Interviews

Lorraine Vaillancourt, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne she conducts and soprano Myriam Leblanc launch this Tuesday the Semaine du Neuf dedicated to Quebec composer Claude Vivier (1948-1983).  
Complemented by a work by Marko Nikodijevic in tribute to the composer, three works by Vivier will be performed at Salle Claude-Champagne in the context of his 75th birthday and a series of concerts dedicated to him. 
In reference to the Événements du Neuf which, four decades earlier, provided a platform for the launch of his work (among other composers), this Semaine du Neuf honours his memory as one of the most significant Quebec composers of his generation and of contemporary music in general, regardless of era or nation. 
Colleague and close friend of the late Claude Vivier, who was murdered in Paris by a young anti-gay man in the same manner as the Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini during the same time, Lorraine Vaillancourt, artistic director and founder of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, tells us about her complicity with this singular creator whose fate was tragic.
PAN M 360: Let’s start with Claude Vivier, whom you worked with at the time. His unfinished body of work was extremely important. What is your point of view in this respect?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: Indeed, his work is constant and successful. Perhaps he would have gone in different directions… But he already had all his strength, his beauty, his light. It is a really unique music! I have a very special attachment to Vivier, his music touches me. When you conduct an ensemble, you try to have a certain distance, it’s the public that is moved, not you. We manage, we invest ourselves but… But every time I have conducted his music, especially 3 of his works that I created, there are moments when we rise up.
PAN M 360: In what way do you rise?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: That’s the feeling I get because it’s a music that can be very, very dense and suddenly, either by a break in dynamics or by a sudden unison, things become clear. We breathe. That’s why the word light comes up all the time when I talk about his music. It remains great moments, and I can only regret that he did not compose for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, which he did not know. There is chamber music, solos, duets, otherwise great works require great formations. So for us, that already narrows the pool that leads us to do and redo his works. 
PAN M: The voice is at the heart of his work and you will testify to that on Tuesday.
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: He loved the human voice. It was through his extraordinary work for woman’s voice that I got into Claude’s music. He was at the music department at the University of Montreal), I got there in 1970, he was there in 1972-73, he was preparing an opera for his PhD, and the students of my workshop at the time. So the voice remains an instrument that he favored. I wouldn’t say he tortures them, but for a singer it’s really very demanding. It requires lungs of steel, it settles in long durations, it is necessary to be very camp!
So I’m delighted to do the “Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire”, the last work he really wrote to the end. And to revisit “Bouchara”, which we did at the 25th anniversary of the NEM at the Maison symphonique. “Et je reverrai cette ville étrange”, originally written for Arraymusic, I had not done it and it is very special. We could have chosen a different instrumentation but I took the original instrumentation, it’s written a bit like “The Art of Fugue”, with a chosen instrumentation. It’s in unison for the voice, they are very difficult melodies to perform because it’s naked, perfectly exposed.
PAN M 360: At the time, at the turn of the 1980s, the laymen who were introduced to contemporary music had the impression that they were in a different world from the rest of the contemporary repertoire.  Why was this?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: I can understand, because it’s a world you want to go to! Claude was not of this school even if he did not deny these tendencies of modernity. He was very harmonic, he worked on chord progressions, he was not a contrapuntalist, so all this music of complexity, it was not in his language? He was rather in the melody, the psalmody, the modal music, all using with accuracy the codes of the modernity. When he hijacked the sound universe, he could make it his own, which also included very noisy things. So in his music, there is a density at the level of the frame quite marked, of a certain violence. There are these breaks that you always get physically.
PAN M 360: What was his relationship to his work?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: He liked his music a lot, which is a particularity! (laughs) When he spoke about it, in fact, it was really as if it was not him who had composed it. It was more as if he had received it from the divine in the way of an old-fashioned creator. Above his head, an angel telling him “Write this down, it’s going to be beautiful!” (laughs) When he was composing, he would call us, sometimes very late at night, it couldn’t wait. “Listen, how beautiful it is!” And he would get on his piano completely out of tune, he would play us bits and pieces of it. He was taken high by the result. He was inspired. Very inspired and inspiring. 
PAN M 360: So this love of his own music was something other than narcissism?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: One thing is sure, it was no bullshit. It wasn’t mechanical. Claude Vivier was not a professional composer who wrote 6 hours a day on the same frame. Maybe he didn’t have the time to fall into that… He was always in a hurry. What makes the difference between genius composers and the others, it is this strength that one can only admire. 
Why him rather than another? He may have the same language as the others, but the others are boring and he is interesting ? There are things that are transcendent and that we can’t really explain with words. It’s like wine: we have many words to explain wine and in the end, it’s the taste that decides. Words don’t explain the magic of Claude Vivier either, the aura of mystery and spirituality that emanates from his music.
PAN M 360: “Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire”, “Bouchara”, “Et je reverrai cette ville étrange”. Why are these works on Tuesday’s program? 
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: Since there is a limited pool of works that we can put in our repertoire for a chamber music concert, we ended up with three works from the last years of his life. He lived so little and I was with him for 10 years of my life… It’s not that much. 
I had created his opera in 1979 and the works that we play were composed in 1981 and 1982. He was already in a very evolved universe, his thinking was clear. That guided the choice, and I also wanted to do “Bouchar”a, a love song dedicated to his lover at the time (Dino), which is the only word we understand except for some fragments of German. 
PAN M 360: Is there nothing to understand?
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: He always used this invented language (except some rare words) which is extremely expressive. Nevertheless he said a lot of things with these invented words and one understands finally the direction of it, what is really extraordinary. He managed to put this invented language in the mouths of the singers, it was fabulous. I remember when he did his opera “Kopernikus”, the main character, Agni, was written for the singer Jocelyne Fleury.  There is no real story in this opera, it is more of a ritual than anything else. But he knew to whom he was addressing himself, she said to me “if I had invented this language, I would have done it in the same way”, as if he had found a way to transmit tenderness.
PAN M 360: La Semaine du Neuf refers to the Événements du Neuf, the precise time when you were hanging out with Claude Vivier.
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: It was an extremely nourishing period. We kept going until 1988, shortly before the birth of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Claude was no longer there but the starting point had been his songs and a work by José Evangelista. It was great, the interpretation of our young musicians was magnificent. From there was born our desire to make this music radiate, to take it out of our small premises, to play it elsewhere than at the university, to make people hear composers who are not heard. The idea was not to highlight individuals, but rather to stir the pot a bit, to present things that we wouldn’t have been able to present otherwise.  
PAN M 360: Les Événements du Neuf, it was above all a core of artists having marked our contemporary music.
LORRAINE VAILLANCOURT: It started in February, March and April 1979. It was always presented on the 9th of the month, at 9 PM, and we changed the venue every month. John Rea, who was a friend of José Evangelista, soon joined the team, followed by Denis Gougeon. Every week, we liked to get together and discuss our programs and themes.   It was limitless… because there was almost no budget! (laughs) 
We had all already been to several concerts (especially in Europe), we had absorbed a lot of music, we fed each other. We also wanted to get out of the strict music, we had also done shows with dance, sound poetry, etc. and so some programs could leave the world of instrumental music.
And since we didn’t have a fixed ensemble, the musicians from my workshop had contributed a lot. The free concerts were presented in the university context, so the musicians could get paid, so I would put these works on the program and it was part of their training at the same time. It was a very exciting time that I will never forget.

THE TRIBUTE PROGRAM TO CLAUDE VIVIER IS PERFORMED THIS TUESDAY, 7:30 PM AT THE CLAUDE-CHAMPAGNE HALL OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC OF THE UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

PROGRAM

  • Marko Nikodijevic: Chambres des ténèbres / Tombeau de Claude Vivier , 2005
  • Claude Vivier: Trois Airs pour un opéra imaginaire , 1982
  • Claude Vivier: Bouchara , 1981 pour soprano, quintette à vent, quatuor à cordes et percussions
  • Claude Vivier: Et je reverrai cette ville étrange , 1981

PARTICIPANTS

The Quasar Quartet have long been Montreal’s premier saxophone quartet. Specializing in contemporary repertoire, the group have over 25 years of experience together exploring the interstices between chamber music, electronic music and the avant-garde. Marie Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard from Quasar joined me for an interview about their upcoming presentation, “Dialogues Intercontinentaux,” at this year’s New Musics Festival. 

PAN M 360: Thanks for being here. The description for Quasar’s presentation this year is very exciting.  A saxophone quartet with remote performances featuring European musicians and even Artificial Intelligence. What exactly can we expect?

Marie Chantal Leclair:  Well it’s a very original proposal. Since its conception there have been many people involved and the project has seen many different iterations. The idea first came from Dániel Péter Biró, currently in Bergen, who has long been a close collaborator with Quasar. In the Montreal concert as such, only the musicians from Quasar will be present, but we will have other musicians from Europe playing live with us via remote streaming technology. For example, the second piece, Hongshuo Fan’s “Conversation in the Cloud” features Jean-Marc playing Baritone from Montreal and Andrea Nagy on Clarinet from Freiburg. In fact, the same piece will feature an AI joining us from Manchester. 

PAN M 360: So not only is there a show happening in Montreal, but in Freiburg and Bergen as well.

Marie Chantal Leclair: Yes! The idea is that the show will be different for all the audiences, and of course we will be the remote musicians for the audiences in Europe. 

PAN M 360: How exactly are the remote musicians integrated into the pieces?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Think windows. We begin a piece, for example “Udvarim Achadim,” and at some point, the sound will come from Norway but it will still be one continuous piece of music.  

PAN M 360: Are you ever playing live together in the show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Yes, and of course during the pandemic we were able to experiment with this technology a lot and learn what we can about its limits. We’re well aware about latency, but the music was conceived with all these things in mind. We’re not necessarily trying to avoid it, but to compensate for it. Actually now we’re in a phase of testing, seeing what are the best mics, the best positions, etc. 

PAN M 360: Could you explain a bit more about the inclusion of AI in the concert?

Jean-Marc Bouchard: It’s a bit complicated but what happens is that the composer, Hangshuo Fan, is in Manchester, and from there he is managing audio and video processing which is going to Freiburg. In Freiburg, the signals are transmitted to Montreal, and from Montreal it goes to Bergen and back to Freiburg. Is it any clearer that way? But really the AI is listening the whole time and adding to and manipulating the signals. For example, as we play, we use cameras which transpose our bodies into 28 points, which is lighter to transmit on the Internet, and that image is then sent onto a screen. The same thing is happening with the audio signals. From our input, it generates a new score each time. And we can actually see it in the form of a written score. It’s not exactly as neat as a classical piece, but the result is really fascinating, putting together acoustic instruments and live electronics. 

PAN M 360: Is there a lot of chance for something to go wrong then, for such a technically demanding show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: (Laughs) Well yes. We are risky people, but if you want to push things forward, you need to take risks. Of course we’re doing what we can to minimize those risks, and there are many meticulous people involved in this project, so I’m confident but still there is an unavoidable element of chance. 

PAN M 360: How long has this show been in the making, did COVID give the impetus to do a show around remote musicians?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Well it’s hard to say. It wasn’t necessarily conceived of as a COVID project, but of course the fact that we experimented and made those remote connections during that time made it more possible in a way.

PAN M 360:  Does this represent a new direction for Quasar, or is it a natural moment for the quartet?

Marie Chantal Leclair:  Yes and no. We’ll see how it goes, but Quasar is always about exploration and creation, and that takes many different forms and paths and this presentation is one of them. Even though we are experimenting with elements coming from abroad, it’s still thoroughly a live experience, and that is something we’ve always strived to deliver. 

PAN M 360: This show seems very topical. This year we are seeing the impacts of ChatGPT on text-generation, and it’s not long before the musical equivalent of ChatGPT will gain traction. How do you feel about these developments?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Technology is part of music because technology is simply a part of our lives. So of course it is an inevitability, and I’m not afraid of that at all. We’ve been working and experimenting with electronic music since 2000, for more than 20 years, and actually it is very exciting to see where this technology can go. There has been bad music before, there will be bad music written again, regardless of the tools. At the end of the day, it’s about the choices we make using these tools. 

PAN M 360: Sounds like this will be quite a unique show. Any words for people who will be attending the show?

Marie Chantal Leclair: Come with an open mind and you won’t be bored. It’s going to be diverse, we’re really excited by the show and I really think it’s going to be a very special experience. 

Participants

Program

The Dialogues Intercontinentaux takes place March 4, 2023
Tickets Here

Active on the Quebec City music scene since early 2020, alternative rock/punk band Dogo Suicide has attracted more and more interest thanks to a super original hybrid sound that can be found, in others, on their latest EP, Sexe Pour Les Yeux. I spoke with Nicolas Côté, singer and guitarist of the band, about the project and their recent participation at Le Phoque Off festival.

Pan M 360: To begin, can you tell me how the band started? How did you meet?

Nicolas Côté: Manu (Emmanuel Canadian, bass) and I are childhood friends, he even taught me how to play the guitar … We met Richard (Richard-William Turcotte, drums) in 2020 through mutual friends and we’ve been playing together ever since.

Pan M 360: Did you play in any other separate projects before creating Dogo Suicide?

NC: Our drummer is about 10 years older than us (manu and me) so he’s played in a lot more projects than us. He’s been in Ancestors Revenge, The Death Wheelers, Stained Glass, Souphl and a bunch of other stuff. For my part, I had a few bands before Dogo, but nothing serious.

Pan M 360: You must be asked this often, but where does the name Dogo Suicide come from? Is it random or does it have a deeper meaning?

NC: We liked the paradox between Dogo and Suicide, but overall, it sounded good to us!

Pan M 360: I heard the name of the group pronounced in French and in English, how do you guys pronounce it?

NC: In French, but we absolutely don’t mind people saying it in English.

Pan M 360: Being on the subject, what made you sing the majority of your songs in French? Is your Quebec identity important to you?

NC: It really came naturally. It’s easier to describe feelings and ideas in your native language. There’s something very cerebral in the French language, which is super interesting to combine with music that is more aggressive.

Pan M 360: What is your creative process like? Is one of you taking your songs to the others or are you starting from scratch and creating the whole thing together?

NC: I almost always arrive with demos on which I play everything very badly, and then we work on the songs as a group.

Pan M 360: You mentioned a few times that your musical genre would be “post-everything, but a bit punk overall,” I imagine that includes a variety of influences. What are the musical groups on which the three of you get along the best?

NC: We hardly listen to anything in common (laughs). Honestly, I don’t think Rich and Manu ever listened to punk. I’d say It It Anita is a band that the three of us listen to, but I don’t see anything else that is unanimous!

Pan M 360: You are two singers in the band, do you write the lyrics together?

NC: No, I write all the lyrics.

Pan M 360: You recently performed at Le Phoque Off festival for the second time, how was your experience compared to the previous one?

NC: In 2021 we played in front of a technical team at Cégep Limoilou (the set was filmed by the festival), so we were very happy to play in front of a crowd at Pantoum this year!.

Pan M 360: You are from Quebec City, do you have any places to recommend to a music fan who would visit the city?

NC: Le Pantoum, Knockout, Anti and Scanner are downtown staples.

Pan M 360: Finally, what’s next for Dogo Suicide? Any Plans for 2023?

NC: We’re releasing a single on March 10. And lots of shows are to be announced shortly.

Pan M 360: Thank you very much for your time.

NC: Thank you.

Of Cree descent, (Fisher River First Nation) Toronto-based artist is an visionary composer/conductor/singer/sound designer. We can observe  his talent through a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works. 

His work has been performed by the Winnipeg, Regina and  Toronto Symphony Orchestras, Tafelmusik, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Ensemble  Caprice, Groundswell, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, the Winnipeg Singers, the  Kingston Chamber Choir and Camerata Nova, Luminous Voices, Chronos Vocal Ensemble, among others.  

His choral works, the core of his approach,  bring the listeners to gather their souls in a communion, as in Vision Chant, inspired by an Indigenous singing style that reaches the heights of tranquility and intensity. 

“Notinikew” , which means Going to war in the cree language, is about Indigenous soldiers who fought for Canada in Europe during the First World War and were denied their rights and freedoms when back home. This anti-war mini-opera evocates « the words and woes of a community and destiny too rarely heard about ». 

On his way to Montreal, Andrew Balfour answers PAN M 360 questions about Notinikew.

PAN M 360 :  The narrative of your piece is First World War and involvement of indigenous Canadian soldiers. How come this specific episode of Indigenous people history ? 

ANDREW BALFOUR : Indigenous people in Canada fought in every war since pretty much 1812 to Afghanistan. So, but originally, the piece “Notinikew” that I wrote, which was more focused on the soldiers that went to fight World War One. And the sort of like that was, you know, that was a long journey if you’re from northern Canada, and then you have to go down to the south to get trained. And then you have to take a train to Toronto, and then from Toronto to Halifax, and then get in a boat and go all the way to Europe and then fight in this war. It’s a pretty big journey. Yeah. I understand that. And it’s also, I think, just the fact that many Indigenous soldiers were quite good at being snipers. There were a lot of really good snipers from indigenous people.

PAN M 360 : But it was quite a tough journey for them, considering the racism in the process added to the already tragic war conditions.

ANDREW BALFOUR : The thing is, for the first two years, Indigenous soldiers weren’t allowed to fight in this war.. a little bit of racism in the army. But halfway through the war, when the Allies realized that they were losing a lot of men, they thought maybe indigenous would be good. Because they’re good outdoors people, they may be good with a rifle on the battle field… So then, several 1000s of indigenous soldiers signed up, hoping that they might be able to get rights when they come back to Canada, which was not the case. Indigenous people couldn’t vote until 1963. So it took a long time for them to get even basic rights. 

PAN M 360 : Where does it lead us?

ANDREW BALFOUR : This is more of an anti war piece as well, like for all people. Like, I’m very happy that we’re being involved to bring it to Montreal.

PAN M 360 : But  the bottom line is the music itself, and your work. So as an Indigenous composer, but at the same time, you’re not taught you’re linked to to sort of a global aesthetic, that is not only a native, you know, you mix your own legacy and the world legacy. So you have a double training in a way, you’re very close to your traditions, to your cultural legacy ans also you have a classical music training. How do you  link those two worlds?

ANDREW BALFOUR : Well, I must admit that  I’m not that close to my tradition, because I was taken away from my tradition when I was a  baby child. I learned through music because I learned how to read music when I was a young boy in choirs, which is the reason I’m here right now. But I guess we could say I was colonized at a very early age; I didn’t know my language, I still don’t know my Cree, my connections, my medicines, and I must learn much more about my music. I’m able to try to find all those elements that I’ve lost. So I’m trying to find myself through music as much as I try to find my history, my storytelling, my traditions.

PAN M 360 : Then how do you connect with your Indigenous cultural legacy, considering that you are also a musician trained with occidental references ?

ANDREW BALFOUR : Here in North America, we have some of the oldest musical languages in the world. It’s been going on for so long !  We’ve been telling stories, we didn’t write it down for us but it’s very diverse. We know  Ontario or Quebec traditions but there so many others in the Americas, from Mexico to Arizona. So many Nations, so different ways of drumming, chanting, playing instruments. So exciting because it’s still here after the settlers wanted to wipe it all out. So we’re still, we’re still singing, but also this hybrid of coming, bringing together like Western music with indigenous music, and yeah, well, no, I don’t really necessarily write traditional indigenous music at all.

PAN M 360 :  Now we’re facing a global blend of cultures, respecting our own legacies of course, our own personal traditions, but at the same time, embracing the world. And this is what you do through your music.

ANDREW BALFOUR :  I totally agree. Because we need to go forward. But I’d like to see is a little more respect when it comes to Indigenous land and culture. Going back to “Notinikew”, there wasn’t respect, Indigenous men came back from the war, they were scarred. Some of them lost their, their families, their culture, their language, they didn’t get the benefits they were promised. They even couldn’t leave their little reserve. Many of them turned to alcohol or drugs. They were lost and it affected their families and the families of their children. So it’s not a nice story in some ways, it’s just the way that society treats, and so still treats indigenous people wrong. 

PAN M 360 : Fortunately, we’re living a sort of Indigenous culture renaissance in the Americas, especially in Canada, almost everywhere in this country. It’s so interesting to see this new energy.

ANDREW BALFOUR : Yeah, and it’s an honor to be doing this festival. That wouldn’t have happened even 20 years ago ! So it’s a great honor. But it’s also a great responsibility, and that’s why we’re working really hard. I live in Toronto now but our group in Winnipeg rehearsed carefully. And so we’re going to do the show in Winnipeg, on the 28th, and before this show we come down to Montréal and present it at the Maison symphonique on the 24th. It’s really exciting !

PAN M 360 : Have you performed the piece before?

ANDREW BALFOUR : We did it in 2018 because 2018 was the100th anniversary of the armistice of World War One. Also a group in Edmonton just did this last November, after what I did some extra editings and other small improvements. So this will be the third time it’s been performed, I’m really looking forward to it.

PAN M 360 :  If we can be more specific about the body of work itself, how did you you built that piece? How did you imagine it ? 

ANDREW BALFOUR :  It’s a cross between the music which is historical inquiry. It’s a mixture of sort of abstract ideas about what we know and the feeling of being there. Can you imagine if you were in a state of trance, and you’ve never been seen war before, some people are firing at you, artillery, mustard gas and all that ? It would be horrifying .

PAN M 360 : Absolutely. This World War 1st was a huge carnage.

ANDREW BALFOUR :  It was insanity in a lot of ways. I think political leaders lost their minds when they’ve been throwing their young men into this carnage, as you said. So there’s also a narration in the piece, and I’ll be doing the narration. And it’s about sort of, like sort of being a sniper lost in the reality of war. And along with a cello player who’s hooked up to loop pedals, and doing some great stuff while helping up the narration. It’s very unique. And we also have a choir that’s going to embody the voice of the youth. In some ways, the music is like a carnage suit, there’s so much going on.  It’s hard to explain, but there’s a lot going on.

PAN M 360 : So you work with a small instrumentation with some loops, some electronic machines mixed with modern or traditional instrumentation. And so you mix electronics with a choral approach. So you started as a choir boy, trained like that. So the singing and the choral is basic, very substantial as well as very, very important in your body of work.  

ANDREW BALFOUR : Yeah, that’s mostly what I do. I do a lot of orchestral stuff, too. But my most satisfying part is the choir. And they’ve been doing it for a long time. So I still feel like I love the sound of voices coming together. But at the same time, I think it’s the best way to tell a story.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, the voice is the first instrument ever.

ANDREW BALFOUR : Yep.  Exactly. And it was my first instrument because I learned how to sing when I was like seven years old. So it’s part of who I am. So I’m very lucky to be able to write in this medium, and I’m very happy to be able to work with some really good choirs.

PAN M 360 : Yeah, at the same time, you have a polyphonic approach, which is not existing in the traditional indigenous music in Canada. So it’s a sort of interesting cross pollination between, you know, Occidental influx and your own rich tradition of storytelling and singing.  But it’s not only monadic in early forms of pow wow singing. You’re not working that way.

ANDREW BALFOUR : It’s this because the way I was brought up was the Western culture. But honestly I still love Early Music and Baroque, I sang a lot of Renaissance music. So there was a lot of Early Music that still influences my music now.

PAN M 360 : We also like to think that early music and Renaissance and baroque can fit very well with indigenous music.

ANDREW BALFOUR : Yes. I think it works really well. And, you know, I’ve been doing it for a while now. And I will continue to do it. But I think that, yeah, I’m pretty lucky because I do feel that I do have, you know, still more stories to tell. And right now, Nitinikew is an important story for all of us.

AT MONTREAL / NEW MUSICS FESTIVAL, NOTINIKEW IS PERFORMED AT THE MAISON SYMPHONIQUE IN MONTREAL, FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24TH, 7 PM

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

Participants

Program

Golgot(h)a, a piece composed by Walter Boudreau 3 decades ago and recently reworked for its upcoming performance this Sunday at the Montreal / New Musics Festival, illustrates what the composer calls his “historical-cultural bestiary.
“The ritual of the Catholic mass, the nuns of the Congregation Notre-Dame with whom I had my first piano lessons, the sin (of the flesh…) admitted (with clenched teeth) in the confessional, religious choral singing, church bells and the organ, the fear of Eternal Damnation, sexual pleasure, artistic ecstasy, gladiator movies… and what else!” Walter Boudreau says in his history of the work at hand. Thus, the sounds of sacred music, deeply rooted in his childhood and adolescent imagination, come to the fore through the metaphor of the Stations of the Cross, illustrated in all Catholic churches as we know.
“Although I am not really religious,” adds the composer in his notes, “the way of the cross is to my eyes the most intense representation of the drama of a human being in front of the inevitable. This long tunnel of great darkness is the terrible funeral march of a man condemned to an abominable torture: the crucifixion.”
Golgot(h)a” was conceived in 1989 when Walter Boudreau was commissioned by a patron to celebrate the refurbishment of the Guilbault-Thérien organ at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of its founding.
While visiting the superb chapel of the Grand Séminaire and its organ, Walter Boudreau was immediately struck by the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross of the Passion of Jesus Christ, hence Golgot(h)a . In his opinion, this mystical journey, which was well known to French-speaking Quebecers in his Catholic era, was an obvious choice for the structure of the work…., which took longer to compose than expected.

PAN M 360: So first we are in the chapel of the Grand Séminaire, the origin of Golgot(h)a. Remind us of the context:

WALTER BOUDREAU: At the time, I was newly appointed composer-in-residence at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, I was doing Toronto-Montreal non-stop. I’m newly seated in the cockpit of the artistic direction at SMCQ. I have composition commissions. I conduct the Metropolitan Orchestra regularly. I tour. So I get the commission and I say okay, I’m going to go see this and right away. What strikes me is the way of the cross. Immediately I have the idea of paintings for an exhibition. I know these paintings because when I was young, you had to follow them on your knees, praying if you had committed a sin of the flesh. At the age of 12, 13 or 14, you knew immediately who had done that sin when you saw him doing his penance in church! So the Stations of the Cross for me, I must confess that I often did it on my knees, it stuck in my head – raised in Sorel in the Catholic religion, next to St. Pierre’s church which I abandoned when I was eleven years old with the agreement of my agnostic grandmother who raised me. My mother was an organist and pianist who played in the church. I sang religious music, it is part of me, of my Quebec identity.

PAN M 360: On familiar ground, then.

WALTER BOUDREAU: This order, it was perfect for me. I started working there, right away, I didn’t think about the financial aspect because I had an income. At one point, however, I had been working for a couple of months and I needed a payment to continue. The patron then invited me to the restaurant to finally declare that he was in love with me. I remained polite. I got up and left, telling myself that I would work on the piece in my spare time.

PAN M 360: Which did not guarantee the delivery of the work!

WALTER BOUDREAU: I went to see Denis Regnaud, then director of the music section of the now defunct CBC’s Chaîne culturelle, and he suggested that I reduce the initial length of the work from 45 minutes to 30 minutes in order to meet the criteria of the Grand Prix Paul-Gilson of the Communauté des Radios Publiques de Langue Française (CRPLF). Among these criteria, it was necessary to include innovative techniques in radio production at the time – voice transformation, digital sampling, new multitrack techniques, etc. Being familiar with these techniques, I accepted the proposal. For example, I had to work with a choir of sampled voices rather than with real choristers or soloists. At the time, my colleague (and composer) Alain Thibault worked alongside me to complete the work, given his high expertise in digital technologies.

PAN M 360: You then collaborated with Raoul Duguay, whom you had known long before the SMCQ, that is to say at the time of Infonie.

WALTER BOUDREAU: Raoul Duguay wrote the texts and was the reciter – instead of Gaston Miron, that the patron (resigned) had initially suggested. I got along very well with my old friend Raoul, who gave me some pretty good heptasyllables, since it was 14 Stations of the Cross that I divided into 2. Golgot(h)a is thus divided into two large parts, each comprising seven sections. Each section is preceded by a “fanfare-promenade” that acts as a transition between the sections. And so everything revolved around the number 7, which is why Raoul delivered 28 heptasyllabic poems to me. In the studio, Raoul had recited three versions of his texts, including one with the syllables well detached, which I had then digitized to give the phrases rhythms that Raoul could not have executed. By modifying his voice, moreover, I had made the reciter a sort of Darth Vader to embody the “voice of destiny”. This time, the actor Pierre Lebeau will be the narrator.

PAN M 360: The work finally made its way !

WALTER BOUDREAU: And I had been paid for the commission and for conducting. The work was recorded according to these standards, presented in Paris in May 1991 and won the Prix Paul-Gilson – we are 3 Quebecers to have won it: Otto Joachim, René Lussier and myself. It was a beautiful adventure but for me it remained an unfinished work.

PAN M 360: So what about Golgot(h)a 30 years later ?

WALTER BOUDREAU: I had won a prize but I had it left across the throat. I had built a terrace in my yard, something nice, but I didn’t finish it. So recently, since I am now retired from the artistic direction of the SMCQ, I could work on it again. Many of my works needed a brush stroke, some sanding, a few more nails. Today, I have the time when I was busy doing so many things at once, I even had to compose during my conducting breaks because I was so overloaded. It is a miracle for me to have been able to produce works at that time. A real way of the cross! (laughs). And now, at 75 years old, I am very happy to put the final coat of varnish. At least, I hope so!

PAN M 360: In your history of the work, you explain that all the music was derived from a four-part responsory “Tradiderunt Me In Manus Impiorum” (“They have delivered me into the hands of the impious”) from the “Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae” (“The Passion”) by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomas Luis De Victoria (1548-1611). In Golgot(h)a, this motet is intended as a historical link to contemporary compositional techniques at the time of its conception. Is this aspect further emphasized in the completion of the work?

WALTER BOUDREAU: This time I have real voices singing in Latin, a soprano, a mezzo, a mixed choir. I even called upon the voice of the composer to help me with this. I even called on the ayatollah of Latin choral singing, Yves Saint Thomas, to guide me, to allow me to enter the text and add something new.

PAN M 360: And who’s conducting this time, since you haven’t appeared in public for quite some time?

WALTER BOUDREAU: That would be me ! I’ll show my face! I’ll do it when and where I feel like it! That being said, I found the orchestra directing job great, it allowed me to see that I wasn’t the only one with good ideas. Now that I’m no longer the artistic director of the SMCQ, and I haven’t overplayed myself before, I’ll be conducting concerts of my music instead, although I do occasionally for other composers – Steve Reich, for example, whose “Tehilim” I dream of doing.

PAN M 360: His most mystical work!

WALTER BOUDREAU: Yes, it is. Come to think of it, we could have played it at this edition of Montreal / New musics, whose theme is “music and spirituality”…

AT MONTREAL/NEW MUSICS FESTIVAL, GOLGOT(H)A IS PERFORMED NEXT SUNDAY, 3PM, AT SALLE PIERRE-MERCURE

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

Participants

Program

Katia Makdissi-Warren is an accomplished musician and composer from Quebec. She is currently the artistic director of Oktoécho, a Montreal based ensemble that explores the confluence between Western, Indigenous, and Middle-Eastern musics.  This year as part of the New Musics Festival, Warren will be presenting her creation “Voix du nord: Nunavik — Bretagne,” a cross cultural dialogue between voice music from Nunavik and Bretagne featuring an orchestra. 

PAN M 360: First of all, thank you Katia for taking the time this morning. 


KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  Bienvenue!


PAN M 360: Perhaps we can start with how your Montreal /New Musics Festival presentation this year came to be?

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  Sure. This specific presentation came to be when I was approached by The Orchestre National de Bretagne with a commision. They wanted to showcase music from Bretagne and Canada and because of my work with Oktoécho they called me to do this project.

PAN M 360 So knowing you had to incorporate music from Bretagne, you were free to create around that? 

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  Yes. When they told me that there would be two women singing acapella, which is the traditional way vocal music from Bretagne is sung, I thought it would be great to mix this with Inuit music, which is traditionally performed as a game between two women where the first to laugh has lost the game. This is why at the end of the performance you hear the singers laughing a lot!

We workshopped a lot together, the four singers and me, and together we noticed that there are a lot of similarities between the history and the culture of Bretagne and Nunavik. They both almost lost their culture because of repression from the government and church, and the same can be said of their language. 

PAN M 360:  Did similarities appear in the music as well? 

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  In the Inuit side, the music is performed as a game, and the goal is to imitate the sounds of nature, the wind, the river, the goose, for example. When we did these workshops with our singers from Bretagne, we discovered that they also have a particular repertoire that is about animal imitation, but this repertoire is not as well known. So I thought this was a great point of similarity to explore and the direction we took was to make the music playful, using the sounds of nature as a reference.

PAN M 360: Incorporating such similar yet disparate musical traditions must present a lot of technical challenges as far as the score is concerned. What was your approach?

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  My mother is from Lebanon and so I grew up hearing Middle Eastern music as well as Western music. I think from then I was always aware that there are many ways to conceive and conceptualise music. In this case, throat singing is not written and it was the idea of one of our singers from Oktoécho, Helene Martin, to use cue sheets in our score. It was not always easy but it ended up working very well. 

As far as the orchestration goes, for one year I worked with many different musicians, winds, strings, brass, to see how we could recreate certain sounds and this meant writing a lot of extended techniques. 

PAN M 360: As a composer, what is the musical appeal of throat singing for you?

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  For me personally, Nunavik throat singing is very very important. I was 15 when I first heard it and I even think it might have been the first CD I ever bought. I was so impressed by how two voices could express something almost like electronic music. I heard sounds that for me were previously unimaginable, and there were songs that evoked emotions in me that no other music had.  It’s a very unique art and the game aspect is a big part of what makes it so musical. 

PAN M 360:  For many casual listeners, regional singing can perhaps be a little bit intimidating, is there anything you would like to say to people attending the show to get the most out of the experience? 

KATIA MAKDISSI-WARREN:  Well firstly, there are a lot of elements that will be recognizable to almost everyone. The colours of an orchestra, the folk melodies of the singers from Bretagne, it’s near to Quebecois folklore. But what I think is most interesting in this experience is the sharing. Everyone is sharing his or her own culture and it happens that we’re all together for it. I would say to focus on the elements of nature and the game. There is even a movement where the orchestra improvises. I think it will be an experience that is really playful and beautiful. 

PAN M 360  Thanks again Katia. Looking forward to the show!

This concert is presented by SMCQ at Montreal/New Musics Festival, Thursday, 6PM, Salle Pierre-Mercure.

To get your tickets it’s HERE.

Participants

Program

“So, this is where the magic happens,” says a clean-bearded man opening up some warehouse doors. He is David Palumbo, bassist/vocalist for Montreal’s experimental post-rock group, Atsuko Chiba. We walk down a short hallway with Karim Lakhdar (the lead vocalist/ and a guitar/synth player of Atsuko Chiba) and Mothland label co-founder, Philippe Larocque, towards another set of doors. 

As they open, a vast studio space comes into our vision—filled with guitars, amps, mixers, microphones, a drum set, notebooks (probably full of song ideas), and a rack with two newer band t-shirt designs. This is Room 11, the second home of Atsuko Chiba members, where they rehearse, experiment, and create some of the most thought-provoking music to come out of Eastern Canada. 

Their latest album, Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing has been making waves on North American radio, including landing a spot on the NACC Top 5 College Radio charts. It feels like this twisting experimental rock chimera of a band is finally getting the recognition they deserve. Though, they never got into this to grab recognition.

“I agree that Water is our most accessible album,” says guitarist Kevin McDonald, at a Mothland party weeks prior. “But we definitely know that we are a niche band.”

There are a few tour posters and a pile of road cases shaped like an “L” on the floor of Room 11 and I count close to 25 cases of gear. You see, in a few minutes we will be piling into the band tour van, on our way to Atsuko Chiba’s next gig in Quebec City, for the Le Phoque Off festival. 

“It’s pretty insane that we are taking this much gear for a 25 minute set, but hey, that’s part of the Atusko lifestyle,” says drummer and projectionist, Anthony Piazza, who the band commonly refers to as “Pia.”

The drive is a quick one and I hear a few tour stories from their time hopping between the States, like the one about Atsuko members meeting two “really high guys” and being invited into their apartment to make dinner. As we listen to The Rolling Stones, I also learn about “The Room,” an inside joke when the band members metaphorically make characters they’ve met on tour meet. It’s surreal and satirical, but an excellent way to kill a few hours on the road. 

Atsuko Chiba uses projections when they play live, like many psychedelic music groups, but the difference is they program and sequence them live as well. Pia, Palumbo, and guitar/synth player, Eric Schafhauser all trigger the visuals and lights. It’s really a wonder to see live. Each member has to be so in tune with one another as there’s about a million different sounds consuming the room during a song like “Link.” 

At one point during the Le Phoque Off show, McDonald’s guitar cuts out during a transitory interlude. I think to myself, “This is it, they have to restart,” and interrupt the soundscape. But no. They all motion to one another to extend a certain noisy instrumental, making the transition seamless. Of course, this band has been around for a decade at least. And with this much gear to set up and play with, they’ve run into about every problem in the book and know how to keep the intensity going.

“Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing”

“Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing”

The show in the Le Pantoum first floor is wild and vivid. Atusko opens the show with their trip-hop meets prog rock track “Quick Infant Guilt,” immediately grabbing the attention of  Le Phoque Off concert goers, Heavy synthesizers, and Rage Against the Machine-esque vocals, it feels like Run The Jewels fronting the heavier parts of The Weather Report with a bit of The Mars Volta. Just primo stuff. 

They then play a few numbers off of Water and end with the very doom heavy outro of the title track. The whole gig is fantastic, but over too soon, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Hearing chatter along the crowd, I hear that they are left craving more, and perhaps that’s the point. Atsuko Chiba don’t get to play “Shook (I’m Often) which seems to be the most popular on Water, so we will just have to wait for that.

But worry not. If you missed Le Phoque Off and have been devouring the new record on loop like myself, Atsuko Chiba’s album release show is March 10th. We wait in anticipation. 

Toronto-based dream-pop folk artist poolblood (also known as Maryam Said) has only been releasing music since 2019, but has made a huge first impression with their debut album, mole.

The album is a stunning journey, both sonically and emotionally. Numbers range drastically from  triumphant, driven anthems like “twinkie,” to soulful, melancholic ballads like “shabby” and “wfy,” to heavy, gritty sonic collections like “beam.” Despite the huge variety of sounds and vibes on offer here, all of it comes together in a distinctly human way.

Covering themes of sorrow, regret, and the harsh realities of friendships drawing to a close, mole is the ideal accompaniment for your next quiet night in, whether you’re running a melancholic bath or enjoying your own company. 

We caught up with Maryam via Zoom to talk a bit more about their inspirations, their process, and what might be awaiting them around the corner, both artistically and personally. 

PAN M 360: It’s been a really successful month for mole and poolblood. How does it feel to finally have your debut album out in the world?

Maryam Said: It’s been really exciting. It’s been nice to see the response to this record. I worked on it for a year and then when everything was wrapping up and stuff, I was kind of anticipating how I was going to feel about these songs a year after. And they still kind of hit the same, which is really cool. It’s also been awesome to meet new friends through it and play more shows with friends—it’s rewarding, for sure. 

PAN M 360: Some of these tracks are such a far cry from your previous work, particularly when you pull in the horns and orchestral bits. Did you have any specific inspirations for this new blend of aesthetics?

MS: I kind of always knew I wanted to go into that realm. For the first EP, I was kind of just going off of things, doing justice to the songs to the songs that I had at that time and letting them live in this dream-pop world. But I grew up playing violin in school and I was in a classical choir in uni, so I was always drawn to orchestral stuff and around classical music. So I wanted the record to have elements of that to honour myself. I was also utilizing a lot of the great bands and artists that I knew around me, like “I love your work and would you wanna dip your toes into this? (Please do it.)”

I love that there are more wind instruments in pop now. Like, Lizzo has her flute. Aaron Hutchinson, who did the horn stuff on the record, is a phenomenal player and brought all these great parts. He made the record flourish in such a different way that I didn’t even expect—a lot of it was very spontaneous. I’ve always been a fan of music that leaves me feeling a big question mark. I wanted to explore that feeling and bring it to my own music as an experiment.

PAN M 360: Is it true that you wrote a lot of the words on mole around the major pandemic times in 2020?

MS: Yeah. I had written this really small poetry book that I was kind of just passing around to friends in mid-2019. Then I started writing words for mole (it didn’t have a name at the time) because I thought I was gonna record it in 2020. And when the pandemic hit I sat down and really started fleshing out the songs. Even during recording, I was tweaking things because certain inspirations had come through. I would watch something or talk to someone and be like “that’s giving me a feeling that I need to go back to.”

PAN M 360: Do any of these tracks have new meaning for you now that they’re in their final form?

MS: Sometimes, yeah. There are moments when I was writing certain songs and they felt very mundane or hyper-simple. Like I didn’t know what I was actually trying to say. As I was recording and finishing up production, I started to realize what I was trying to say, what I was trying to connect to, what feeling that certain line comes from—why I wrote it. When I’m writing I’m just trying to get something out, and then when it’s out I’ll start to process it. Some of the lyrics might sit in a different space in my life.  

PAN M 360: When I first listened to this album, I thought it was like reading the best and worst days of someone’s life, straight out of their diary. Do you do any journaling?

MS: I’ve heard that a lot. People are like, ‘are you just straight-up writing from your diary?’ But this record is an homage to my younger self and paying my dues of being a writer in my 20s trying to figure it all out. I started journaling as a really young kid, like eight, but nowadays, I journal in my notes app. I’ll look back into my notes and sometimes use that to write lyrics. The diary thing is cool though, I’m still trying to grapple with it. I’ve always liked to write from my own perspective. I kind of want to challenge myself now to try and take myself out of the picture and explore different stories. I really, really love Andy Shauf and I think he’s a phenomenal songwriter who can do that in such a cool way, writing these characters who are sometimes unlikeable, sometimes likable, really human. He embraces the human condition in such a great way. 

PAN M 360: You’ve mentioned before that mole is a story about letting go of relationships that don’t serve you anymore, and kind of a reflection on lessons learned.

MS: A lot of it is around relationships and friendships. I was learning how to reframe and reposition myself in my connection with the people around me. I felt like I was of service. I had really weird childhood stuff that was kind of leading me to certain people. This record was me going ‘that’s not cool, let’s reroute. Let’s recalibrate.’ 

PAN M 360: Would you say the making of the album itself shed more light on that situation for you?

MS: A lot of artists do this thing where they go, “I made this album because it was healing and now I’m healed and I’ve poured everything into it and it’s transformed me,” but it kind of didn’t really do that—it was kind of just me being a brat. I said all this stuff I was upset, depleted, defeated about, and I didn’t really know the solution. I guess the solution is just realizing that this is a reality and it’s gonna be an active lifelong journey to undo all this stuff. And I kind of chose the biggest, hardest topic. If I chose something smaller, like a heartbreak, I could just be like “Oh yeah, that was not cool. Next situation, I’m gonna learn to love the person a certain way or treat love a certain way.” 

I feel like ending a friendship is harder than romantic stuff. There’s a different kind of intimacy. There’s not a weird, inherent power structure, we just love kicking it with each other and it sucks when you can’t do it anymore. 

PAN M 360: I wanted to ask you about “beam.” Where did the inspiration for such a dark, brooding interlude come from? 

MS: It’s so funny. I was listening to Korn a lot, and I was doing a lot of walks when I was recording this record. There’s this big forest conservatory place near my house, and I’d walk there a lot. It’s really beautiful, I’d see deer during my morning walks and stuff. This one day I was walking and listening to Korn, and I was thinking about how much I love how weird and dark their music is. 

I was playing around with older stuff I had recorded on my computer and layering it and just making it as weirdly hellish as it could possibly be because I knew it could fit on the record. With the lyrics, I wanted to pretend to be dark, with Edgar Allen Poe-type stuff. So I guess the main inspiration is listening to Korn’s “Freak on a Leash.” That breakdown? Insane, like, what is he even doing? He makes you terrified. 

PAN M 360: What was the thought of the track placement of “beam” between “null” and “sorry”?

MS: I was really excited to do the track listing. I knew how I wanted to sort the record, not only thematically, but also to have a sonic story from start to finish. Placing “beam” in the middle, I think is the moment when someone hits their breaking point, and is in a moment of defeat. I wanted to capture that feeling of defeat—like there’s no end to it. The song covers the stages of grief in a way too, with the feeling of sorrow, and then forgiveness comes in “sorry,” and then a bit of that person crawling out and hearing “my little room” and being like, there’s a light now that you can sort of get to. But can you? I don’t know. It’s kind of the hangover track as well. 

PAN M 360: At times, mole is like the soundtrack of the saddest yet happiest coming-of-age film ever. Do movies and the cinematic aesthetic play a part in your process?

MS: I’m a movie guy for sure. When I was making this record I was watching stuff that revolved around complicated friendships or relationships, but that didn’t necessarily have that resolution or typical traditional narrative of ‘they go through the rough times but clean up their act and they’re good again.’ Movies like My Private Idaho, with these two intense characters living through similar situations and trying to help each other through the shit. But they end up not being friends in the end. They’re distant. Like people they knew, friends of the past, but still rooting for each other. 

I was also watching Black Swan and David Lynch’s Lost Highway. The way he plays with time in that movie was a mind-equals-blown kind of moment. The soundtrack in Lost Highway was a big one too. The Bossa Nova moments by Angelo Badalamenti and Trent Reznor were big inspirations. The soundtracks of movies mean a lot to me. Music can make it or break it for a scene, and it can do the same for your life. We all have those feelings of knowing how we were feeling or what we were doing the first thing we heard a song. It’s such a beautiful and magical thing that music can do. 

PAN M 360: What are you thinking next for poolblood?

MS: I’m going on tour in March which is really sick. It’s my first tour, so I’m trying to be all prepared. I’m going to Detroit and Iowa, but I’m playing SXSW which I’m really stoked for. I’ve always wanted to go to Austin, so it’s cool that it lines up that way. And SXSW is kind of GOATed too. So I get to do that, and hopefully, in the next couple of months we’re gonna be touring again, and I might start writing as well. It’s weird, once the record comes out ‘what’s the next thing’ is a natural question, but I just want to spend some time with this little child I just gave birth to!

PAN M 360: “my little room” is such a stunning resolution and really speaks to that sense of learning to be happy by yourself. Can you walk us through poolblood’s perfect night, home alone?

MS: I feel like I’m gonna sound so boring, but I’m a big fan of a nice, clean living room. Some sort of TV, and a blanket, and my three-drink rotation. At night it would probably be a decaf coffee, water, and some kind of seltzer, like sparkling water. And then putting on a bunch of different movies and maybe having a meal that I’ve made with a friend together. That’s a nice night in. Just a cozy night.  Maybe I’m second-guessing. Should I just be like ‘I love partying, I love to do all this crazy shit. I’m gonna smash up over here. Straight to the club. Pounding back shots. Then it’s the next club. Getting on a plane. Getting married. The whole nine yards.’ It’s just being super cozy with someone you love. We get to just chat and vibe. That’s cool. And that could be in your room too, just to tie it up.

Honeydrip, talented Montrealer producer and DJ, has had a fascinating journey in the music world. From being a cheerleader in high school to studying electroacoustic music at Concordia, hosting a show on local radio stations CJLO and n10.as, releasing her debut EP in 2021 and being a resident DJ with Homegrown Harvest; she created a unique path leading to her participation to Igloofest 15th birthday edition (2023) this Friday.

PAN M 360 : What can you tell me about your relationship with music before you started producing and DJing ?

Honeydrip : When I was younger, my mom would listen a lot to reggae dancehall so I have a special affection for this genre. When I started my own musical discoveries, I went towards stuff like field alternative. When I was in high school, I also was a cheerleader, it’s a lot of dance, gymnastics, pyramids, all that stuff. Basically, it’s like a three-minute routine, but then you have like 10 songs within that routine. So if they don’t beat match they’ll do like cut, but cuts that like makes sense. If a song is about to drop, it’s the buildup, and then boom, it’s the next track. And I would actually make some cheer mixes at home. It was kind of an introduction to mixing that I had learned when I was in high school doing that. I would use this program that you could play the song on the internet and that would record the music that was being streamed on the Internet. It was kind of my way of illegally downloading, I guess. I also was a dancer for a bit of high school as well, so always around music.

I think I was more in the dancing part of it because I didn’t really feel like being a producer, I don’t think I knew what DJing was at that time. But being a producer just kind of seemed like something that only people that would produce music for Lady Gaga or something like that was the only way in which they existed or something. It wasn’t really something I had in mind.

PAN M 360 : Then, what led you towards DJing ?

Honeydrip : When University started there wasn’t a cheerleading team so I had to find a new extracurricular activity. I saw that there was the CJLO radio at Concordia. I signed up as a volunteer and that ended up going like pretty well because I won the best new show the first year I was doing it and then like I ended up climbing the ranks and becoming like the electronic music director there, which is a somewhat paid position. At that point that’s when I started to learn how to DJ when I was on the radio because I wanted to blend my songs together and not have radio silence on my shows.

PAN M 360 : Is the radio show you are talking about “Waves of Honey” that you also host on n10.as ?

Honeydrip : Yeah, so I actually don’t do the show on n10.as anymore but it was, yeah. It started off at CJLO and it was every week on Sunday nights for four years. At one point I was doing n10.as and CJLO simultaneously. But I would have to go physically into the radio, I would do it by bike and it would take me like an hour one way an hour back, like a lot. So I ended up stopping CJLO, and just doing n10.as, which was once a month. I did that for another three years, and then I just stopped because I realized I wasn’t using it as a tool to actually create engagement and I just didn’t have the energy and time to use it properly. It was just taking time that I wanted to start dedicating towards producing.

PAN M 360 : And beside all of that, you also studied electroacoustic music at Concordia. What motivated you to enter the program ?

Honeydrip : I’ve gotten much better with my self-discipline and I’m really happy about that, but before, it was something that I was struggling with. I wanted to learn how to produce, and I had the tools, I just wasn’t doing it. I felt if I were to sign myself up to a program in school that would force me to produce then that would be the best way for me to get into it and learn. And it was! So I applied and I had an application where like, one of my songs was I layered like 13 times like Danny Brown, acapella, like a weird way. And then the other one, which turns out to be a classic application – but I thought I was so creative at the time – was the Montreal Metro. Yeah, turns out every year someone uses the Montreal Metro sounds field recording vibes as an application. And it worked ! I did a minor only because I was majoring in marketing. But it was a really great program, I learned a lot like mostly from my peers, amazing people still doing amazing stuff.

PAN M 360 : What do you think are the elements you kepts from electroacoustic studies into the work you do now and the way you work today?

Honeydrip : I would say one thing in terms of my approach to producing is I work a lot with audio files and less with MIDI, and that is something that we would do a lot in electroacoustics. We use this program called Amadeus with which you can really get deep into your clips. I generally work a lot with audios, I cut them up and use them as like little kind of glitchy sounds. So that was something that I would do a lot in electroacoustics but also just like a creative approach to producing where you really focus on making the sound as unique, really going deep with effects and stuff. So that too. In electro acoustics we do a lot of like spatialization stuff, which I don’t really do much because I keep my music like stereo but like it’s definitely something that I would like to get back into exploring eventually.

PAN M 360 : What are the raw materials you most work with ?

Honeydrip : At first I had like that kind of typical mentality “Oh, I’m just using samples and it’s not my music”, but in the end I kind of stepped away from that view because I’m not going to start making like all of my own kicks and stuff. If people do that, that’s really cool, but like, I don’t think it’s necessary. In terms of drum, like percussive stuff, I use samples and then I try to take them away from their original sound through like E cueing, effects and stuff. But, um, otherwise, I have a Arturia micro freak, I like to use that for lead sounds. I record mic sounds,, field recording vibes and I’ll transform them. I’m working on an album right now and that one has a lot of sounds via feedback and pedals.

PAN M 360 : Can you tell me a bit more about the album you are working on?

Honeydrip : I’m working on kind of  an extension of my first EP, which has explorations of dub reggae, dancehall, but in a dancefloor context, and keeping my kind of styles like bassy, left field electronic music, so it’s kind of chapter two of that. It’s going to be released on a label in the UK. Singles are going to start coming out over the summer and then the album maybe early fall, late summer. 2023 for sure, and I’m working on my first live sets.

PAN M 360 : You are a resident DJ for Homegrown Harvest, can tell me more about this project?

Honeydrip : Homegrown is doing a really good job at bringing over international artists and kind of liaison, meaning like the relationship between like local artists here and having the opportunity to create friendships and networking vibes with international artists coming through, so that’s really cool. The collective has Lea Plutonic, Pascale Project, Lis Dalton, Dileta, Zi! and me. At first, they kind of were keeping mostly their residents on the lineup, but now they’re opening up and bringing in different locals. It’s becoming a central hub for all of the DJs in Montreal in the electronic scene.

PAN M 360 : Montreal underground dance music in particular, we have an anglo side and a french side of it. How do you feel those two sides are connected (or not) ?

Honeydrip : It’s funny that you pointed out because then it kind of makes me realize that I’m very much on the Anglo side and I’m not that familiar with what the French side is up to. I know they’re more into techno. Homegrown Harvest [Anglo collective] and Noreiner [French collective] just did an event together. I think both parties realized it was maybe time to start combining forces. That’s maybe something that has not helped in Montreal, that people always are trying to kind of do their thing on our on their own and not like, put their strengths together so that we can just elevate the city as a whole. So I’m happy to see those kinds of connections being made !

PAN M 360 : In May 2022, you participated in the NON-STOP, a 36h dance music event organized by MTL 24/24 at SAT. It’s an important step for the underground dance music scene, don’t you think ?

Honeydrip : I think it’s really amazing what they’re doing. You know this whole having a late liquor license is something that has been tried in Montreal a few years ago, and the government might have even canceled it before the trial period happened or something. I think it’s great that not only have they done it once, but they’ve done it a few times now and it’s like it seems to be working. In comparison to Europe, the Canadian underground scene is really suffering because the government doesn’t view the value in us. And although, for instance, in Quebec, there’s so many festivals and there’s a lot of money, the artists that are a part of this don’t necessarily always represents the underground scene. So instead, the underground scene is just kind of viewed as villains, we’re getting ticketed and shut down. Especially since after COVID the landscape has really changed, like raving used to be much easier before COVID. So what MTL 24/24 is doing is amazing.

We don’t need to introduce Lydia Lunch anymore. Underground icon and high priestess of the no wave genre, this elusive artist has never ceased to shape a (voluminous) disturbing, destabilizing, provocative, audacious and hostile work, whether it be through her music, her literary creations, her poetry or as an actress. Even today, at 63, she remains as relevant as ever in her impertinence.

From Teenage Jesus and the Jerks to Big Sexy Noise, 8-Eyed Spy and her multiple solo albums and collaborations, the Queen of Siam revisits her impressive musical career with her band Retrovirus, as part of the Taverne Tour.

A few days before her Montreal appearance, we had the pleasure of speaking with this living legend of counter-culture. Affable, generous, joking and animated by a passion that we feel is still burning, she talked to us about no wave and Retrovirus of course, but also about her relationship with death, some of her projects and her singular desire to sell all her work.

PAN M 360: You are often associated with the New York underground, how has this city influenced your work? And does it still influence it?

Lydia Lunch: How did I influence what happened in New York you mean? Okay, let’s be clear. I was first influenced by literature. So if I was influenced by the literature of Hubert Selby Jr. and his Last Exit to Brooklyn when I was 12. if I was influenced by the writings of Henry Miller, I was well prepared for what New York could be, should be, or would be. I already had a preconceived idea of what I was supposed to do before I got here, in a sense. I’ve lived in New York less than I have in other places, which is weird. That’s because I came here in ’76 until ’79, or ’80. I moved to Los Angeles for two years, London for two years, back to New York for four years, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Barcelona for eight years… But as someone once said, maybe I am what New York once was, I don’t know….

PAN M 360: This city has changed a lot in the last 30 years. Do you think those underground art and music scenes of the ’70s and ’80s could exist today?

Lydia Lunch: If we want to make history, which I really like, the scenes are cyclical. For example, we would start with the ’20s in Paris, the ’30s maybe in Berlin, or the ’50s in Chicago, the ’60s in San Francisco, the ’70s in New York, London, Los Angeles, and then the ’80s… I don’t know what happened to music in the 80s, it went sideways….. I think with the arrival of the Internet, there was less urgency to be in a specific place, and everything became more expensive too. And then instead of clubs, which are gone now, there were bigger festivals. Everything is always changing. Things can’t stay the same. I mean, I wish it was Paris in the ’20s, but it’s not. You go anywhere, it’s not what it was. But there are always radical elements somewhere. I’ll give you one tiny example that I’ve been really excited about lately: some kids in high school IV and V at the Brooklyn Library consider themselves Luddites, they’re anti-technology, they read books, they write, and they don’t go online, and I’m thinking, “Now that’s a form of rebellion!” Because we know how soul-sucking electronic mania the Internet can be, and when young people reject it, it means they want a real life experience.

PAN M 360: You were and still are closely associated with the no wave movement. Can you tell us a bit about this scene? Was it even a scene?

Lydia Lunch: Honey, its whole history has been written, but let me define what no wave is. I still consider myself a no wave artist. When you hear punk rock, opera, classical, piano music, pop… you have an idea of what defines that sound. But with no wave, no; this genre doesn’t even have a relationship with itself. It’s much more dada or surreal, it’s discordant, it’s not necessarily audience friendly, and it’s generally not melodic. And as opposed to punk, for example, which was happening at the same time and was more of a social revolt, with no wave, most people were living an internal revolt. They had personal revolts; because of the city, because of the madness of America… It was more of a personal madness, I think.

PAN M 360: In the last few years, we’ve seen a sort of renaissance of the no-wave genre. What do you think about that?

Lydia Lunch: Well, for me it never went away. But I consider myself no wave because it defies categorization. I mean I’m always happy when something is discordant, or something is shredded, or something is irritating. But I’ve also done swamp rock, I’ve done big band music… I don’t expect anyone to make music for me, I make it for my many selves! That’s why I usually try to have a different flavor.

PAN M 360: You’ve created a lot of things and looking back on your work, are there any missed opportunities or things you would have liked to do? And that you still want to do?

Lydia Lunch: Well, that’s a very good question. No, because what would I have missed (laughs). The thing is, I’m a conceptualist. So I mean, first of all, I have a concept, a musical concept. Then I try to find the person who I think will be the best to illustrate that sound. I never think “oh I want to work with this person.” I wouldn’t know who to work with. It’s not that I’ve worked with everyone either, but I don’t sit down and think “oh, I’d like to do something innovative.” No. I’d like to continue to collaborate with those who make the most sense for a specific project. What’s interesting about Retrovirus, because we cover so many decades, is that a lot of this music has never been played live, or only very, very briefly. So it’s interesting to have musicians who can perform these tunes, but take them beyond that, in a more… I wouldn’t say sophisticated way, but in an even more beautiful and punishing way. (laughs)

PAN M 360: Speaking of Retrovirus, we just saw Bob Bert on drums with John Spencer in Montreal two weeks ago. Will he still be behind the drums for the Retrovirus show at the Tavern Tour?

Lydia Lunch: No, we have Kevin Shea now. You know, this is the longest set up I’ve ever had. Because usually I have a concept, I find the collaborators, we do a tour or we do a record and then we move on to the next (concept) please! But with the amount of songs in my repertoire that we can draw from, it might be that Retrovirus becomes a new band from time to time (laughs). And so now we have a new drummer, mainly because Bob is involved with John Spencer for a long time, so we had to get Kevin Shea, and that made the band sound even more brutal. I say that with great pleasure! (laughs) We open the show with “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath! I stay true to the lyrics but coming from me, coming out of my mouth, they take on another meaning, they are completely distorted.

PAN M 360: I wonder what Ozzy would think of it…

Lydia Lunch: Is he still able to hear anything? (laughs)

PAN M 360: And I believe that Weasel Walter still plays the guitar and Tim Dahl the bass?

Lydia Lunch: Of course! Weasel and Jim, yeah!

PAN M 360: Considering that you have written more than 300 songs…

Lydia Lunch: 400! Who’s counting? Not even 10 a year, I’m slacking! (laughs)

PAN M 360: Ok, considering you’ve written over 400 songs, are there any you’ve never played live on this tour?

Lydia Lunch: We’re playing songs from my catalog that we’ve never played before, yes. But we don’t write new songs when there are so many choices. If I’m going to write new songs, I’m going to have new collaborators, like with Cypress Grove, or my Fistful of Desert Blues, and I also have an unreleased jazz noir album with Sylvia Black, who is an incredible singer/songwriter (in French in the interview). I have a record with Tim Dahl’s band, Grid, with saxophone, bass and something more like spoken word, which is not out yet. So there’s no reason to put new music on Retrovirus; it’s the “Retro” virus! But what’s interesting is that we can do songs that we’ve never done before. For example, we’re doing three or four songs that we’ve never played before for this tour.

PAN M 360: A few years ago, we heard that you wanted to sell the rights of all your works. How did that happen?

Lydia Lunch: I’m always there with my hand out, waiting for gold to fall in (laughs). You know, I sold my archive to New York University, but it was just physical debris. I don’t know how, but from a very young age, I managed to keep the rights to everything I did, unlike so many of my contemporaries. And I don’t know how I was so thoughtful at 17. I own everything, which is great, but nobody wants to buy it (laughs). It’s all there. You never know… But you know, why would they be interested in my work when they spend 150 million fucking dollars on the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Ew! In-croy-able… I mean, I never wrote “Under The Bridge” and they never wrote “Orphans.” I don’t know what to say… I just wish somebody would take it off my hands and do something with it. In the 400 songs, I think there’s a lot of scary ones that could easily be in some of these crime shows, which I’m obsessed with.

PAN M 360: So there were no offers?

Lydia Lunch: Well, there have been some offers but not what I wanted…. I have to try to hold out. It also has to be with the right people. You know, it’s not like a storage unit that we would auction off. And if it was, who would come? (laughs). Look, I have to take everything with a grain of salt like I always have. For example, last year I received a grant from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, which has the oldest and largest music archive in America. They offered it to me, and I laughed, and said, “So what does that mean? And who else got it?” They said, “You know, it means a few thousand dollars, you come in, you jog, you get a plaque…” And the only other two people who got it were Lamont Dozier, who wrote a lot of songs for Motown, I love Motown, and Barry Gibb! I hate the Bee Gees! (laughs). So it was me, Barry Gibb and Lamont Dozier! It was great! Likewise, I’ve taught at universities before and having dropped out of school in high school, I just thought “I like this!” It’s so ridiculous when you think about it! That’s really what no wave is all about: absurdity! I love the absurdity of it. I mean, I’m more proud of my gun training than I am of a scholarship! (laughs). I’m an American, I have gun training you know! (laughs)

PAN M 360: How did the recent death of Tom Verlaine affect you? Were you friends?

Lydia Lunch: Affected? Ah! I’m surprised that everyone is still alive! I’m kidding, but the thing is, people have a bad attitude about death. We don’t cry for the dead, we cry for ourselves, like “oh, I’m not going to have that anymore…”. We have to appreciate what people have given us in life. That’s why we have to be very grateful, every day. Because everybody is going to die. You don’t have to mourn their departure, you just have to appreciate what they gave you, what they did for you, what they gave for the culture or whatever. I mean, Tom Verlaine was not a friend of mine, but I think his contribution to the first two Television albums was great. How much more does a man have to do before he can rest in peace in that black velvet room? (laughs) I’m not ready to go but… you never know!

PAN M 360: Please wait until after the Montreal show.

Lydia Lunch: At least I’ll wait until after this interview! (laughs) I’m not going anywhere anyway, except to go in circles like I always do. So I’ll be circling around your place in a few days, I’ve got a lot of guts!

The name Jonathan Toubin is one past Taverne Tour attendees should know well. He’s brought his eccentric collection of soul, rock, funk, and whatever he’s feeling, to Taverne Tour’s after parties since the festival has been running, and played almost every year. His enthusiastic energy as a DJ has earned him titles like “The most-liked man in the soul music scene” and “New York’s favourite and best DJ,” and his New York Night Train dance parties have become stuff of legend. He’s the only DJ who is constantly playing after parties or opening for big names like Jack White.

With all this praise, Toubin remains a guy who has yes partied with the greats, but is also very humble. He loves spanning a few decades with his parties, usually focusing on the soul records you’ve never heard of, deep cuts of guys like Carl Hommes and the Commanders, or the original pressing of The Presidents “Shoe Shine.” He also mainly plays original 45’s, honing in off that vintage sound. We spoke to Jonathan at 11 am (early for him!) ahead of his Taverne Tour appearance and talked about his new bar, links to Montreal, and love of old Soul music, as he walked around, made coffee, and his flipped through old record crates.

PAN M 360: Hey Jonathan, how are you today?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah I’m good, just making coffee. I had a late night, and I’m sober this month, I’m doing late hours.

PAN M 360: Oh you’re doing that sober January thing?

Jonathan Toubin: No not really. I started it a few days ago. I opened a new nightclub a few weeks ago and both of the places I own close really late. And then you know, my job in New York is usually done around four in the morning we get paid after that. So it’s the kind of thing where I need a health kick every once in a while. I like the mornings, but it’s just not it’s not in the cards for me right now.

PAN M 360: What’s the new club? I know you already have the TV EYE bar/ venue?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah the new one is just a bar really. It’s a two story bar. Basically a friend of mine [Howie Pyro] died. And he was really cool. He’s like a original ’77 punk rocker, when you know he was a teenager he played at CBGBs and put out records. He was just a really interesting guy. Like a queer proto-goth who played with D Generation and Danzig, and played older records like me, but he collected all this rock n’ roll crap. And he was buried Hollywood Forever [a cemetery in LA]. I was sitting there with his other good friend and we were working out like ‘What’s gonna happen to all this stuff?’ And you know, his sister didn’t know what to do with it and they didn’t give it to the university. So he always wanted to have a bar or like something like that so we just decided to make a place with all of his stuff.

PAN M 360: That’s cool. Kind of in memoriam of him.

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah and it’s cool stuff. Like the ashtray that Andy Warhol stole The Velvet Underground banana from I mean, note for note. Or the Ramones gave him their first gold record, you know, presented to him. That’s up there. The Dead Boys guitar case that he used for his bass.

PAN M 360: What’s this place called?

Jonathan Toubin: It’s called 96 Tears. It’s in East Village.

PAN M 360: 96 Tears… That’s a song by Question Mark and the Mysterians right?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah he had it tattooed on his neck and he was a huge collector of rock n’ roll memorabilia so the name made sense.

PAN M 360: So on top of being one of the most sought after DJs in the world and owning two establishments, you travel a ton, and your next stop is Montreal’s Taverne Tour.

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah I’ve played everyone until I think they quit when they weren’t allowed to have dancing. I think last year because there was a surge. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve done it since … God, I hate to say it, it might be 2019 or 2020. Probably actually 2020, right before the pandemic. So I feel far away from it. Basically I can’t wait to come back.

PAN M 360: Do you have a pretty big link to Montreal in general?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah sort of. I’ve definitely spent a lot of time there. I guess I started doing DJ parties there in the 2000s. And you know, Bloodshot Bill is my friend and I stay with him sometimes. Or he stays in my house. And I always, you know, put on his shows at my other club and at my dance parties in New York. So that’s, he’s a good link. I’m also longtime fan of the city. I got a ticket a day early before my show, just to go see some stuff. And also I always go record shopping there because I love Quebecois cover versions and like garage music and I hope to find some interesting records.

PAN M 360: Your collection must be massive?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah and it’s really disorganized. But I have around 20,000 of these things and I want less, more quality less quantity.

PAN M 360: And you only play 45s when you perform right?

Jonathan Toubin: Not only that, but the original copies to make it more fun for myself. But that means I’m not really able to play most of the songs I want. It’s just like being an Iron Chef right? Like you only have pork belly and scallion and go! You have to be creative with what you have… I mean even Spotify doesn’t have most of what I want, either. But you know what I mean, if you’re able to have everything ever, you would you wouldn’t have any limitations right?

PAN M 360: So are you always on the hunt for something new to add to your repertoire?

Jonathan Toubin: I definitely used to be. But to be honest, during the pandemic, I ran out of money. So I started looking through my own records. You know, sometimes I forget and I was cataloging things and digitizing things during then. And I found all this great stuff that I completely forgot about. Like sometimes I’ll be in a town like Detroit, and I’ll come home with like, 100 records of something. Then I’ll get really busy when I get home and I won’t listen to all of them. Maybe I’ll take two or three out. So I did all my shopping for a couple of years in my own house. it was really fun.

PAN M 360: Are you ever surprised with what you already have?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah, there are a few time when I’m like ‘Where the hell did this come from? Like certain records, I really have no idea. How long it’s been here. I mean, it gave me a chance to get to know though what I really had. And also, I think the problem was, and I think this is true with anyone, I think the reason people like Top 40 or whatever is it’s new all the time is that they just want something new to listen to. They got bored with their old favourite song. They don’t really want to hear it again. So someone makes them a new favorite song. And so I guess for me, I guess probably a lot of people do my job, you know, we play all this stuff, so we need to go find another thing that we’re not bored with yet. You know, there was times where I was doing over 300 nights of these shows a year and you call get into habits. You start either playing things way too much or doing the opposite. It’s nice to be like I don’t really know what this sounds like, but we’re gonna figure it out.

PAN M 360: And as a DJ you need those little moments right? You don’t really get to enjoy the music as much and your always queuing up the next song?

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah you’re queuing the next record, you’re talking to someone; it’s very rare that you get to really enjoy music on the level of someone that just hears the songs uninterrupted. And sometimes you think certain ones are maybe a little long. When you finally get time with them alone, you start cutting it off a little early. Or you realize ‘This record is so repetitive.’ You don’t want to play it anymore. But it’s great at the club, because it’s got that kind of beat and you’re sitting back, feeling people dancing, enjoying in the magic, but maybe I don’t really like the record. But I think you enjoy the feeling of it more.

I came up with a definition for DJ a few years ago; You’re a mediator between people in music, and I was thinking that covers even radio, or any one that we call a DJ, because it’s someone that connects people in music. And I’ll say that feeding off that energy from people dancing based on my record choices, that’s better than listening alone at home.

PAN M 360: And one of the reasons you’re such a name in the DJ and live music world is you don’t play the hits, but rarities many people don’t even know existed. That must be fun shocking people or turning them onto new music from a different era.

Jonathan Toubin: Yeah I don’t play any hits or sometimes I’ll play an obscure cover of a hit. It’s usually around 100 records for most of these nights and I really like people to be challenged. And I also I guess I like to think about what I would want if I walked in somewhere. I’d like to hear some song I hadn’t heard before even ,man, I’d love to hear a rhythm I hadn’t heard before. I think the why I ended up with playing Soul music the most for dancing was that you can just find a lot of quality stuff that has a lot of passion and that you haven’t heard before. They made so many of those records in the era and they’re very unique. And every region has a different sound or different producers and arrangers, different sizes, certainly musicians and singers with all kinds of different sounds. So it can be, it can be very textured. Now I’m moving more into the mid to late ’60s, maybe little to the early ’70s.

PAN M 360: And you kind of set these rules for yourself. Like ‘OK I’m only going to play from this time period of Soul music to this one?

Jonathan Toubin: So my thing is, I just kind of decided to make a parameter. I’d be like, ‘Well, the set will be roughly from the years that James Brown did his best stuff from the ’50s to the, like, mid 70s. That would be my guideline. But and within that period, there was so much innovation in Black American music, and, you know, there’s so many things going on, so you have a lot of territory you can cover, if you don’t get stuck. I think there’s a lot of continuity, in some ways of like, the sort of expressive quality of the voices or the types of beats chosen. I don’t know, a lot of people just do like a party over just like a two or three year kind of span. To me, thats like if you made a cookie with only flour and you forgot all of the nuts or chocolate chips.

PAN M 360: You’re background was more into the garage and punk scene in Austin and then after you moved to New York, did your style kind of shift into Soul?

Jonathan Toubin: Well, I never really shifted, I mean I always liked this stuff. I really started DJing like, at clubs and stuff when I was in New York, and I kind of quit playing in bands and all that. And in most of the people I played to were in these bands at like rock n’ roll bars. People are drinking and they want to sing along to The Damned so I’d throw that on and I didn’t really think much about it.

But when I when I had to do dance parties, I was just sort of surprised. I didn’t want to do electro or disco or any that kind of thing. I wanted something that felt really organic and passionate and raw, like the stuff that I liked the most. I did learn how to do rock and roll for dancing too, but the soul parties became the most popular. I organically moved into that sort of direction. I think what it was is I was this guy coming from a different kind of music world approaching soul in my way and I was speaking to lots of people through it. I wasn’t at deep cuts kind of guy yet and was just kind of finding my way. And it’s funny, that after all these years I’m still an outsider, playing rock n’ roll venues and venues, and I’m not really part of the soul world at all.

Soul Clap Party 2019

PAN M 360: Did you ever envision yourself getting this big? I mean, you’ve opened for Jack White, sold out multiple venues, and host the most popular soul dance party in the world. Was there a point where you were like ‘ Wow I can do this as a career?’

Jonathan Toubin: No and I still don’t think that. I’m more like ‘Oh no. Today my career is over,’ almost everyday (laughs). I didn’t expect anything from it. When I played music, I really started pursuing that in certain point fairly seriously and making a living doing that for a while. Bit I quit messing around with it. With DJing, I never really cared. I just started. I was in graduate school at the time and I was just trying to get a little extra money and have fun, and I didn’t expect nothing. And I think that might have also been what helped. But Jack White … one of my bands in Texas, we along with The White Stripes opened for The Dirtbombs on a tour in Detroit. And this turned out to be The White Stripes’ second show ever. So it’s all connections and fortunately, a lot of those people I know from my band days have been doing pretty well. And then people like Vice gave me a bunch of money to play music I already liked, so it all really happened by accident.

PAN M 360: Would you say your goal with New York Night Train is to get people who aren’t normally up for dancing to dance? Like the too cool rock n roll people who only head nod to music.

Jonathan Toubin: Oh for sure. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I think there has always been the people who play the hits and then the people who play the really rare stuff that’s almost pretentious like ‘Oh if you don’t know what this is, get the fuck out,’ kind of thing. There was never much middle ground. I never understood why people never danced to rock n’ roll like they did in the ’50s. I mean there’s this fuzzy line between rock and soul with the same kind of beats that encourage dancing, but yeah with my stuff you’re getting an eccentric, middle-aged gentleman and an odd suit, very enthusiastically, playing all of the most exciting solo records you’ve ever heard.

In residence at Groupe le Vivier since last fall, Ukrainian artist Alla Zagaykevych has come full circle in Montreal. In this second concert-portrait of her, she presents four works from her repertoire, including a world premiere and a previously unpublished transcription.

Links have been forged between the composer and Quebec performers Pamela Reimer (piano), Lyne Allard (violin), Hubert Brizard (violin), Marie-Annick Béliveau (mezzo-soprano – Chants Libres), Corinne René (percussion – PSM) and the Quasar Saxophone Quartet.

Far from the real danger she will have to deal with again the day after her custom-made program promoted by Le Vivier, on Wednesday at the Espace Bleu in the Wilder Building, Alla Zagaykevych sums up her stay in Montreal as “a kind of cinematic flashback in search of a new artistic identity as a composer in wartime”.

The latest Montreal manifestations of her creative talent came on January 23 – an open rehearsal of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne gave us a nourishing first reading of the work “Et seul le roseau brille au soleil”, composed in Montreal. Evocative of his own perception of the ongoing armed violence in his country, the title refers us to the mystery of “Friend Li Bo. Brother Du Fu..” by the late writer Oleh Lysheha, whose poetic plot is set within a military unit deployed in a northern forest.

Inspired by the same author and premiered this Wednesday, “Song of Maiden” recalls the condition of a young bride who finds refuge in love songs, seeking to pick up the pieces of an existence broken by war.

Obviously, Alla Zagaykevych is not a pasionaria of the Ukrainian resistance, we feel in her nuance, sobriety and restraint in her words on the situation, which does not in any way question her allegiance. We must observe that the artist visibly prefers to express herself on the absurd violence of the armed aggression as a phenomenon first felt. She applies herself to map the emotions through her recent work.

Before returning to Kyiv, where she directs an electroacoustic program at the Conservatory, she talks to PAN M 360 and takes stock of the last months spent in Montreal.

PAN M 360: As an artist and musicologist, how do you experience the two languages spoken in Ukraine?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: I come from a family of university professors. My first language was Russian, but in this period of war, I do not speak Russian in Ukraine. However, I can speak it elsewhere – I have, for example, exchanged in Russian here in Montreal. I must also say that I lived in the western regions of Ukraine, regions quite close to Poland, I spoke Russian in my family but I went to Ukrainian school to study at first. At the age of 18, I started to do a lot of folklore research in Ukraine and discovered even more. I had the feeling that I was living in a bilingual environment but in times of war everything becomes black and white.

PAN M 360: It must be difficult to go home in the context. How do you experience it?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVICH: You know, there is a civil society in Ukraine, unlike many authoritarian countries in the region or elsewhere. Yes there is corruption, contradictions, you can see some nonsense done to the LGBTQ+ community… it’s very difficult to change things. But we are optimistic because we can count on a civil society, which can control part of our reality.

PAN M 360: What is your relationship with Quebec?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: When I spent some time at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music) in Paris in 1995 and 1996, I met there (the Quebec composer) Serge Provost, who introduced me to the work of Claude Vivier. Afterwards, I founded an electroacoustic music studio at the Conservatoire where I invited Serge, who in turn invited Véronique Lacroix to play works by Anna Sokolovic and Jean Lesage.

PAN M 360: Away from the conflict zone, how did you find your way inside as an artist?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: I tried to choose themes and texts that were in tune with my spirit as an artist in residence whose country is in a time of war. With Jeffrey Stonehouse (Groupe Le Vivier’s artistic director), we put together programs that represent the work done here.

PAN M 360: Let’s go first with “Song of Maiden”, which premieres Wednesday.

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: “Song of Maiden”, which highlights a text by Oleh Lysheha. This poet is the inspiration for another work of mine performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (“Et seul le roseau brille au soleil”), although the text is not quoted as such – I can, however, represent its tone. I wrote “Song of Maiden” for Marie-Annick (Béliveau, mezzo-soprano) and Corinne (René, percussionist) because they had performed in my first portrait on October 16. They were very open to other experiments, to contrasts, and for me it is fantastic that Marie-Annick can sing so well in Ukrainian.

PAN M 360: Let’s take the creation of the transcription “The Saxophone Quartet/While Flying Up”:

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: This is a transcription of a string quartet (2009) that I reworked a lot afterwards. For the saxophones, the foundation becomes multiphonic and sonorous. And I know that Quasar is more than familiar with the multiphonic approach. I see this work as an electronic piece played by an instrumental ensemble. I’m saying the same thing but in a completely different language.

PAN M 360: Let’s go for “Keep Silence”.

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: The pianist (Pamela Reimer) improvises while listening to recorded electronic parts and consulting graphic scores. Something then invites the pianist to exert his performative energy. It is a kind of concerto with orchestra, a powerful concerto, very active, very personal.

PAN M 360: There is also “Inner Voices of Violin” with dedication.

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH : This is a duet for violins (Lyne Allard and Hubert Brizard) with live and pre-recorded electronics. The work is dedicated to Ivry Getlis (1920-2018), a very important French-Israeli violinist whose Jewish parents were natives of the Ukraine. Having met him, I believe that he understood many things in Ukraine, including anti-Semitism. It was important for me to go there because the Jewish culture has always been part of the Ukrainian culture with the atrocities that we know – we know that tens of thousands of Jews were killed in Kyiv at the beginning of the 1940s. So it is my response to the great Ivry Getlis to seek out this inner voice of the violin.

PAN M 360: Your language is vast and your use of popular or classical traditions could not be more contemporary. Do you agree with that?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: When, for example, I use song or very little known folklore, I treat this material as a sound object as a notion of electroacoustics. My instrumental music is also situated in the spectral exploration. Now, in the context of my reality of war which becomes an artistic matter, it is a question of knowing when and how I can evoke it pertinently.

PAN M 360: Your background as a musicologist, instrumental composer or electroacousticist, including opera and symphonic music, makes you unique. How do you explain this wide range of interests?

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH: It comes from my experience with different communities, my relationship with different types of musicians. I’m also involved in the world of film, which requires real collaborative work. I dare to believe that I, as a Ukrainian, participate in the development of the world musical language. My position is in the middle of all this. One cannot say exactly what I do and that’s fine!

PROGRAM

  • Yuliya Zakharava: Oj Tap Song for voix, corps et percussions de la pianiste
  • Alla Zagaykevych: Inner Voices of Violin (dédicace à Irvy Getlis) for violons et électronique live et pré-enregistrée
  • Alla Zagaykevych: The Saxophone Quartet/While Flying Up , 2009 – 2022 for saxophone quartet  – premiere
  • Alla Zagaykevych: Song, to text by Oleh Lysheha , 2023 for voix de soprano, percussions et électronique  – premiere
  • Alla Zagaykevych: To keep silence for piano solo et électronique enregistré

PARTICIPANTS

INFOS + TICKETS FOR THIS CONCERT PRESENTED BY GROUPE VIVIER AT WILDER BUILDING, WEDNESDAY, 19H30

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