nervous. I was proposing a completely different sound to what I’d been doing with Eli et Papillon, so it was quite stressful. I think Hypersensible is more like me. I’m simply looking forward to presenting it to the public. I’m also looking forward to meeting my public live, which I wasn’t really able to do on my first album with the arrival of the pandemic.

PAN M 360: Since the release of your first album in 2019, a lot has happened in your life, including the birth of your son. Has his arrival changed the way you see your career in music?

ELI ROSE: Completely. I think that explains why I feel calmer about the launch of this album. The arrival of my son has sort of put my values in the right place. Becoming a mother wasn’t easy. It was a real ordeal. I missed a lot of sleep and had a difficult pregnancy. It turned my life upside down. Now I feel more stable and I feel like I’m at a good time in my life. My son is older and all is well. I think it’s a good time to launch this album. It’s an emotionally charged album and writing it was very therapeutic for me, I think I needed it at the time.

PAN M 360: What did you manage to do better with Hypersensible than with your previous project Eli Rose?

ELI ROSE: I think I’ve improved a lot in terms of managing my emotions. Of course, I’m still going to be very sensitive and I’m still going to experience my emotions intensely, but I think I’m learning to manage them better. It’s funny because, as mothers, we have to teach our children to manage their emotions, but I have to do it too!

PAN M 360: How did you go about creating this new opus?

ELI ROSE: It wasn’t an easy composition. My team and I started when I was pregnant. I had a really difficult pregnancy. I was vomiting and nauseous 24 hours a day, but I didn’t stop myself from composing. I just kept going. That’s why the album was made over a longer period. If I come back four years later, it’s not because I wanted to wait four years. It’s really because I had a difficult pregnancy and became a mother. The year I became a mother, I wasn’t really thinking about writing songs. We put it on hold and then I came back to it. It was a long process. My team and I really took it one day at a time. If it was a good week, we wrote. If it was “I’m not sleeping, my son is colicky”, we waited. We ended up with this album, which took two and a half years to write.

PAN M 360: Tell me more about your meeting with artist Gaële Cockpit, which was a turning point in the development of Hypersensible.

ELI ROSE: After winning “Revelation of the Year” at ADISQ in 2020, everything came to a halt for me with the pandemic. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. At one point, I tried to recreate it, but it wasn’t working. That’s when I thought of Gaële, whom I’d met at a Kenekt camp in the past. I knew she was extremely talented, so I gave her a call. She invited me to her place and we had coffee together. We opened a document and brainstormed. Talking to her, I quickly realized that I’d found the best person to co-write the album with. I felt she understood where I was coming from and what I wanted to say.

PAN M 360: With this album, you wanted to return to a production style that was more organic than electronic. Why did you do this?

ELI ROSE: When I was part of Éli et Papillon, we only made music with real instruments. When I went solo, I wanted to show people what I could do. I wanted to do things differently, and I went totally to the extreme with 100% electronic music. For Hypersensible, I wanted to find a balance. This album is a happy medium between folk and electronic music. It’s a middle ground in which I feel more comfortable than in one of the two extremes.

PAN M 360: How does the album title represent you?

ELI ROSE: I’m definitely a hypersensitive person. It’s a word that comes up all the time in my life. I experience emotions very intensely. I cry easily and have a lot of empathy. Emotions are part of my daily life. I think it was an obvious choice to write an album called “Hypersensible”. I’m more comfortable with this side of my personality than I used to be. I’m more open to saying to myself “Look, this is who I am.”

PAN M 360: In your song Ace of Hearts, you say “Following the rules we dictated to her. Is she too sensitive to play?” Do you often question your own hypersensitivity?

ELI ROSE: It’s funny you should mention that phrase. I’ve often asked myself, “Am I too sensitive to be in music? Because the truth is, when you’re a singer, you’re in the spotlight, people criticize you and have opinions on social networks and all that. At one point when I launched my first album, I said to myself “Wow, I don’t know if this is for me. I don’t know if I’m capable of living it and taking it on.” Over time, I realized that I needed music to live. I need to describe my emotions. Now I’ve got a certain step back from all that, and that helps me a lot. I don’t dwell on all the criticism and negativity. I dwell more on the positive.

PAN M 360: Are you also at this stage of acceptance in your life in general?

ELI ROSE: Yes, I try. I tend to see things negatively, but I’m really working on seeing things more positively and not dwelling on them. I think being a mom has taught me that. I’m more attracted now to spending time with my son and picking dandelions than dwelling on criticism.

PAN M 360: What’s your title CDN all about?

ELI ROSE: CDN is short for Côte-des-Neiges. When I was 16-17, I was working at the Saint-Hubert on Côte-des-Neiges and fell in love with a boy. I’ll spare you the details of the story, but I really broke this guy’s friend’s heart. So much so, that 15 years later, I was still thinking about it and felt like writing a song. In writing an album about emotions, I obviously revisited a lot of stories from my past. I’m an emotional person, so I have a ton of stories to tell. When I wrote the song, I said to myself, “I’m going to call that person. He’s in a pharmacy in Granby. I found his number and called him at the pharmacy. In the end, it was a bad idea because he didn’t really want to talk to me. But anyway, I was happy to write that song. My past will always be part of me and I draw a lot of my inspiration from it.

PAN M 360: I think a lot of people will recognize themselves in this song. Are you the kind of person who looks back and asks questions?

ELI ROSE: That’s something that used to bother me a lot. I’m someone who thinks a lot about the past. I tend to be very nostalgic, thinking about my high school years and what I used to go through. My song CDN seems to have taught me to turn the page on the past and let go. It’s always going to exist and be a part of me, but that doesn’t stop me from looking forward and moving forward.

PAN M 360: “N’oublie pas,” your first collaboration with rapper Koriass, comes at the very end of your album. What is this track about?

ELI ROSE: “N’oublie pas,” it’s our two perspectives on yo-yo love, the kind that goes wrong. It’s love that’s hard to let go of. I’ve always loved writing about love because I’m a romantic. I’ve listened to Dawson’s Creek 16 times now, and it’s a series about love. I think I’ll always, in spite of myself, write love songs. Don’t forget, it was a beat that Ruffsound and RealMind sent me at the very end of writing the album. I really felt it was the missing piece to bring the whole thing together. I was really happy that Korias agreed to do this collaboration with me, he’s an artist whose work I greatly admire.

PAN M 360: For two tracks on Hypersensible, you’ve reunited with producers RealMind, Ruffsound and D R M S, the trio you worked with on your first album. What does this reunion mean to you?

ELI ROSE: As I mentioned earlier, I have a nostalgic side. Although I’m moving forward, my past is part of me. These are guys who have supported me since day 1 of my solo project. To have managed to get them all back together in the same room, in the studio making music, was really special. It’s an honour to be able to collaborate with such talented people. It’s really an album we enjoyed making. There was no stress, no pressure. I think that’s why I’m so proud of it. I hope this isn’t the last collaboration we’ll do together.

PAN M 360: You mentioned you were disappointed not to be able to go on tour due to the pandemic after being crowned “Revelation of the Year” at the ADISQ Gala in 2020. I imagine you plan to make the most of the months following the release of your album!

ELI ROSE: Certainly! I hope the pandemic doesn’t come back so I can enjoy it. I’ve got a tour starting in February, including the Montreal premiere at Le Ministère on February 1. There are several shows coming up and lots of promotions. It’s only after the holidays that things really get going!

Photo credit : Universal Music Canada

Vous aimez le rap keb et êtes à la recherche de quelque chose de différent? Ne cherchez pas plus loin! Au début du mois d’octobre, Miro Chino a fait paraître Bons Times Bad Times, son premier album et véritable récit de son quotidien. 

Good lyrics, catchy choruses and a happy mix of hip-hop, jazz and soul as a soundtrack. That’s what he offers in this project that oozes Montreal life.

Here’s our chat with the 23-year-old artist. 

Although he wouldn’t call himself a rapper, Miro Chino demonstrates excellent rhythmic skills. Working with producer Philippe Brault and a number of musicians, the Quebecer has combined electronic and organic elements to perfection. The presence of different instruments such as guitar, brass and drums gives a coherent, orchestral result.

In this, his first book, Miro talks about his life, his good times and his bad. With each listen, one hears a new detail in the production and sketches an extra smile when understanding one of his multiple metaphors. With Bons Times Bad Times, listeners jump into his world with both feet, and ready to bet they’ll wish they’d stayed there.

PAN M 360 : Hi Miro, tell me a little about yourself! Where does your passion for music come from?

MIRO CHINO: Miro is my real name. Miro Chino is my artist name. I grew up in Montreal. My parents moved around a lot, and so did I. Let’s just say I’ve lived in many different places. Let’s say I’ve lived in several different places in Montreal. I’ve been making music since high school. What can I say?

I never had any musical training, learning almost everything on the job or from YouTube tutorials. I started with rock because I was really into the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and so on. Over time, I experimented with different styles, like folk. Then, two years ago, I went to the Musitechnic production school. There I discovered electronic production, and that’s when I started rapping.

That’s how I realized the power of rap. I liked that it was fast and that I could say several things in one sentence. What I love most is writing. That’s why I got into rap in the first place. But I don’t think you could call me a rapper. I see myself as a versatile artist who integrates rap into his art. I don’t have the attitude of a king. .

PAN M 360 :  You say that the essence of your music is not necessarily linked to the rap world, is that right?

MIRO CHINO: That’s really it. In my music, I’m eclectic, I really touch on a lot of styles. I love rap and I consume a lot of it, but I don’t consider myself to be in the rap game. In life, I’m a pretty diverse person. I hang out with all sorts of people and have a whole range of different hobbies. I think that comes through in my music, I don’t really have a defined style. 

PAN M 360 : How long have you been designing?

MIRO CHINO: I’m 23 and started in 2014 or 2015, so that’s about 8 years. 

PAN M 360 : How have you changed since your appearance in the finals at the Festival de la chanson de Granby in 2022?

 

MIRO CHINO: This festival was a good springboard for me and it allowed me to make a name for myself. It was the first time I’d had so many resources to produce a show. I had people around me to advise me and a band. It was a very formative experience. It has to be said that at the time, I was really a baby as an artist. I was very candid and naive. Since then, I’ve acquired more artistic maturity and I know more about where I’m going. My style is clearer.

PAN M 360 : You say that “you know where you’re going now”. Where exactly are you heading? How would you describe your sound right now?

MIRO CHINO: For Bons Times Bad Times, I’d say it’s primarily a hip-hop album. There are hip-hop sounds, but it’s a bit orchestral. With director Philippe Brault, I was able to create something cinematic. That’s how I’d describe it;

PAN M 360 : Let’s talk about your recent project Bons Times Bad Times. What is it about?

MIRO CHINO: It’s really a collection of stories. It’s full of little short stories that form a diary about my life over the last few years. It’s quite retrospective and introspective, a kind of balance sheet of my good and not-so-good deeds. That’s why it’s called Bons Times Bad Times. I’ve tried to capture this duality in my songs as much as possible. There’s a certain progression on the album, from light to darker.

 

PAN M 360 : What impression do you want to leave with this project?

MIRO CHINO: With the album, I want to get across a message of acceptance and openness to vulnerability. I find rap a very powerful medium for getting a message across. In this album, I assume myself, I put myself forward and I accept myself as I am. I show myself to be vulnerable, but in a positive way. My message is that we’re all imperfect, we all have our faults, but that’s what makes us beautiful and we have to accept ourselves. Humans are complex, we’re not always good or bad, and we need to maintain a balance in our lives.

PAN M 360 : There’s a person divided into two colors on the album cover. What does it represent?

MIRO CHINO: I asked a friend of mine called Sarah Leblanc to do the cover art. I asked her to create a character that represents the principle of Bons Times Bad Times, and this is the result. For me, the blue part represents night and the orange part, day. As humans, we’re all polarized and have a good side and a bad side inside. We all have an angel and a demon. However, it’s rare for us to demonstrate both at the same time. I wanted to represent this on the cover.

PAN M 360 : The productions on your debut album are  versatile, with jazz, soul and blues influences. These instrumentals mixed with your rap make for a truly interesting result. Where do you draw your inspiration from?

MIRO CHINO: I really have phases in what I listen to. It’s cliché to say, but I really listen to everything. Right now, I’m listening to a lot of African music. Last winter it was French rap and this summer house. Recently, I found my old iPod that I had when I was a teenager. There’s a lot of Quebec rap on it, and I often listen to old albums by Dead Obies, Loud Lary Ajust and others. It varies a lot!

PAN M 360 : Did you the entire production of Bons Times Bad Times?

MIRO CHINO: It depends on the songs, I collaborated with several people for the album. I produced the demos for most of the tracks, there are even some that I kept as they were. For some tracks, we re-recorded the instruments in the studio with musicians. Otherwise, there are others that my team and I worked on from scratch. 

PAN M 360 : On several occasions in your album, we hear vocal excerpts taken from TV shows and the like. What was the purpose of including these sound bites?

MIRO CHINO: I see my songs as capturing moments from my life,  a portrait of what I’ve been through. To make it even more representative of my daily life, I decided to incorporate several sound extracts from my life. I have recordings of conversations with friends and lots of other things. For example, in rdv, I’ve added sounds of transportation like the subway and a bicycle. I like to add a sound ambiance to my songs to really situate the environments. 

PAN M 360 : Your lyrics are full of references to Montreal and the Montreal lifestyle. Tell me about your relationship with the city?

MIRO CHINO: I really have a loving relationship with the city. I’d say we don’t have many conflicts and we get along great! No kidding, I kind of wanted to pay homage to Montreal with my album. With everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, I often think how lucky we are to be here;

PAN M 360 : One of the best-crafted tracks on the album is unequivocally bad little bunny. How did this track come about? 

MIRO CHINO: Creatively speaking, it’s probably one of the tracks that was the hardest to do. It was a huge headache because I had originally written the verses of the song over another instrumental. One day, I was composing a bossa nova-style song and that’s when the chorus of bad little bunny came to mind. That being the case, I decided to mix this chorus with the other verses.Then I showed the text to my band, and asked them to make arrangements for me to bring my song to life. The members of my bandare jazz musicians. They started tojamand that’s when it all clicked.

it’s about this desire in me to chill out and “pogner le beigne” in good Quebecois. It’s part of my history, and I feel like I’ve “wasted” many years of my life smoking and spending time with my friends. At the same time, I’ve always had this desire to be successful in music. This song is about making the balance between having fun and working hard. In a way, it’s a song to motivate me. All the time I spent with friends isn’t necessarily lost, it allowed me to experience some very beautiful moments. Now, those years are behind me and I’ve had my fun. I know what I want in life and I have to work towards it. 

PAN M 360 : Do you feel you have reached another stage in your life?

MIRO CHINO: Absolutely. In my entourage, my friends are starting to have serious jobs in administration or whatever, they’ll soon be buying a house and starting a family. Seeing that, I tell myself it’s time for me to concentrate on my career and my music. I’m at that stage in my life where I want to get serious about my passion;

PAN M 360 : What does the future hold for Miro Chino? What are your ambitions?


MIRO CHINO: I’m going to take full advantage of the release of my project. I already want to dive into the creation of my second album. I already have an idea of the universe I’d like to create. It’s going to be a bit dystopian and post-apocalyptic. I want to go more into fiction and storytelling than dealing with my personal life. That’s where I want to go next, and I can’t wait!

Crédit photo : Éléonore Delvaux Beaudoin

Last Thursday, the CIRMMT (pronounced Kermit, like the frog) inaugurated its new multimedia room. A state-of-the-art infrastructure, whose use is threefold: as an acoustic research laboratory, a concert hall and a recording studio capable of comfortably hosting a symphony orchestra. Montreal is now equipped with some unique infrastructure in the world that opens up avenues of research for an entire generation of Quebec researchers and musicians.

The auditory experience of this room is of an enjoyable sensuality, every self-respecting Montrealer should experience it. We met the man who has been carrying out this project for twenty years: Marcelo Wanderley, professor of music technology at McGill University.

PAN M 360: Why was this multimedia room project needed at the Interdisciplinary Center for Research in Music, Media and Technology (CIRMMT)?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: In 2006, we had a room that was good for music, but our setup was rustic; the floors were made of plywood, we used curtains to manage the reverberation of the sound, so to meet the needs of the CIRMMT researchers we needed a multi-functional, high-tech room, a place where we can play music but also where we can study music and sound. For that, we were missing millions of dollars, because a floor of 400 square meters, in addition to acoustic treatment with a volume of 7,000 cubic meters, is expensive, all the same.

Professor Wanderley smiles as he talks about the acoustic tiles, the removable curtains, the wooden reflectors that make up the essence of the room. He pursues:

We invested $6 million. Constellation alone costs over a million. The Constellation sound system is 62 speakers, microphones, equipment that adjusts the reverberation of the room according to our projects, a technological gem that allows us to modulate the acoustics of the room at will.

PAN M 360: What was your role in the project?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: (laughs) Well, I wrote it, five times. With other researchers, of course, we presented the project to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, we explained to them what research we planned to do in this room, it was the fifth time that we presented our request ; in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2012, and each time it didn’t work, finally in 2014 we got the green light.

PAN M 360: What made it work this 5th time?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: The partnership with the University of Montreal! We made it an 11 million project, where there were three million for the Salle Claude-Champagne and suddenly it became a project that affected practically all music students in Quebec. In 2014, we were preparing to submit a new application, the U of M team was preparing their project on their side and contacted me to collaborate on their own application, we married the projects, we went beyond the idea of the bell tower, where a university owns a room which allows it to say that it is the best. We don’t care about that. It’s taxpayer money whether at McGill or the U of M.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the taxpayer: why do we need cutting-edge infrastructure like this in Montreal in 2023?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: First, for its realization, we developed knowledge in acoustics which is unique in the world; the architects and engineers who worked on the project learned to do things that have never been done. What has been done here is very exportable. I think the Montreal Chamber of Commerce should look at this project and brag about it.

Then, with this equipment we will attract the best researchers from around the world because there are not five laboratories like this in the world.

There is monstrous economic potential here.

PAN M 360: So this is cutting-edge research that is highly applicable?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: “Yes, for example, if the OSM has to do a concert at the Orange Bowl in Los Angeles, obviously it is a very particular acoustic, the Orange Bowl. This must be taken into account when preparing for the concert. However, we can recreate the acoustic conditions of this stadium in our own room.

We can simulate a lot of environments. For musicians, we don’t play the same way in the Maison symphonique, in an arena or in a cathedral. This is an example of practical application of the room.

PAN M 360: If we enter CIRMMT in the coming months, what research projects will we be exposed to?

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: Our first axis is the development of new instruments, new interfaces for creating music, we create sounds never before imagined. The second axis is computer science, the entire musical database, scores, image recognition, the third is the study of movement, cognition, playing style and the last is is the application of all that in performance, in practice. We have more than 60 researchers from 8 or 9 universities working here.

PAN M 360: Are you an engineer by training? This leads us to discuss interdisciplinarity, which is one of your hobby horses.

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: I am not a musician. I am an engineer, and I am very humble in the face of the musicians around me (laughs) but at CIRMMT, we touch on all areas. It ranges from philosophy, electrical engineering, mechanics, physics, through history, music, neuroscience.

This is something that I find great in Quebec, we have funding for a transversal center like ours. We are shaking up silo structures with the multidisciplinarity of projects; for example, one of my students is leading a project which allows a musician in training to physically feel, with the help of sensors, the action of the muscles, tendons and breathing of a professional musician and therefore to inspire one’s own practice. This is an unclassifiable project, is it a music or engineering project? The CIRMMT allows this type of project that the faculties do not know where to classify.

And we sense that Professor Wanderley has a lot of fun with the idea of instigating projects of this type which challenge established structures.

Professor Marcelo M. Wanderley: In closing, the CIRMMT is also a place of performance. The general public can see concerts there, most of them free, just go to the Schulich Faculty of Music website.

To get an overview of the room click here

With his Au bon endroit EP unveiled last Friday, singer-songwriter Erwan transports us into his enveloping, ethereal folk world, greatly inspired by the likes of Blake Mills, Louis-Jean Cormier and Patrick Watson. A few days before the release of his project, PAN M 360 met him at Picnic Vélocafé to discuss his young career and his second mini-album.

A graduate of the École nationale de la chanson in 2020, the Quebecker’s folk sound occasionally veers into rock and electro. Two years ago, Erwan made quite a splash with his debut EP Dis-moi où tu m’emmènes, and has since gone back to the drawing board to bring us his second project.

With Au bon endroit, the singer certainly doesn’t disappoint; on the contrary, he impresses. The soundtrack is organic, and his gentle voice blends in perfectly. On the project, Erwan makes frequent use of a toy guitar from the ’60s, to which he has added a rubber bridge and nylon strings, giving his songs a distinctive timbre. Through his meticulous songwriting, he tackles subjects such as anxiety, the sometimes dizzying hubbub of the city and the soothing effect of nature.

PAN M 360: To find out more about you, tell me a little about your personal history. When did you start making music?

ERWAN: I was born in Montreal and grew up in Pointe-Calumet. In the past, I took piano lessons and taught myself guitar. I also did choral singing with Les Petits Chanteurs de Laval. That’s what introduced me to singing. I started writing at the age of 11. More recently, I studied music at Collège Lionel-Groulx in Sainte-Thérèse, then at the École nationale de la chanson.

PAN M 360: Where does your passion for music come from?

ERWAN: Music has always been part of my life. My father listened to a lot of vinyl and I was exploring percussion at a young age. From a very early age, I was able to sing nursery rhymes by heart, and my mother couldn’t understand how I managed to remember them all. My relationship with music is very natural.

PAN M 360: Let’s move on to your second mini-album, Au bon endroit. The influences of artists like Louis-Jean Cormier and Daniel Bélanger are striking. Where do you draw your musical influences from?

ERWAN: Over the years, I’ve definitely listened to a lot of Louis-Jean and Daniel Bélanger. I’d also name Patrick Watson and Coldplay as big influences for me. These days, I seem to be getting into a lot of stuff with Spotify. It’s so easy to discover new music. Now it’s hard to focus on just one artist.

For this mini-album, I’d say I also went for rubber bridge sounds, which you hear a lot in California, with a rubber bridge over a guitar. I was influenced by Phoebe Bridgers, Blake Mills and Andrew Bird. At times, it sounds very indie.

PAN M 360: How long did it take to create this second mini-album? How did it all unfold?

ERWAN: We’ve been hard at work on Au bon endroit for almost a year now, but some of the tracks are 2-3 years old. Over the past year, I’ve mostly been recording at Makina studio in Montreal with Mathieu Quenneville, with whom I co-produced the project. He handled the mixing and acted as sound engineer. With the various musicians, we did two recording sessions for four of the project’s six tracks, like “Helena” and “L’hirondelle (au bon endroit).” We really recorded in one take, just like in the old days. I wanted to go for a pure, organic sound. Once that was done, I went back to Mathieu several times to work on the arrangements, adding my final vocals, synthesizers and guitars. For the tracks “Photosynthèse” and “Tant mieux,” I didn’t think it was necessary for several of us to create them, I needed more intimacy.

PAN M 360: Why did you need more intimacy for these songs?

ERWAN: It came about quite naturally, depending on the titles. Honestly, I also created with fewer people for some songs because of my budget. I thought “Okay, how can I do this song by myself.” I wanted an organic, more acoustic aesthetic for those songs, so I adapted to do it in collaboration with Arthur Bourdon-Durocher.

PAN M 360: What’s the story behind your project Au bon endroit?

ERWAN: During the creation of my microalbum, there were a lot of things that inspired me, like the pandemic. My move from the North Shore to Montreal also inspired me. I also love nature. In Au bon endroit, there’s this idea of wanting to get into the great outdoors and out of the city. During the pandemic, it wasn’t easy for me and I felt trapped in the city. The seasons also have a big influence on me. I love the sun and the good weather, and then when autumn comes, you get a bit more cooped up. That’s the kind of feeling I was trying to capture with my project. “L’hirondelle (au bon endroit)” is about living in the moment, observing the world around us and knowing how lucky we are to be here. “L’hirondelle (au bon endroit)” tells the story of a time when I broke down in Gaspé. It was the most beautiful thing that could have happened to me that day. I couldn’t go anywhere, I was stuck there and could only enjoy the surroundings. It was that song that guided the title of my EP, because there’s this concept of being in the right place at the right time. It kind of ties in with all the themes of the songs.

PAN M 360: Does this project give you that sense of calm?

ERWAN: I think so, that’s really what it brings me. As much as it brings calm, as much as it makes me feel in the right place. Some songs move more, others less, but in the end, it’s all about that spirit of inner peace and balance.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk more about your song “Helena,” how did it come about?

ERWAN: I wrote “Helena” and “Tant mieux “when I spent the winter in Rivière-du-Loup. I wanted to do a song with a first name because I didn’t have one, and I thought of Île Sainte-Hélène, where there’s the round. I thought Helena was more beautiful than Hélène, so I decided to go with that. Then I wrote a song in which Helena is caught up in La Ronde, in her fears and anxiety. She’s not able to get off her rides, she doesn’t know how to deal with them. We’ve just shot a music video for Helena, which will be released soon. I was able to work with a great team and I’m very grateful. We managed to create a great universe, and there’s dancing too. We expressed the theme of the song with a rather strange universe. I won’t say any more, but it’s coming out just before Halloween, and that’s no coincidence!

PAN M 360: What can we expect from you next?

ERWAN: There’s a launch on October 24 at Le Verre Bouteille in Montreal. Otherwise, I’m already getting ready to record my third EP. For each of my projects, I have specific themes. For the next one, I’m going to a cottage this winter. Last year, I went to a chalet and wrote six songs in the space of three days. It really just came out. There was something magical about it and I want to recreate that.

PAN M 360: How important is it for you to work on several EPs before embarking on a debut album?

ERWAN: I’m still an independent artist and I like to get more stuff out quickly. I’m definitely looking forward to doing a debut album, something really complete. I figure I’m trying to do something consistent with smaller projects. The album will probably be the next step for me!

Erwan will be performing at Le Verre Bouteille on Tuesday, October 24 at 8:30 pm for the launch of his EP.

Photo credit: Marc-André Dupaul

On Tuesday evening, Ensemble Paramirabo will welcome Ensemble Variances to Salle Bourgie. Founded in Martinique in 2010 before moving to France, Ensemble Variances aims to create a meeting place for all musical traditions and to create as much new music as possible. This collaboration between France and Quebec was born by chance, in the United States. A meeting between Jeffrey Stonehouse, flutist for Paramirabo, and Thierry Pécou, pianist, composer and founder of the Ensemble Variances, was the starting point for this great collaboration.

The program to be presented next Tuesday consists almost entirely of new works, including one by Thierry Pécou. At the heart of the musical preoccupations are the idea of the pulsation that follows us everywhere, sometimes going unnoticed, and the ecological crisis, which is now impossible to ignore. PAN M 360 caught up with Thierry Pécou to find out more about the Ensemble Variances and the program to be performed at Salle Bourgie.

PAN M 360: Hello! Tell us a little about the Ensemble Variances, which you founded. How did the project come about?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s an ensemble that’s about 10 years old now. My main activity is composition, but I’ve always enjoyed being active as a pianist too. For me, being a composer also means being involved in the concert of sound. So I’ve always enjoyed playing with other musicians, and I wanted to create an ensemble with people close to me, to create a kind of laboratory and explore the interpretation of works. That’s how the ensemble came about.

PAN M 360: What type of repertoire does Ensemble Variances most often perform?

THIERRY PÉCOU: At the outset, our idea was not only to create a performance laboratory but also to explore oral traditions. The ensemble was originally founded in Martinique, and we stayed there for a year to work on a project on traditional Martinican music. Then we came back to the continent, to France, and continued to work on projects with Turkish, Indian, Chinese and other musicians. That’s the ensemble’s DNA. It’s an ensemble that strives for openness, both in contemporary writing aesthetics and in the encounter between orality and writing.

PAN M 360: And how did you come to work with Paramirabo?

THIERRY PÉCOU: With Paramirabo too, it was an encounter. You could also say that with Ensemble Variances, one of the things that really guides us is always to go out and meet others. As it happens, we were due to tour the United States in March 2022, but needed to replace our flautist at the last minute. We had the idea of looking for someone who was already on American soil, and we decided to look for someone from Montreal. That’s how we met Jeff (Jeffrey Stonehouse), whom I didn’t really know, but who had been recommended to me by Claire Marchand, the director of the Canadian Music Centre, who is herself a flautist.

So we did our tour with Jeff, and we felt there was a very strong affinity, so we started putting together a project with his ensemble, Paramirabo. And the project came together very quickly because barely a year later, we’re presenting this program.

PAN M 360: How do you set up a project like this, when the two ensembles are separated by an ocean?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s true that our ensembles are separated by an ocean, but at the same time, they have something very similar in the way they work. Also, we realized that we had an equivalent core of musicians, i.e. these are two ensembles of the same size, which can double up. We thought this was an interesting feature to exploit in the architecture of the program and in the line-up we were going to present. After that, Jeff and I had a lot of discussions about the program, the composers we wanted to play…

PAN M 360: And as a starting point for your program, you have this piece by Steve Reich…

THIERRY PÉCOU: Jeff and I were immediately drawn to the idea of playing a piece by Steve Reich. Initially, we wanted to play the double sextet, i.e. exactly the formation of our respective ensembles but doubled. But in the end, we decided to choose a different one, since the double sextet is very often performed and Paramirabo had played it several times recently.

In the end, we chose a piece emblematic of Steve Reich’s last period, called Pulse (which, incidentally, is the title of the concert…) And this idea of pulsation was very inspiring for the rest of the program.

PAN M 360: What does this pulsation mean to you? Does it manifest itself in the same way in all the pieces on the program?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s true that when we think of pulsation, we think of something fast, of a clearly identifiable rhythm that allows us to have a pulse that we perceive directly. In some of the pieces on the program, what’s interesting is that there are very slow, very interior pulsations. And so the music unfolds in a way that, when you listen to it, you almost never hear the pulse, but it’s there, underlying it. And if the performers don’t feel it, the music can’t unfold.

PAN M 360: If we read the description of the concert on the Le Vivier website, which produces this concert, we hear a lot about a program that is part of a response to, or awareness of, the current ecological crisis. How do you see this manifesting itself in the program?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s true that this is a subject that is present in the consciousness of artists in general. For us, the way we’ve tried to reflect on the issue is through our relationship with the environment and nature. From this came the idea of pulsation, of Pulse, which is the pulsation, the pulse, the beat, almost the primordial beat, the heartbeat.

So it really is life, in the original sense of the word. That’s what we’re trying to convey in our concert, this idea of pulsation. And also, particularly in my piece, which is very much inspired by Balinese gamelan, to turn to a culture which, unlike our Western culture unfortunately, has remained very close to the natural environment. For example, in Balinese music, I find that there are many elements of sound architecture that are like echoes of the natural world.

PAN M 360: And personally, how do you integrate these issues into your own compositions?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s a subject I’ve been integrating for a long time, even before it became as urgent as it is today. It’s a subject that’s been with me for several years. I have two examples to give you.

First of all, there’s an opera I composed in collaboration with the Navajo poet Laura Tohe, entitled Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World. The Glittering World is a Navajo expression for the world we live in today. It’s a play about pollution and the need to respect nature. It’s almost a manifesto, really.

There’s also a very emblematic piece called Méditation sur la fin de l’espèce, which I wrote in 2018 and which incorporates real whale songs broadcast over loudspeakers. This piece was composed in the spirit and with the idea of calling attention to endangered species, in this case, animal species, but also plant species. The question of biodiversity is at the heart of this piece.

PAN M 360: Let’s get back to the program for this concert, Pulse. You’ll be performing, but you’ll also be taking part in the creation of one of your own works. How do you approach this dual role?

THIERRY PÉCOU: It’s a role I like to take on. What’s surprising, in fact, is that the composition process is a very solitary thing. When you know who you’re composing for, you visualize and integrate the characteristics and qualities of the performers you’re going to work with. And then, afterwards, when you move on to the realization, I’d say there’s a kind of separation. I almost forget that I’m the one who composed the music I’m going to work with. So I take on the role of performer in my own right, with a kind of detachment from the fact that I wrote the piece.

PAN M 360: Were the other pieces on the program also composed for the occasion?

THIERRY PÉCOU: The initial spark for the program was Steve Reich’s piece. Jeff and I then asked ourselves which composer we could include in the program who would resonate with Reich’s piece and the notion of minimalism, or who would be an extension of it. We also wanted the project to have a strong female presence. So we came up with the idea of having this piece by Missy Mazzoli, who is part of Paramirabo’s repertoire, and who is, I think, part of this new generation that follows in the footsteps of the twentieth century. Then there’s Cassandra Miller, who takes a very interesting approach to minimalism, counterbalancing this notion of pulsation. Finally, Mike Patch’s piece for solo piano is a piece that works a lot on harmony, and for me it gives the image of a mirror that cuts the program in two, putting the two parts of the concert face to face, so to speak.

PAN M 360: Finally, if you had to describe the concert in a few words, what would you say?

THIERRY PÉCOU: I’d say minimalism, pulsation, too. I’d like to say harmony, in other words, musical hedonism, generous sound, beautiful sound, which simply brings us back to the beauty of nature. And all this brings us back to the environmental question.

Ensemble Variances and Paramirabo present the Pulse concert at Salle Bourgie on Tuesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm. Info and tickets HERE.

Aho Ssan closes Akousma this Friday at Usine C, and PAN M 360 is interested in his work not only because he’s a rare Afro-descendant to shine in an electroacoustic world largely dominated by palefaces, but above all because his music is excellent.

Aho Ssan is the other real first name and artist name of Parisian Niamké Désiré. After studying mathematics, computer graphics and film, he began beatmaking and then electroacoustic music.

At a very young age, he won the Fondation France television prize for the soundtrack to the film Dissimulée by Ingha Mago (2015) and subsequently joined several projects linked to Ircam and GRM, French institutions involved in electroacoustic research.

A debut solo album was released in February 2020 on the Subtext Recordings label. Simulacrum was inspired by themes elaborated by Jean Baudrillard, notably on inclusivity and equality.  

Recently, a second album of his own was released, Rhizomes evokes the rhizomatic thinking of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and also Édouard Glissant, who also evolved the concept. Artists from all over the world have been invited to take part, including Chilean-American Nicolas Jaar, a favorite among electronic music fans.

So many reasons to talk to him!

PAN M 360 : Still in 2023, few Afro-descendant artists are making their mark in the electroacoustic field and in fundamental research into acoustics, electronics, and you’re obviously a case in point, even a pioneer insofar as there aren’t very many of them. What do you think?

Aho Ssan : It turns out that when I started with the Simulacrum album in 2020, it’s true that most of the references in electroacoustic music or electronic music, quite simply, that I was listening to, there were very few Afros who were African or on European territory. But in the wake of George Floyd’s death, there was a collective on the Internet that started to create a database of Afro producers everywhere. That’s when I realized just how rich the production was. At the same time, I met KMRU, an artist from Kenya who now lives in Germany, and we made an album called Limen, a kind of ambient electroacoustic;

PAN M 360 : So yes, we’re seeing a lot more Afro-descendant human resources. But it’s not yet reflected in perceptions. It was the same thing with techno or house, which were initiated by black Americans and whose aesthetic was then taken over by white Westerners without today’s generations always being aware of it. The same cannot be said of musique concrète, now electroacoustic, which was initiated by white Europeans 75 years ago. In music today, white Western culture has been taken over by people from all over the world. And Afro-descendants are no exception, and you are an eloquent example of this.

Aho Ssan :  We have a festival linked to GRM and which is very close to Akousma  and we have a whole generation of which I am a part  and which allows us to discover all the repertoire of previous generations. 

PAN M 360 : But what led you to electroacoustic music? What is your background?

Aho Ssan :  I started listening to more abstract music when I was a freshman in college. I was studying mathematics, physics and computer science at the time. And I had a friend who was using software like Max/MSP at the time, which is computer software for making music. I didn’t know anything about these programs at the time, so I started looking for artists who were using them to make music. And so I discovered music that required more attentive listening, and that’s how I also started to get involved in musique concrète. At the beginning, I made links with the music I liked, music that was a little more popular even if already quite experimental, I’m thinking of Autechre, Flying Lotus or other artists on the Brainfeeder label and more.

PAN M 360 : So you were willing to look further into more experimental electronic music.

Aho Ssan :  I understood the idea of musique concrète at the time, but I’d never really listened to it. As soon as I discovered this software, I discovered another world, and I started looking everywhere, thanks to the Internet. You start listening to things, discovering Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Henry and so on. And in the same way, the people who went on and influenced me a lot.

PAN M 360 : And so, you didn’t pursue mathematics?

Aho Ssan : I did a degree in mathematics. And after that, I wanted to have something more artistic because that’s really where I saw myself being. So I studied design and computer graphics before switching to film studies. But I didn’t study music.

PAN M 360 : But you do have a digital background. You developed your musical vocabulary in this universe.

Aho Ssan : When I started doing this, I was using software that’s rustic today, like Fruity Loops at the time. On the Internet, there weren’t many tutorials like there are now. I had to do a lot of research, spending hours and hours in the software trying to understand why this button activates this or that, what compression is, what reverb is, and so on. I was trying to reproduce what I liked at the time, and then trying to find my own language;

PAN M 360 : Vous avez grandi à Paris, quelles sont vos origines africaines?

Aho Ssan :  My parents are from the Ivory Coast, but my grandfather, who died quite young, was a trumpeter originally from Ghana. My parents didn’t really speak English, but still inherited the culture of Ghana. At home, we listened to a lot of highlife and afrobeat, which for me is the best music there is, even if I listen to very little of it today. So I try to bring groove into my music, even if it’s a deconstructed groove, because I also incorporate other music that I really like. And then, I’d also say that I grew up with an older brother and sister who listened to a lot of popular music at the time; as a result, through them I got to know the French hip-hop of the 90s and so my musical culture has also been marked by this period. And I think you can feel this hip-hop influence even more in Rhizomes, and you can also feel the jazz side, Sun Ra in particular, which my father also listened to at home. And there’s also this big broken-beat influence whose leader was Flying Lotus.

PAN M 360 : You speak of “deconstructed groove” in your music, of Afro jazz or Afro African music being quoted and after that, processed and transformed. But still?

Aho Ssan : Yes, I incorporate music inspired by groove artists but also experimental ones, who played a lot of different instruments that weren’t particularly heard in popular music or even jazz. I’m thinking of Alice Coltrane’s harp, for example, or traditional Indian instruments. In this sense, the groove is deconstructed in another proposal from the electroacoustic family.

PAN M 360 :  What are you playing at AKOUSMA?

Aho Ssan : I’ll be presenting music linked to the Rhizome process. I did a piece with the musical research group, GRM, who commissioned a piece from me and so it’s called The Falling Man, in reference to that famous photo by Richard Drewof the man who threw himself off the World Trade Center. Before it became the Rhizome album, these were multi-channel pieces I’d created for GRM, which I played in several venues.PAN M 360 :  What are you presenting at AKOUSMA?

PAN M 360 : And so it’s not exactly a piece from the Rhizomes album.

Aho Ssan : The idea was to make it a three-part piece. There’s the first part that comes with the Rhizome book. It’s not in the album that you can listen to on Spotify or Apple Music, those are extras. It’s the first part where I wanted to develop this sound simulation  of someone throwing himself into the void : The Falling Man.

The second part is more fantastic, more phantasmagorical. It’s the journey of a character who loses his life, and it’s called Till the Sun Down.

The third part is a sound I made with Lafada, a French artist. I decided to include La Fada’s voice on the last part, because I think it adds hope to the journey.

PAN M 360 : For its broadcast at Usine C, you probably adapted this music to Akousma’s 30 speakers.

Aho Ssan : Because it’s a bit special, it’s a bit like doing multichannel music, at least from my point of view, is that generally, me, I start with stereo because that’s what my software allows me to do or mono. And then you broadcast in multichannel, so you start to create space from these things in stereo. And that creates another room, another space, something physical and something different. And then, when it becomes an album, it goes back to stereo;

PAN M 360 : Lastly, was the title of your new album inspired by Rhizomes, the famous book by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which refers to a structure constantly evolving in all directions at all levels?


Aho Ssan : Yes, exactly,  but it also comes from one of my favorite authors, the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, who took up the concept. It’s a bit like the journey of my pieces, which evolve formally, designed for different listening, different  destinations.

AHO SSAN IS PERFORMING AT USINE C FRIDAY OCTOBER 20TH, 8PM AND CLOSES AKOUSMA / INFOS ET TICKETS HERE

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