Interviews

Young pianist Felix Hong has been honored several times. In 2016, he was awarded first prize in the Canimex Canadian Music Competition. In 2017, he won the Prix d’Europe and was named to the CBC’s list of the 30 most promising classical musicians under the age of 30.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Felix Hong settled in Canada in 2012 to pursue his studies in music at McGill University. Afterwards, he did his master’s degree in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

For his recital, he intend to perform works by Alexander Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner and Nikolai Kapustin.

PAN M 360 : More precisely, where did your family settle in Canada before you attend McGill University?  

FELIX HONG : My family was settled in Montreal before I came to Canada! Prior to attending McGill, I have visited Montreal for a few summers as a child.

PAN M 360 : How came this inspiration for being a professional classical pianist?

FELIX HONG : When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to perform Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 with an orchestra. It is still one of the most memorable experiences on stage as I really felt the connection between me and the music. For quite some time afterwards, my biggest wish was to have the opportunity to play with an orchestra again in my life because I want to relive that moment. It eventually became my motivation to work hard on piano and pursue a career as a professional classical pianist.

PAN M 360 : When did you realize you had this gift to pursue?

FELIX HONG : I realized that I have the gift to pursue when I was able to develop my own interpretations on different works. I also realized that I have the determination to pursue when I can spend hours on the piano exploring different expression that I want to convey in a certain passage of music

PAN M 360 :Who were your key teachers in Canada?

FELIX HONG : I completed my Bachelor degree and Artist Diploma at McGill with Professor Ilya Poletaev. There is always so much knowledge that I can learn from him and his lessons are so inspiring!

PAN M 360 : Why have you chosen to pursue in UK?

FELIX HONG : For my master degree, I also applied to conservatories in the United States. The reason why I ended up choosing UK to study at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama was not only because of my professor Ronan O’Hora, but also the opportunities that Guildhall provides to their students are unmatchable. (such as masterclasses and chamber music studies…etc.)

PAN M 360 : Where are you based now?

FELIX HONG : Currently, I am going back and forth between Montreal and Toronto. Despite being away from time to time, I am still proud to call Montreal my hometown!

PAN M 360 : It’s hard to say from the musician himself but let’s try : how would you describe your pianistic characteristic at this stage of your development?

FELIX HONG : This is indeed a very hard question to answer! Personally, I believe one’s pianistic characteristic can be related (or partially related) to their personalities; since performing is essentially another method to communicate. As I am a rather shy person, I have always naturally felt more comfortable performing lyrical, exquisite pieces. However, I wanted more development in myself to be a more complete artist, thus this year I picked a very challenging Kapustin Sonata to work on, which probably has one of the most virtuosic and flashy last movement I have ever played.

PAN M 360 : What is your quest as an interpret?

FELIX HONG : My quest as an interpret is to ensure that my audiences receive what character am I trying to deliver while I am performing the music. This depends on different works: I could be telling a story, and trying to walk the audiences along as we move into contrasting sections, I could be also simply creating an aura, and bring my audiences into a certain mood.

PAN M 360 : About the program. You’ve chosen Russian (and Russian Ukrainian) composers. So you must have an appeal for them. How did it happen in your artistic life?

FELIX HONG : I have been introduced to Medtner by Ilya during my studies at McGill. I was fascinated by Medtner’s ability in storytelling in his pieces; the way how Medtner’s composition techniques can be so sophisticated, adventurous but keeping everything together tight is just marvelous. On the other hand,

Scriabin has always been one of my favorite composers; studying his music from his earlier periods all the way to “late Scriabin” is quite a journey as we see how Scriabin develops his unique “colors” and gesture of expression. His music in his “mid period” where he was wandering by the boundaries of tonality is exceptionally beautiful.

I actually discovered Kapustin’s music from Youtube’s “Autoplay Next Video”, as one of his concert etudes pops up. Unlike many classical composers who added “jazz elements” into their compositions, Kapustin’s music has a jazz essence, with a classical formation structure. With that, Kapustin maintains jazz harmonies throughout his work, I failed in love studying his music immediately because of the colorful , but at the same time ambiguous harmonies.

PAN M 360 : We have here 2 generations of Russian composers. Can you comment on this choice

FELIX HONG : While Scriabin and Medtner shares relatively more similar style in terms of music in the late romantic period. Kapustin’s music also inherited many Russian music’s texture, for example in his neighboring long linear writing. I made the choice to present 2 generations of Russian composers to showcase how contrasting in musical styles they can be but can also have similar voice and compositional techniques at the same time.

PAN M 360 : Please give us an appeal of each challenge and love for playing those  

  1. The 2 Mélodies oubliées from Medtner – beginning of 20th century:

FELIX HONG : Even though this is probably one of the less complicated Medtner’s sonata, it doesn’t erase the fact that the Sonata Tragica has many virtuosic challenges and the difficulty to present a complete big picture of this work. My love for playing this piece is in the coda: even though technical very demanding but there is nothing more satisfying than playing a coda written by Medtner!

  1. The 5 préludes and 2 Poèmes from Scriabin – end of 19th century:

FELIX HONG : Out of all the preludes set that Scriabin wrote, the Op.16 set has probably the thinnest texture while reserving a huge amount of emotion. My love for playing Scriabin music is it often has a huge amount of room to make creative rubato and explore different possibilities of voicings. 

  1. The Kapustin Sonata no 1, – end od 20th century, sometimes very close to modern jazz.

FELIX HONG : In Kapustin’s first piano sonata, the most challenging part is to execute the complexity of its rhythm: the upbeat gestures, syncopations and rests are very challenging for a classically trained pianist. I enjoy playing this work a lot not only because jazz harmonies are so satisfying to hear! Jazz music can really help us pianists work with two-hand coordination, and creating different colors.

PAN M 360 : What are the next steps for Felix Hong?

FELIX HONG : In the past two years, I was mainly focusing as a collaborative pianist at McGill. While taking a break this year, I am able to work on more solo repertoire and various projects. I am planning to have a program of more Kapustin’s sonatas ready later in the year, and I can’t wait to present them so that more people can enjoy this classical-jazz amalgamation!

FELIX HONG PERFORMS RUSSIAN MUSIC ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15TH, 12 PM, SALLE CLAUDE-LÉVEILLÉE, PLACE DES ARTS. THIS PROGRAM IS PRESENTED BY PRO MUSICA

TICKETS & INFOS HERE:

PROGRAM :

NIKOLAI MEDTNER, Mélodies oubliées, op.39, IV. Canzona Matinata
NIKOLAI MEDTNER, Mélodies oubliées, op.39, V. Sonata Tragica
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN, 5 Préludes, op.16
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN, Deux Poèmes, op.32
NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN, Sonate pour piano no. 1“Sonate fantaisie”, op.39

Forty years ago, Quebec composer Claude Vivier passed away, leaving behind him a body of work as fascinating as it was unheard of, whose lasting influence is still palpable in the music of our creators today. Held from March 7-17, 2023, the Semaine du Neuf, an event organized by Le Vivier, which is in its first edition this year, will pay tribute to this giant of Quebec music through a series of concerts dedicated to part of his production.

On Tuesday, March 14, 2023, it will be the Temps Fort Choir’s turn to take the stage at the Monument National to present Journal, a monumental composition with dizzying technical demands, rarely performed in public, and whose last performance in Montreal dates back to 2009.

PAN M 360 spoke with Pascal Germain-Bérardi, artistic director of this emerging ensemble, to learn more about the process that led to the existence of this project, the challenges of performing such a piece, and what the conductor and his group have learned from it.

PAN M 360: The Temps Fort Choir, of which you are the artistic director, is a growing musical ensemble. How did you come to be asked to perform Claude Vivier’s Journal for the Semaine du Neuf?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: This project was initiated by percussionist David Therrien Brongo. He and I already knew each other, as we were in the same metal band in the past. David is studying the music of many Quebec composers as part of his PhD. So he was aware of the fact that Journal had been performed here very little in Quebec. He also knew that I run a choir and that I like to do things that are off the beaten path—it is this aspect of our practice that has established the choir’s reputation and given us credibility with granting agencies. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Claude Vivier’s death this year, it seemed like the perfect time to tackle this ambitious program.

PAN M 360: Journal is a highly virtuosic piece where many forces come into play, both in terms of textures and sound planes. How does a conductor reconcile these technical challenges with the inherent intimacy of the work?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: As soon as I laid eyes on the score, I knew immediately that this was the most difficult work I had ever conducted. And yet I have conducted Stravinsky, Bartók and Penderecki during my university career! Several members of the choir and soloists have expressed similar opinions. We had to rehearse for a total of 35 hours to achieve our goal, which is much more than for a standard classical music concert, where the average is around 9 to 12 hours. But the difficulties are such that it was necessary to make this extra effort.

The first step in my work with the singers was to isolate the most complex parts of the work. This involved a lot of rhythmic solfeggio, on the one hand, but also a thorough analysis of each of the chords stated in the piece so that each performer could appreciate its distinctive colours. This step was particularly long and arduous. When one plays an instrument like the piano, the accuracy of the sound is not a concern in itself. You just have to press the key to hear the associated note. In singing, this is not possible. It is therefore necessary to integrate the chords one by one in their respective context in order to better feel them and to attack them with confidence during the performance. Fortunately, Vivier’s harmonic language is very intelligible. I also allowed the singers to bring a tuning fork on stage for him to use in case of insecurity. This is not something I usually do, but in the context of a concert, it seemed justified, if only to ensure the well-being of everyone.

PAN M 360: This desire to think outside the box is one of the first things one reads about your ensemble on its website. There are also references to the desire to share powerful moments, the excitement of the ritual of passage, the miracle of a performance, and even music as a survival instinct. In short: a visceral experience.

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: Yes, my relationship to music is visceral, whether we’re talking about metal or punk rock, but that’s true for any style where there’s a very strong energy. Classical music is no exception to this type of intensity—think of Beethoven’s ability to break down walls and conventions, Bruckner’s grandiose, almost cosmic music, the death metal nature of some of Shostakovich’s works, or the tribal nature of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The concert is for me a privileged moment to share the fruit of our work with the public. It gives us the opportunity to broaden their horizons, to make them experience strong emotions, to teach them something about themselves and to elevate them while giving them a good time. These aspects are fundamental to me and guide every thought I have before producing a concert.

In the case of Journal it is a little different, because its intensity is found less in the raw energy that emanates from it than in the depth of the affects from which Vivier draws his inspiration. The work is divided into four sections: childhood, love, death and after death. Each of these sections is filled with moments of fragility. The love sequence, for example, explores the abandonment of one’s first great love, that moment when one is convinced that one has found in the other the part that completes one. It also deals with the feeling of love that is confused with sexual attraction, the countless questions that its pursuit can generate, as well as the whirlwind of panic that can take hold of us when it suddenly leaves us and we feel as if we have lost it forever.

Human reflection often takes the form of thoughts that unfold simultaneously on different planes. Then, without warning, a fixed and latent idea comes to take all the place, the space of an instant, then declines in a new tree of ideas. Vivier, I believe, translates well this tumultuous cerebral activity. It is the accumulation of these layers and the way they are treated that gives the work its great intensity. It is also in this sense that I approached my work with the singers. Once the technical challenges were overcome, I focused on the meaning and scope of these affects, and on the way they are embodied in the score. Sometimes a piano subito can mean more than just a gentle dynamic. It can also be a symbol of complete uncertainty.

PAN M 360: After all those hours spent working hard to give shape to these complex ideas and crossing the line between life and death a thousand times over through Vivier’s work: what have you learned and how has the group grown from it?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: Some of the singers have told me that their rhythmic solfeggio is now going to “wipe” (laughs). Others have mentioned that the complexity of Journal has allowed them to put into perspective certain works of the repertoire to which they have been exposed. They also feel a great deal of pride in being part of such a special event. But more than that, there is a strong sense of accomplishment. And that’s something I look for in my projects and value greatly.

Forty years ago, Quebec composer Claude Vivier passed away, leaving behind him a body of work as fascinating as it was unheard of, whose lasting influence is still palpable in the music of our creators today. Held from March 7-17, 2023, the Semaine du Neuf, an event organized by Le Vivier, which is in its first edition this year, will pay tribute to this giant of Quebec music through a series of concerts dedicated to part of his production.

On Tuesday, March 14, 2023, it will be the Temps Fort Choir’s turn to take the stage at the Monument National to present Journal, a monumental composition with dizzying technical demands, rarely performed in public, and whose last performance in Montreal dates back to 2009.

PAN M 360 spoke with Pascal Germain-Bérardi, artistic director of this emerging ensemble, to learn more about the process that led to the existence of this project, the challenges of performing such a piece, and what the conductor and his group have learned from it.

PAN M 360: The Temps Fort Choir, of which you are the artistic director, is a growing musical ensemble. How did you come to be asked to perform Claude Vivier’s Journal for the Semaine du Neuf?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: This project was initiated by percussionist David Therrien Brongo. He and I already knew each other, as we were in the same metal band in the past. David is studying the music of many Quebec composers as part of his PhD. So he was aware of the fact that Journal had been performed here very little in Quebec. He also knew that I run a choir and that I like to do things that are off the beaten path—it is this aspect of our practice that has established the choir’s reputation and given us credibility with granting agencies. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Claude Vivier’s death this year, it seemed like the perfect time to tackle this ambitious program.

PAN M 360: Journal is a highly virtuosic piece where many forces come into play, both in terms of textures and sound planes. How does a conductor reconcile these technical challenges with the inherent intimacy of the work?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: As soon as I laid eyes on the score, I knew immediately that this was the most difficult work I had ever conducted. And yet I have conducted Stravinsky, Bartók and Penderecki during my university career! Several members of the choir and soloists have expressed similar opinions. We had to rehearse for a total of 35 hours to achieve our goal, which is much more than for a standard classical music concert, where the average is around 9 to 12 hours. But the difficulties are such that it was necessary to make this extra effort.

The first step in my work with the singers was to isolate the most complex parts of the work. This involved a lot of rhythmic solfeggio, on the one hand, but also a thorough analysis of each of the chords stated in the piece so that each performer could appreciate its distinctive colours. This step was particularly long and arduous. When one plays an instrument like the piano, the accuracy of the sound is not a concern in itself. You just have to press the key to hear the associated note. In singing, this is not possible. It is therefore necessary to integrate the chords one by one in their respective context in order to better feel them and to attack them with confidence during the performance. Fortunately, Vivier’s harmonic language is very intelligible. I also allowed the singers to bring a tuning fork on stage for him to use in case of insecurity. This is not something I usually do, but in the context of a concert, it seemed justified, if only to ensure the well-being of everyone.

PAN M 360: This desire to think outside the box is one of the first things one reads about your ensemble on its website. There are also references to the desire to share powerful moments, the excitement of the ritual of passage, the miracle of a performance, and even music as a survival instinct. In short: a visceral experience.

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: Yes, my relationship to music is visceral, whether we’re talking about metal or punk rock, but that’s true for any style where there’s a very strong energy. Classical music is no exception to this type of intensity—think of Beethoven’s ability to break down walls and conventions, Bruckner’s grandiose, almost cosmic music, the death metal nature of some of Shostakovich’s works, or the tribal nature of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The concert is for me a privileged moment to share the fruit of our work with the public. It gives us the opportunity to broaden their horizons, to make them experience strong emotions, to teach them something about themselves and to elevate them while giving them a good time. These aspects are fundamental to me and guide every thought I have before producing a concert.

In the case of Journal it is a little different, because its intensity is found less in the raw energy that emanates from it than in the depth of the affects from which Vivier draws his inspiration. The work is divided into four sections: childhood, love, death and after death. Each of these sections is filled with moments of fragility. The love sequence, for example, explores the abandonment of one’s first great love, that moment when one is convinced that one has found in the other the part that completes one. It also deals with the feeling of love that is confused with sexual attraction, the countless questions that its pursuit can generate, as well as the whirlwind of panic that can take hold of us when it suddenly leaves us and we feel as if we have lost it forever.

Human reflection often takes the form of thoughts that unfold simultaneously on different planes. Then, without warning, a fixed and latent idea comes to take all the place, the space of an instant, then declines in a new tree of ideas. Vivier, I believe, translates well this tumultuous cerebral activity. It is the accumulation of these layers and the way they are treated that gives the work its great intensity. It is also in this sense that I approached my work with the singers. Once the technical challenges were overcome, I focused on the meaning and scope of these affects, and on the way they are embodied in the score. Sometimes a piano subito can mean more than just a gentle dynamic. It can also be a symbol of complete uncertainty.

PAN M 360: After all those hours spent working hard to give shape to these complex ideas and crossing the line between life and death a thousand times over through Vivier’s work: what have you learned and how has the group grown from it?

PASCAL GERMAIN-BÉRARDI: Some of the singers have told me that their rhythmic solfeggio is now going to “wipe” (laughs). Others have mentioned that the complexity of Journal has allowed them to put into perspective certain works of the repertoire to which they have been exposed. They also feel a great deal of pride in being part of such a special event. But more than that, there is a strong sense of accomplishment. And that’s something I look for in my projects and value greatly.

As part of the Semaine du Neuf, which pays tribute to Claude Vivier and other composers of the Événements du Neuf (1979-1988), Groupe Le Vivier presents a multidisciplinary concert: The Lonely Child Project.

Led by soprano Stacie Dunlop, artists Angola Murdoch (aerial dance), Holly Treddenick (aerial dance) and the Lonely Child Collective revisit three of the composer’s works in a world premiere concert where song, circus, dance and music meet in a spectacular staging.

PAN M 360 spoke with David Therrien-Brongo, percussionist, teacher and researcher who will accompany the artists of the concert with the Quatuor Bozzini, to discuss his involvement in the project, but also the music of Claude Vivier in general.

PAN M 360: Could you tell us the genesis of the Lonely Child project?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: This project came from Stacie Dunlop. I came into the project afterwards because she wanted to integrate choreography into Claude Vivier’s Cinq chansons pour percussions. When they found out I was playing it, because it’s not a piece that’s performed very often and I had the instruments to do it, they contacted me instead of using a recording.

PAN M 360: It was the fact that you are playing this piece as part of your doctoral studies that piqued their interest.

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: Right. It’s a play I’ve been doing for a while. I had done a re-orchestration of it where instead of using Indonesian gongs I used marimbas, because I didn’t have the gongs for it. I played it a few years ago in Spain and in the final of the Prix d’Europe in Montreal. In the meantime, I have taken steps to acquire the original instruments that Vivier used for the creation of the work, those of Toronto-based percussionist David Kent. I will be performing the piece at my final recital in May and I have also recorded the piece for an album to be released next summer.

PAN M 360: Lonely Child is a landmark piece by Claude Vivier that has some significance because it was inspired by spectral music. Can you tell us a bit more about this paradigm shift in his writing?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: Claude Vivier’s music, especially Lonely Child, Orion, Wo bist du Licht! is marked – and this I think is unique to him – by a kind of timbral spectralism. So it’s not just taking a note and playing with its harmonic spectrum, but playing with the timbre. For example with Lonely Child, everything is written around the sound of the rin (Japanese bell) from which he will take the timbre, which is not necessarily pure, to write his harmony. Orion is the same thing where he will base himself on the sounds of certain Balinese, Javanese and Thai gongs. So his harmonic writing is mainly based on percussion. This is what he tries to reproduce, especially in imposing chords that imitate the sound of a gong.

PAN M 360: Do you think Claude Vivier’s music lends itself well to the circus art form?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: I think so. I think it’s really interesting, especially for the Five Songs. They are very poetic and meditative pieces at times. The piece sections five moments a time in the day or in daily life. Each little movement really has its own personality that is very adaptable to dance or different visual arts.

PAN M 360: As a musician, does working with other artists require you to adapt to their playing and parameters or do they have to adapt to the parameters of the music? What is the creative process involved in co-creations like this where you pair two art forms?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: Well, first of all, we definitely work differently. We learn our music for the concert, but once it’s ready, it’s ready, whereas those who have choreographies to prepare need the music beforehand. So we can’t put the show together at the same pace. The music has to be ready for the choreographers to work and then we put it all together. For example, I was asked to work with my recorded version, but my recording is not yet ready, so I worked with another recording that I was inspired by. So, for sure, there will be some work to do with the dancer to adapt certain moments where for example I will make certain organ points longer or shorter, depending on what the choreography brings, and at other moments, it will be maybe up to Holly [Treddenick] to adapt to what I do. The important thing, and this is for any multidisciplinary collaboration, is to understand the issues of the other art form and adapt to each other.

PAN M 360: Can we see in this approach a kind of total work of art (gesamptkuntswerk), as Richard Wagner saw it, that is to say a form of synthesis of all art forms to create something that captivates the public?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: Yes, absolutely. And even though Vivier’s music, especially Five Songs, was not written with that intention, I think there are many works by Vivier, and his corpus in general, that are thought of that way. If only because he wrote his librettos himself, or because his music was inspired a lot by Balinese music, but also – and this is less talked about – by the music of the Far East, of Thailand, of Japan and of the Noh theater. There is always a part of theatricality in his music, even if beyond the types of movements, there are no real indications in the score.

But, if we rely on other works he wrote around the same time, notably Journal, a piece for choir, four soloists and percussionist, which I will perform in another concert with the Temps Fort Choir, is a kind of non-religious oratorio, with a story, which is not linear. The percussionist must also take part in the action. I have to talk, interact with the soloists as well. So, for the Lonely Child Project, even though the works were not thought of as a total work of art, it lends itself well to that.

PAN M 360: To conclude, what place does Claude Vivier occupy in the Quebec music world according to you?

DAVID THERRIEN-BRONGO: He does not occupy the place which is due to him. In my opinion, he is the greatest Quebec and Canadian composer. His music is unique. It’s true that you can say that about many composers, you can say that about Stockhausen, for example, to whom he was also close. But Vivier, his music is above all accessible without being easy. And this is not given to everyone.

It is not a music which, when you listen to it, is intellectual and where there are barriers. There is a naivety in the perception of his music, even if it is thoughtful and difficult to play. It’s true that contemporary “classical” music is always a bit of a poor relation in the debates around contemporary arts, but his name should be heard and played more.

In music, his name, and that of Gille Tremblay who was his teacher, are the equivalent of what Michel Tremblay is to literature. Even if he did not teach, Vivier has marked all the composers after him and all the performers who have made contemporary music; we owe him a lot for what he brought.

Presented in the context of the Semaine du Neuf, The Lonely Child Project is performed at Monument National, 9PM, Thursday March 9th. The show will be preceded by a panel led by singer Marie-Annick Béliveau at 6 PM and projections by Michael Greyeyes at 7PM.

INFO & TICKETS HERE

PROGRAM

Claude Vivier : Cinq chansons, 1980 for  percussion

Claude Vivier : Hymnen an die Nacht, 1975 (arr. de Scott Good) for voice and string quartet

Claude Vivier : Lonely Child, 1980 (arr. de Scott Good) for voice in real time, pre-recorded instruments préenregistrés and two aerial dancers

PARTICIPANTS

Stacie Dunlop (voice)

Angola Murdoch (aerial dance)

Holly Treddenick (aerial dance) 

David Therrien-Brongo (percussion)

Quatuor Bozzini

Flutist Marie-Hélène Breault and pianist Pamela Reimer pays tribute to three founding Canadian composers of the “Events of the Nine” that were founding rituals of Montreal composers from the end of the Seventies through the end ot the Eighties:  the late Claude Vivier, John Rea and José Evangelista who died at the beginning of this year.

Mes Hommages II is a natural continuation to “Mes Hommages”, a recording put out in March 2020 by Breault and Reimer. The duo had previously performed this repertoire in January 2016 at SMCQ, in the context of the Tribute Series and concluded in 2019 (Collection QB).

This project is still alive and kicking, we will get a new version with new arrangements for flute and piano – made by the musicians – of key works of the Quebec repertoire, namely “Las Meninas”and “Portrait of a Man in Elysian Fields” by John Rea,  “Monodías españolas and Nuevas monodías españolas” by José Evangelista, “Piece for Flute and Piano and Pianoforte” by Claude Vivier.

Pamela Reimer  pursues a diverse performing career as soloist and collaborator, playing traditional and contemporary repertoire. She has studied with Tom Plaunt, Louis-Philippe Pelletier, Gyorgy Sebok, Lorraine Vaillancourt and  Frederic Rzewski. Her career led her performing across Canada but also USA,  Scotland, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland. 

Invited by  PAN M 360 to tell its readers more about this program,answers generously to our questions.

PAN M 360: First, excuse our ignorance but we aknowledge that you and Marie-Hélène perform together for quite a while.

PAMELA REIMER: No problem ! We can’t know everything! And yes, it’s been 10 years so we’re a longtime team. This is our second tribute concert.In 2016, we did our first tribute tribute to five different Quebec composers John Rea, José Evangelista, Claude Vivier, Ana Sokolovic and Gilles Tremblay. We later did a double disc and then we discovered that we really liked to arrange music. We’ve taken pieces of John Rea and José Evangelista originally written for piano and we’ve arranged them for flute and piano.  So we had their permission, and they were very pleased that we’re doing this. So we haven’t changed anything like structural pieces, but we’ve added flutes. Sometimes Marie-Hélène plays bass flute, alto flute, piccolo. We’ve made them just even more colorful than they are already. This time however, we also added two pieces by Vivier that are not our arrangements. One is for flute and piano and one is for piano solo, in this context of hommage.

PAN M 360: So those arrangements you did for flute and piano are transcriptions of the original charts. Reduction in some cases ?

PAMELA REIMER: Well, the piano part is not very different from the original. But sometimes we’ve taken melodies that happened in the piano, and we’ve put them into the flute parts, or we’ve added countermelodies but we would play on top of the piano part. And sometimes it’s really just a color, a different sound. Sometimes it’s, in some of the slower pieces, I’ll play the piece and she just makes like whistle sounds or she pulls into the flute and makes interesting sounds to complement the music or to bring out the character of the music.

PAN M 360: Sounds good ! So it must be a lot of fun but also a lot of work!

PAMELA REIMER :  It feels very personal !

PAN M 360: How would you describe your artistic relationship with Marie-Hélène ? 

PAMELA REIMER: Well, I think that’s actually one of our strengths is that we’re both like incredible listeners, where we can be soloists when we need to, but we’re, we’re very sensitive to each other’s sound.  And because we’ve worked together for so long, we were almost in a place where we don’t have to cue each other anymore. We just know.

PAN M 360:  And so is it the first time both of you perform this specific repertoire ?

PAMELA REIMER : It’s the first time we’re playing those arrangements of the Evangelista and Rea pieces and we’ve recorded the Vivier’s before.

PAN M 360: Even if you illustrate the work of the three composers, there is a little emphasis on Vivier’s music because this whole Semaine du Neuf is basically a tribute to him. Since when do you know his body of work ?

PAMELA REIMER : I studied piano at McGill, notably with Louis-Philippe Pelletier who premiered many of Vivier’s works. Among these pieces, he recorded “Shiraz” which I will be playing next week with Sixtrum, the percussion sextet – on March 16th at the Monument National. Louis-Philippe told me that when Vivier was writing “Shiraz”, he would call him up in the middle of the night., saying, I found this incredible chord, I found this incredible harmony, like he was just always searching, searching for these new ideas and new harmonies. So I feel like it’s part of my own heritage, just because I studied with Louis-Philippe. With Paramaribo, by the way, I will be part of the ensemble to perform another piece by Vivier that Louis-Philippe created, called “Prolifération” – on Friday, March 17, at the Conservatoire de Montréal. 

PAN M 360: What is the challenge of playing piano with the music of Vivier? Because we don’t see him as a piano music composer. 

PAMELA REIMER:  He was an extravert, he wanted to communicate. In his music, we can hear this personality. In the piano music, he tries to work out the extremes of the piano like very, very loud, very, very quiet. Within those dynamics, he also is working with different characters. For example, when it’s  very quiet, it also can sound very sensual and very intimate. And when it’s loud, it can be quite violent, very aggressive. So that’s what he pushed in the technique of the piano with the extremes. And it’s fascinating to work on it because those changes are very, very sudden.

PAN M 360: Well what you are describing is in all his craft. Sometimes very loud and violent, sometimes very sensual and smooth, and enlightening. He was always traveling between the two poles.

PAMELA REIMER: And there’s not so many composers who are able to do that successfully, I think.

PAN M 360: And there was no fracture between the past and the present. He was able to welcome some music that a lot of composers of his generation and the previous one, were rejecting.
PAMELA REIMER: It’s interesting, as I’ve been really diving into his music, I can hear into it, I know how it feels to play it. I can feel Bartok, I can feel Liszt, I can feel all the past in there and it’s a new language. It’s quite amazing.

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SEMAINE DU NEUF, THE PROCRAM HOMMAGE II IS PERFORMED BY MARIE-HÉLÈNE BREAULT AND PAMELA REIMER ON WEDNESDAY MARCH 8TH, CONSERVATOIRE DE MUSIQUE DE MONTRÉAL, 7H30 PM

INFOS & TICKETS HERE

PROGRAM

PARTICIPANTS

PAN M 360: Could you tell me about the recording process of Earth Then Air and the atmosphere working in Banff Centre?

Alexia Avina: It was ideal. We met every day in the studio and wrote music. I think we did really create a song pretty much every day, our work ethic was reciprocal, but more than that we were just having fun and vibing. We had plenty of time to take in the rest of the center as well. 

PAN M 360: There are so many instruments on this record, it’s hard to picture just the two of you playing everything?

Alexia Avina: We did work more collaboratively on this record than our previous releases, sharing that load. Nick played one of the guitar parts, I played some bits on the piano and vibraphone. 

PAN M 360: The album is very ambient but also dreamy in the lyrics, was this the idea to go for from day one?

Alexia Avina: I think that’s just what happens organically when our energies meet as songwriters. It wasn’t a specific intention. I think the only clear intentions were to write music that was more organic than purely electronic, and to have lyrics that were uplifting and universal. 

PAN M 360: Have you been able to play the album live at all? They must be stripped back versions of the songs?

Alexia Avina: We have been. The songs are slightly stripped back in certain ways, sure, but I think we do a good job of still making it sound full as we use samples, etc. 

PAN M 360: What kind of music were you listening to for not only inspiration but background while working on the album?

Alexia Avina: I don’t think we were listening to music as a part of the process of creating the record at this time. I can’t really recall what I was listening to, only that I recorded a cover of Linger at the same time, so I probably was listening to sappy shoegazy love songs. 



PAN M 360: Were you able to take in the nature around Banff? Go on hikes or anything like that? 

Alexia Avina: Definitely. We went on a few hikes. The scenery is unreal, the kind where it’s too much for your brain to comprehend the level of magnitude and power. 

PAN M 360: The track order seems very important, as tracks kind of bleed into one another. Did it take awhile to come up with the order?

Alexia Avina We did have a few different iterations of tracklisting and in the end this is the one we landed on. The songs are from several years back, so I think coming up with an order was an exercise in itself, as it kind of felt like we were approaching the collections of songs with a new energy. 

PAN M 360: Where did the title Earth Then Air come from?

Alexia Avina: Our previous work had been quite swirly and ethereal and we wanted to create something more grounded through incorporating acoustic instruments. The title kind of points to that relational shift in our work. 

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

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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

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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

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