The COVID hit the Molinari Quartet just before Christmas, so much so that the ensemble had to reschedule this rich program entitled Acoustic Exploration.
Made up of the most daring and avant-garde modern and contemporary works, the menu proposed next Wednesday calls upon the genius of the Polish Krzysztof Penderecki, the Hungarian Belà Bartok, the Romanian (of Greek background) Iannis Xenakis, whose 100th birthday was in 2022, but also the singular proposals of composers born at the gates of the Orient, namely the Iranian Showan Tavakol and the Azeri Franghiz Ali-Zadeh.
First violinist, artistic director and founder of the Molinari Quartet, Olga Ranzenhofer provides us with some insight into these works before their performance, scheduled for January 18, 7:30 p.m., at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal.
PAN M 360: We discussed this program very briefly last September in the context of the Molinari Quartet’s entire season, let’s be more specific this time with the program Exploration sonore / Acoustic Exploration.
OLGA RANZENHOFER: When I chose the theme Sound Odyssey/ Odyssée sonore (performed last fall), I had already forgotten that I had previously found the title Acoustic Exploration/ Exploration sonore (laughs). But there is a common thread between the two programs, Odissey & Exploration, because some music is played in each. So we start the concert with an exploratory work by Penderecki, his Quartet No.1 composed in the 60s. The “sonorism”, an avant-garde tendency in Poland, was in full swing at that time. It was not necessary about making real notes, it was completely free! So it’s great noise… you tap your left hand on the strings, on the instrument, there are col legnos, pizzicatos and other effects. It’s a very powerful work that begins with noise and is then punctuated by these pizzicatos that grow in size. So there is a variety of proposals in a solid structure.
PAN M 360: So this was at the peak of Penderecki’s experimental period!
OLGA RANZENHOFER: Kind of, and it must be said that his score is very beautiful to watch, you have to obey unconventional signs and that creates a kind of tension in the performers. They have to play intensely while deciphering. The execution is not thought notated in bars but in seconds, there is a time line and every 5 seconds. Within these sequences, a vertical line separates each second and the notes fit in these intervals illustrated by these lines. You may then have to play at the beginning, middle or end of this interval. And there is a lot of randomness, a lot of freedom in the interpretation. As much as the score is very precise in time, there is a lot of leeway in the execution. We really appreciate this piece that was originally conceived for the LaSalle Quartet and that we also recorded.
PAN M 360: There is no easy way out, since you have chosen Xenakis’ “Ergma” to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth – on May 29, to be precise.
OLGA RANZENHOFER: We start with Penderecki’s sonorism and then move on to Xenakis, whose work is incredibly dense. Sometimes it sounds like we’re an octet! The instruments often play two notes at a time, often sevenths. It is a block of sound that demands great intensity from its performers. The rhythm is slow, peppered with plated chords. Really interesting, but not easy to play this Xenakis! In any case, it is a good introduction to this “mono-block” work, which includes a viola solo that plays fortissimo while the others play piano and make small interventions. Towards the end, we each play a note, a sort of lightening before we resume the octet effect. It creates a kind of uneasiness haha! A whole course.
PAN M 360: Then we move to the East, more precisely to Iran, with this composer who has settled in Montreal for his graduate studies.
OLGA RANZENHOFER: Showan Tavakol is doing his doctorate in composition in Montreal with Ana Sokolovic, and has composed for us a piece that he entitled Modal Hologram in several movements. From him, we propose this “Creation for quartet and kamancheh”. Showan, it must be said, is a virtuoso of this Persian hurdy-gurdy, played vertically. The work is thus conceived for quartet and kamancheh – two movements are planned with the soloist and the others for quartet alone. We explore Iranian modal music, which includes quarter tones or even two-thirds tones. We try to change our sound to meet the composer’s goal of merging his own traditions with contemporary Western music.
PAN M 360: From Iran we go to Azerbaijan.
OLGA RANZENHOFER: The work of the composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh was written for Kronos Quartet, shortly after the tragic death of the son of the violinist David Harrington – musical director of the Kronos. It is more Western writing than that of her colleague, but it manages to bridge the gap between Western music and that of the desert territories of Azerbaijan. In this spirit, the work is entitled “Oasis”, which the composer herself describes as a place of calm, rest, refuge. The piece includes a recording with sounds of water drops, a song of the” gazelles of love”, of Iranian inspiration… I can hear the sound of caravans in the desert, I can perceive a human hubbub as we approach the oasis. And then we get there, aaaah! I also must say that it can have a double meaning, in the context of the deadly tragedy that occurred during the composition. The drops of water can also be tears…
PAN M 360: And we conclude with Bartok, his fantastic String Quartet No.3.
OLGA RANZENHOFER: We play recent works in this program: 1960, 1994, 2022 and… 1927! This piece by Bartok is of great modernity, it is the string quartet where he went the furthest in his research, with very particular effects for the time, and a very tight counterpoint. The second part arrives at the moment of the recapitulation of the first, this one arrives just before the recapitulation of the 2nd and so on. Everything is interwoven, tightly knit, it’s really great. A great sound exploration in 1927. So it will be a beautiful concert!
PROGRAM :
Krzysztof Penderecki: Quartet No. 1
Iannis Xenakis : Ergma
Showan Tavakol: Creation for Quartet and Kamancheh
An interdisciplinary artist, Jean Grünewald leads several projects simultaneously. Under his Christian name, he explores experimental and acoustic sounds through sound installations. With the alias Ottoman Grüw, he is DJ, producer and artistic director of the committed techno compilations Dance Across Borders. The concept ? Bring together local and international artists to raise funds which are donated to the association Solidarité sans frontières. The six tracks of volume 3 explore breakbeat, electronica, acid or trance.
PAN M 360: Tell us about the genesis of the Dance Across Borders project.
Ottoman Grüw : The project started on the first of September of the pandemic, in 2020. With Louis Paulhus of the late Mes Enceintes Font Défaut (MEFD) we decided to launch this compilation project to recreate a form of connection, a platform to put in before the artists of the local Montreal scene and the different political values that go with it. This compilation is like a moment when you can live with other people, even people you don’t know.
PAN M 360: Unlike the first two volumes, you were able to bring this third compilation to life in the evening as soon as it was released…
Ottoman Grüw : Yes, we had a launch party in a Montreal church basement that is managed by an organization, the Milton Park Food Bank. It is one of the neighborhoods in Montreal where there is the most homelessness, especially among the Aboriginal population. The people running it are also connected to the industrial gothic punk scene. They organize events from time to time to raise funds. The money raised during the evening was donated half to the Food Bank and half to Solidarité sans frontières, which is the organization with which the compilations were born.
PAN M 360: This choice to publish compilations registered in charities, when was it made?
Ottoman Grüw : Right from the start. It was also a way to raise certain political issues related to this kind of music that have always been present. Sometimes we arrive in environments where they are a little less so, with this project it was to put them forward.
PAN M 360: As a rave participant, have you experienced any moments that you perceive as political or politicized?
Ottoman Grüw : I have memories that go back to the first raves I attended when I was 17 in Paris. The somewhat striking moments were those when I was confronted with realities other than my own. The space to live together that is built during a rave makes it possible to bear witness to the existence of other people and therefore to tell oneself that despite the differences, we manage to live together.
PAN M 360: Are there any social causes to which you are particularly sensitive?
Ottoman Grüw : Of course they are all somewhat intertwined. We hear “end of the month, end of the world, same fight”, it resonates. Struggles that I have been sensitive to, whether through the friends I have made, the places in which I have been able to live or that I have been able to visit, these are migration issues, border issues and the political and economic infrastructure behind it. Whether it’s the coast guard boats in the Mediterranean, the wall in the Gaza Strip, or the wall as the US-Mexico border. The list is long.
PAN M 360: What is your artistic vision for a compilation exercise like this?
Ottoman Grüw : Whether for this volume or for the previous ones, it can be more or less eclectic, but there is still a guiding thread, in my opinion. For this volume, there were artists from Vienna and Tokyo. It’s interesting because they are artists who belong to different scenes. They can come from the techno rave scene, from the gothic punk industrial scene, as there are some who are more from bass music, breakbeat, jungle, etc. And this convergence works very well.
PAN M 360: Several local, one-off and long-term projects have a charitable dimension (rave events at the SAT in March 2022, MFC Records compilations). In your opinion, what place does the charity have in the Montreal electronic scene?
Ottoman Grüw : I would say that in that environment, in Montreal, there is still a political culture associated with it, which is not necessarily the case everywhere. With the size and density of the city, I also have the impression that it echoes. We often meet the same people at events so perhaps the initiatives that go in the direction of charity have a ricochet effect.
Turbine is the association of three French DJs and producers based in Montreal, determined to shake up the codes of scratch music with a project at the crossroads of EDM and the performative dimension of turntablism.
Both the French and American scratch music traditions have their roots in hip-hop culture and the use of turntables as a musical instrument. In the United States, scratch music played an important role in the early development of hip-hop and in the emergence of other electronic music genres, such as techno and house.
In France, scratch music has also been an important part of the electronic music scene, but it has evolved differently. It is sometimes seen as more closely related to the club scene, influenced by genres such as drum and bass, funk and jazz, which has given it a distinct sound and flavor, as exemplified by the groups Chinese Man and C2C. Turbine wishes to differentiate itself from this heritage by exploring sounds belonging to bass music.
The trio competed against the best turntablists in the world at the DMC 2022 Championship a few months ago and came in fourth place, an excellent performance for an emerging group. PAN M 360 took the opportunity to interview Benjamin, Nico and Tony as they have just self-produced their first single, Warm Up, and are in the middle of preparing a live show for 2023.
PAN M 360: Can you introduce yourself in a few words and your role in the group?
Benjamin: I started djing at 17. I quickly got into hip-hop production and it quickly deviated to drum and bass, then to electro. I got really passionate about production, mixing and sound design techniques. Eight years ago, I arrived in Montreal as a video game sound designer. My role in the band is mainly to produce.
Nico: Nico or DJ Noyl, I don’t produce at all or very little, I’m more of a hip-hop DJ by training, then I also knew electro afterwards. Now my career is a mix of DJing and scratching with bands or collectives. The year before the covid more than half of my gigs were scratching in shows.
Tony: In the band, I do a lot of the technical stuff and make sure everything works. I do scratch thanks to Benjamin who showed me that about 20 years ago and when I came to Montreal about 10 years ago, he joined me. Otherwise professionally I am a sound designer, and I do sound editing.
PAN M 360: Benjamin and Tony, you have known each other for a long time. Nico, how did you come into the equation?
Nico: That’s a good question. I guess by scratching, we must have crossed paths at events.
PAN M 360: Precisely, what can you tell me about the scratch scene in Montreal, what are the important places?
Nicolas: There are quite a few scratchers. There are monthly events with a live band and then like four or five turntables and then you can go scratching open decks in a bar. It’s a small platform for everyone. There’s pretty much every level. The problem is that the scratch community doesn’t have a lot of spaces to meet. There are a few events. We find scratch music in Franco fest, because Monzo, who manages that, he is a bit plugged anyway. So during the all-nighter, he has a spot during the Franco, he has a spot and a kind of hip-hop table on Sainte-Catherine street. Otherwise there was the Killa Jewel concert at Ausgang. Except for the West Shefford, which offers us a place every Sunday, there are not so many fixed events or big parties like in the old days when I arrived.
Benjamin: The 180g used to host parties too sometimes.
PAN M 360: In the context, what pushed you to create the Turbine project?
Nico: The desire! And then there is a lack. It’s a memory of a Facebook status from 10 years ago that started the thing that came back on my wall where I said, it’s weird, there is no scratch. And then I sent a message to Benjamin and Tony. Two days later, we had a beer, two days later, we were in rehearsal. It was done quite quickly.
PAN M 360: How does your creative process work?
Tony: It’s not a very traditional creative process compared to a rock or rap band where you come up with an instrumental version, lyrics, you sing, you record, it makes a single, then you pile up singles, it makes an album. It’s more complicated in the sense that we start by producing tracks, we redistribute the music to reappropriate it to be able to play it, so that it’s pleasant to listen to and to see. The goal of the project, the vision of the project, it is, it is to make something, a true show in live, it is what is rather powerful. And it’s nice to watch a show, you know, not just 3 guys pushing records.
Nico: Except for the first single “Warm Up” that we produced together, for the moment all the productions we use are Benjamin’s. We need to put together an hour of music. We need to put together an hour of live music pretty quickly and as Tony says, it’s a very slow process. We have to produce, do triple exports to share them the first time; re-export them to put them on vinyl, because we have to place the sounds in certain places to be able to scratch them. After that, we have to work dozens and dozens of times so that it fits and you can’t hear the scratches too much. It’s a lot of work.
PAN M 360: Is it particular to want to make scratch music without letting you hear the characteristic sounds of scratching (attacks, etc.)?
Tony: The goal of the game is to keep it musical, danceable and accessible and listenable.
Nico: Yes, it should not be scratched. I had Skills, who is the DMC world champion, listen to our single “Warm Up.” He told me – even though he is scratch champion – “there is too much scratch”. Because he understood the intention we had, which was to make a hyper dancing thing, to listen to in your living room, but the most possible to dance. So we try not to do too much or to be as musical as possible with the scratch, not to be too technical.
PAN M 360: Did you adopt the same approach for the DMC World Championship 2022 in which you participated and won the 4th place?
Nico: The DMC you can spread a little more. But the same thing if you put too much… Besides you have four judges watching you and they will see the mistakes, it is better to do less. Our 6 min DMC is our 25 min compressed show. We adapted it to be more visual, that’s why we change more decks, we move around. It was very electronic for the DMC what we did anyway, too much maybe. The intention was to show our tracks and I think there are a lot of people who didn’t understand that they were our tracks. After that it was good publicity, it’s good on the resume, we represented Canada at the world championship, so it’s still cool!
Beginning and ending with a similar aria, the famous variations were written by Johann Sebastian Bach for his pupil Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who was to play them for the insomniac Count Herman Karl von Keyserling in order to soothe him into a restful sleep.
Nearly three centuries after their composition, the Goldberg Variations are among the most frequently performed works for the keyboard. A recent phenomenal performance was given by the great Hungarian pianist András Schiff at the Bach Festival last October at the Maison Symphonique.
Let us now embrace the orchestral extrapolation of this fantastic work, another demonstration of JSB’s contrapuntal genius. So ? Do JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations retain their intrinsic qualities when adapted for instruments other than early keyboards, organ or piano?
This question has already been answered: thanks to its founder and original maestro Bernard Labadie, Les Violons du Roy have been eloquently demonstrating this since 1999. And they’re doing it once again this Sunday at the Bach Festival with maestro Nicolas Ellis, who has just been appointed Principal Guest Conductor for a three-year period beginning next September.
For PAN M 360 readers, Ellis explains the issues of this adaptation.
PAN M 360: Is this orchestral adaptation an aesthetic problem? Usurpation, or heresy, according to the purists?
NICOLAS ELLIS: I personally believe that the Goldberg Variations is much more than a work for this or that instrument. It’s an extraordinary counterpoint and it’s also interesting to appreciate it in string trio, in string orchestra, for other formations. So it’s a great adventure to embark on Bernard Labadie’s project, especially since the musicians of the orchestra have been playing these arrangements for the last 20 years and have also played the string trio version.
PAN M 360: How does it work to adapt a piano work for string orchestra?
NICOLAS ELLIS: We start with the idea that the counterpoint and harmony of this piece go far beyond a single instrument. An adaptation for orchestra can therefore shed a different light on the work. It should be remembered that the Goldberg Variations were arranged for a string trio by Dmitri Sitkovetski (1985) and this adaptation has been performed several times since. Based on this same idea, Bernard Labadie decided to make an arrangement for string orchestra. The arrangement was performed by Les Violons du Roy in 1999 and recorded in 2000.
PAN M 360: From trio to string orchestra, the order was considerable! More precisely, what was the challenge?
NICOLAS ELLIS: First of all, it was to make the Goldberg Variations sound as if they had been written for string orchestra. When, for example, a variation offers two-note polyphony, Bernard can add extra notes to the arrangement to “pump up” the harmony. He can distribute the notes of this piece to the instruments in a way that brings out the harmony properly. If, for example, we start with 4 instruments and then all of a sudden it falls to two or three voices, we must create lines for the instruments that suddenly no longer play the original score but that must continue to play so that we understand that it is indeed an orchestral discourse. The ornaments of the score for the keyboard alone can also be transformed into arrangements.
But when you transpose this to strings, it’s not just a matter of adding an instrument during a measure to cover all the notes on the keyboard, but rather of finding a way to diversify the proposal from one variation to another in different configurations, whether with two musicians, three musicians, a string orchestra, etc.
The idea, in short, is that this adaptation for orchestra needs to be idiomatic, as if it were a concerto grosso with moments when the entire orchestra expresses itself and others when a limited number of instruments or soloists do so. A colossal work done by Bernard Labadie!
PAN M 360: Today, this transformation of classical works is uncommon. What is your perception?
NICOLAS ELLIS: It should be remembered that this was a widespread practice in the Baroque period, it happened frequently to Bach himself to transform a violin concerto into a concerto for keyboards, to take a suite for orchestra and make a duet, to take old movements of cantatas and integrate them into his St. Matthew Passion, or to quote other composers in his works. There was no such notion of intellectual property in his time, one could take music composed by others and interweave it into a different work. What Bernard Labadie did would not have seemed strange at all, in the baroque era.
PAN M 360: Has his adaptation evolved since 1999?
NICOLAS ELLIS: Yes. Bernard has been able to change the arrangement slightly over time, and it’s really great what he’s been able to accomplish. It sounds like it was written for a string orchestra, it really sounds like a concerto grosso.
PAN M 360: What is the role of the maestro in this context?
NICOLAS ELLIS: My role is very pleasant at the time when my position as principal guest conductor of Les Violons du Roy is announced. It’s like my collaboration with Les Violons du Roy: an exchange. I humbly try to bring my grain of salt to what this orchestra does best. It is also an opportunity for me to welcome and better understand this tradition that has been built up over nearly 40 years. So my three-year term will begin in September 2023. This year already I am doing three different programs. Since my first collaboration in 2018, I have been lurking around Les Violons du Roy more and more!
PAN M 360: What was your knowledge of the work as a conductor?
NICOLAS ELLIS: This is the first time I’ve personally tackled the Goldberg Variations and it’s exciting to do it with Les Violons du Roy, experienced musicians who know the work well. These musicians remain very open and curious in the collective work to find their own interpretation of this piece. This is the image of collaboration and exchange that we want to develop together, as the first guest conductor.
PAN M 360: How difficult is it for a conductor to direct such an adaptation?
NICOLAS ELLIS: Honestly, I would say that conducting the Goldberg Variations for orchestra is a joy because everything is already so well conceived! When you read the score, however, it’s intimidating to be in front of such a genius. One must remain humble! When you look at it, you understand why it was played so much. It’s a huge masterpiece of musical literature, and you have to get the whole picture, understand the journey behind it, and how to make each variation your own, so that they all have something to say. When you hear the aria at the end, you have to have this feeling of having lived a great journey.
PROGRAM
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 arranged for strings and continuo by Bernard Labadie
ARTISTS
Les Violons du Roy Nicolas Ellis, conductor Pascale Giguère, Noëlla Bouchard, Nicole Trotier, Véronique Vychytil, First violins Pascale Gagnon, Angélique Duguay, Michelle Seto, Maud Langlois, Second violins Isaac Chalk, Annie Morrier, Jean-Louis Blouin, Violas Benoit Loiselle, Raphaël Dubé, Cellos Raphaël McNabney, Double Bass Sylvain Bergeron, Theorbo Mélisande McNabney, Harpsichord
Expressivity, vitality, integrity, high precision, these are all words that can be used to describe the Ensemble Masques, recognized throughout the world of baroque and early music, particularly in Europe. Founded two decades ago, Masques has come a long way since then. Along this way, many paths were taken and lead to JS Bach and this is the object of the program we are dealing with here.
The ensemble takes its name from a form of Renaissance high society entertainment that became popular at the court of King Henry VIII, the father of Queen Elizabeth, and continued into the Elizabethan era. A Masque was a lavish and dramatic entertainment involving poetry, drama, dance and music, often performed in verse by masked actors dressed as mythological or allegorical figures.
In this case, it is essentially a question of music: the Ensemble Masques is made up of high-level performers, whose six members have careers as soloists and/or performers in international early music ensembles and orchestras. The ensemble is directed by Montreal harpsichordist Olivier Fortin.
Masques is “transnational” in the sense that it is made up of Australian violinist Sophie Gent, Toronto violist Kathleen Kajioka, Montreal violist and cellist Mélisande Corriveau, Finnish violinist Tuomo Suni, Brussels bassist and violinist Benoît Vanden Bemden, and its Quebec musical director Olivier Fortin.
Beyond our local classical or baroque milieu, the Ensemble Masques is well known on the European circuit and still deserves to be better known on this side of the Atlantic. Here is an opportunity to acknowledge its great quality: this Thursday, the group performs at the Bach Festival after returning from a tour in Iceland where PAN M 360 joined Olivier Fortin to talk about the Montreal program presented this Thursday, November 24, at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours in Old Montreal.
PAN M 360: The music of the 17th century is dominant in this program.
OLIVIER FORTIN: In fact, the first part of the concert covers works written in the mid to late 17th century while the second part is devoted to Bach. The idea is to trace the composers who influenced Bach’s work in the way they composed and used harmonic language. From more or less far from Bach, there were musical currents at the time, including that of France, notably the music of Lully, which took a large place on the European territory and which each one took up in his own way. So we open and close with a French suite by a German composer and we end with Bach who always went further than anyone else, in such a personal and brilliant way. We propose a journey towards Bach, in a way.
PAN M 360: From Georg Muffat (1653-1704), then, you open with Fasciculus I from Florilegium primum.
OLIVIER FORTIN: He was very much inspired by the French style. He was a follower of the music that was going on in Europe, but he didn’t have the genius of Bach. We open the concert with an orchestral suite, an overture and dances, and we end with another Bach suite, thus putting the rest of the program in brackets. The first part of the program consists of music older than Bach, while the second part begins with his son Wilhelm Friedemann. And we want to show that he still played a little bit in the style of his father but in a very different way in the language.
PAN M 360: If we go inside the program, we find ourselves with Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690), Sonata sesta – La Cetra (Venetia, 1673).
OLIVIER FORTIN: JS Bach met neither Muffat nor Legrenzi, nor any other composer on the program except his son, but their music reached Bach, since he had already written fugues on themes by Legrenzi. This powerful, rich and expressive Italian language influenced Bach in his youth.
PAN M 360: The next piece is by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1620/23 – 1680): ,
OLIVIER FORTIN: There you go, this is very beautiful, very moving lamento on the death of Ferdinand III, who was a great lover of music and patron of the arts, humanly close to the artists. We have played all this music, we are very comfortable playing it, it’s a bit like breathing. It’s part of our DNA. People often think it’s too old. But it’s extremely expressive. Schmelzer was a great violinist. He wrote hybrids that Bach took up and synthesized.
PAN M 360: What about the sonatas of Johann Rosenmüller (1617-1684)?
OLIVIER FORTIN: Rosenmüller composed in Germany, he was also a keyboardist and violinist. He had to escape secretly Germany for reasons of morals, a sort of me too with who knows whom. He ended up in Venice at the time of Legrenzi. He wrote in a style from which Bach took on certain forms.
PAN M 360: What about the Sonata XI Opus 1 (1695) by Romanus Weichlein (1652-1706)?
OLIVIER FORTIN: Weichlein was a Benedictine monk who was a student of the next composer on the program, Biber. This is music for violin that makes Biber’s music, very improvised, great passacaglias, music that makes the strings sound good. Weichlein spent his life as a monk in Austria. He belongs to the school of composers for virtuoso violins. This music has won us several prizes in Europe.
PAN M 360: And then we go to the master with the Sonata III, Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum (Nuremberg, 1683) by Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704).
OLIVIER FORTIN: There you go. We have seen what the student does, now we see what the master does. It is very difficult, harder than Weichlein who is difficult for the violin whereas Biber is difficult for all the voices in the ensemble. Very virtuoso.
PAN M 360: So we move on to the Bach family.
OLIVIER FORTIN: At first, we would have liked to play only orchestral suites by JSB but it was too many people to travel so we often do this suite by his son, we see how the French style is treated in Wilhelm Friedmann in another harmonic world than that of his father, pre-classical. The last movement is a fugue but different from those of his father, which does not take the same path. One feels that it is the end of something and we end with this suite in the French style, which is very well known by the master Bach.
PROGRAM
Georg Muffat (1653-1704) Florilegium primum – Fasciculus I
Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690) La Cetra – Venetia, 1673 Sonata sesta
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1620/23 – 1680) Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinandi III
Johann Rosenmüller (1617-1684) Sonate a 2, 3, 4 è 5 stromenti, da arco & altri – Nuremberg, 1682 Sonata nona à 5
Romanus Weichlein (1652-1706) Opus 1 – 1695 Sonata XI
Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704) Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum – Nuremberg, 1683 Sonata III Wilhem Friedemann Bach (1710 – 1784) Ouverture – Suite for orchestra, in g minor (formely attributed J.S. Bach, BWV 1070)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Ouverture – Suite for orchestra, in D major BWV 1068
ARTISTS
Ensemble Masques Olivier Fortin, harpsichord and conductor Sophie Gent, Tuomo Suni, violins Kathleen Kajioka, viola Mélisande Corriveau, basse de viole & cello Benoît Vanden Bemden, violone & contrebasse
Madison McFerrin turned 31 a few days ago and she also ended her European Tour. Her soft voice and her sense of humour go with a thoughtful and kind spirit, turned towards people, the belief of music as a healer and the importance of being part of a community. Pan M 360 asked her some questions about her last few projects and her personal growth since the pandemic.
Pan M 360: In 2018, you were cited as a rising independent artist. Where are you now in this process?
Madison McFerrin: I am still independent, which I think is great. We are in a day and age where you can actually have a viable career and stay independent, so I really have been trying to build this in a sustainable manner, that’s where I am. The team has expanded, and new music is coming, so it’s definitely building wax.
Pan M 360: Alright, that’s great. Where and when did you learn to produce on your own?
Madison McFerrin: I really just started in the pandemic, so 2020 is really when it started. I was producing my acapella stuff but in terms of adding different instrumentation that really started during the pandemic, in my living room. Since we weren’t going out or anything, I was like “alright, here we are”.
Pan M 360: The EP “You+I” was made with your brother.
Madison McFerrin: Yes, he produced No Room, Try, Unwise, and Fallin, and I did Re:intro and Know you better.
Pan M 360: What did the collaboration with your brother bring you?
Madison McFerrin: Working with my brother is something I really wanted to do. I look up to him and I think he is incredible, you know, just sibling love. I appreciated.
Pan M 360: Speaking about Know you better, we talk about your vocal dexterity. How do you build your harmonies? Where do you pick your inspirations?
Madison McFerrin: I think my biggest inspiration is just life in general. I always start with chords first and whatever melodies I come up with are definitely also an inspiration. They kind of motivate what the topic is going to be about because since I write my melodies first, I really find the words that fit with the melody and that reveals what the song is from a lyrical standpoint when I write.
Pan M 360: About the song Stay Away, which came out recently, this is a mix of soul and house music. What are your current tastes and influences?
Madison McFerrin: A friend of mine who goes by the name L’rain. She is really incredible. I wrote the song before Beyonce’s album came out, but in terms of dance house music, this has been big for me at this moment. I think it is really fantastic. I am a big fan of Jamila Woods, and Nick Hakim. I am grateful that a lot of people that inspire me are also my friends.
Pan M 360: This song’s musical mood is contrasting with the topic. I saw you were very involved in mental health promotion. How much is this subject important to you?
Madison McFerrin: It’s majorly important to me, especially now. In this time, we are still living through a pandemic, there’s a lot of collective grief and trauma and I don’t think a lot of us have been able to process, especially in the United States, you know there’s been a big emphasis on just getting back to work and getting back to life as usual without allowing people the space to really process what we have gone through. I mean over a million people have died in the United States and people have lost their entire families you know the idea that we are just supposed to move on is pretty sick in my opinion. For me, music helps contribute to my positive mental health and I recognize that it is true for so many other people and so I really see myself and my music as a conduit through which people can find healing in happy songs or sad songs, or songs about anxiety, I am taping into what I feel understanding that so many other people feel them as well and maybe my music can put words to their feelings that they have been unable to articulate.
Pan M 360: Does that help you?
Madison McFerrin: Oh, totally!
Pan M 360: How easy is it to show yourself and your feelings?
Madison McFerrin: For me, showing it in music is probably the easiest way. I write in a journal just about every day and that is helpful, but I think in terms of really getting all of the expression out, music is definitely the place where I feel I can flow the most freely with my feelings. Music is the best place for me to be able to do that.
Pan M 360: You said in your song “undefined is a reminder I ain’t done so stay away,” what does that mean?
Madison McFerrin: I have been spending these last few years trying to define myself and my art and trying to figure out who I am, and not just as an artist but as a person. So the idea is that like if you are undefined, if you haven’t figured out what it is, it just means that you are not finished yet and it doesn’t mean that this is the end and so the “stay away from me”, what I am speaking to is that anxiety, that pressure of like “you don’t know who you are,” it’s like “you can stay away from me” because I am figuring myself out and I recognize that I am still on this journey and being on the journey is okay.
Pan M 360: You named two of your EPs “Finding Foundation,” did you find yours?
Madison McFerrin: Yeah, I think so. The meaning behind those titles was, I had taken some time to really figure out how I want to express myself as an artist and as a solo artist specifically because I have done some stuff in other groups. I come from a rich legacy of vocal music and even the first song I wrote in college was one where I couldn’t figure out the chords on the piano so I’d sing them and I ended up writing an acapella song and kind of getting back to that original root of my songwriting and that coupled with my familial roots, that’s what “finding foundation” was really about.
Pan M 360: Can you tell me more about your familial roots?
Madison McFerrin: My grandfather was the first African-American to sign a contract [editor’s note: Robert McFerrin was a baritone singer who sang negro spirituals] to the Metropolitan Opera. His wife, my grandmother was a renowned vocal teacher who was recognized by the state of California. My father is obviously a ten-time-grammy-winning vocalist, my oldest brother Taylor is a producer, and my middle brother, he’s an actor but he can sing too, he played Hamilton on Broadway. I am sure that it goes even further back than that. The musical legacy is incredibly rich in ways that tap into my familial roots.
Pan M 360: So finally, how do we learn to get true to ourselves?
Madison McFerrin: That’s a good question! If I could answer that, I think I would be a much more fortified human being [laugh], but ultimately, I think it comes down to really tapping into yourself, taking time for yourself, meditating, and journaling. I think also community is really important to that. Self-discovery doesn’t only come through yourself, it also comes through the dynamics that you have with the people around you and how they motivate you, how they push you because we are kind of told that we are supposed to be highly individual when, really, we are supposed to be communal, so I think that all that self-discovery comes through having a positive community.
Pan M 360: About composing, you said that you first sing before you play?
Madison McFerrin: I always start with the chords whether that’s me singing them in loop fashion or playing on the piano. Interestingly enough sometimes with production now I start with a drum beat and then I add chords to it but I definitely need some chords in there to be able to sack the melody and ultimately write the lyrics.
Pan M 360: Do you have some new projects coming or any projects aside?
Madison McFerrin: Some new music is on the way. Stay tuned.
Pan M 360: Is there something else you would like to add?
Madison McFerrin: I am just grateful to be back on the road and if anybody wants to connect with me, shoot me a DM, I am always down to connect with my fans. I am really looking for to be back in front of audiences.
Pan M 360: Have you already played with fans?
Madison McFerrin: I have done some lessons and I also have people joining for soundchecks. People will send me stuff in DMs and I do my best to listen to everything, give some advice, and I also have like a texting number where people can text me and we can chat that way, that has been useful during the pandemic.
Pan M 360: Thank you very much!
Both born in 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel are the great German composers on the program for this evening of the Festival Bach, courtesy of the London Handel Players. Scheduled for Monday, November 21 at Salle Bourgie, the connection is ideal: a British ensemble playing Handel, who spent most of his career in England where Baroque music flourished as it did in Germany, France, Italy, etc. And that is exactly why PAN M 360 talks to the violinist, conductor and artistic director of the London Handel Players, Adrian Butterfield, who was in England a few days ago.
PAN M 360: Although Handel lived most of his life in England, the corpus of this program is German. We won’t repeat the biography of JS Bach and Handel, would it be better to comment on each piece in the program.
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: Sure! Well, we begin with Handel’s beautiful Trio Sonata, Op. 5, No. 1, in A major, HWV 396. It begins with one of his favorite pieces of music, I think, because he used it several times, including in what we might now call his violin concerto. In my opinion, it is very nice that he brought back favorite pieces of music several times in his work. You can tell how proud he was of it and wanted more people to hear it. It must also be said that this work is interesting because it allows us to observe once again that he wrote German music throughout his life. And that we are very fortunate to have these beautiful works to perform.
PAN M 360: We move on to JSB’s Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord No.6, in G major, BWV 1019, which precedes two others.
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: Bach was such a pioneer that we don’t think of him as a very modern composer even today. He was a visionary for the centuries that followed his existence. In terms of these sonatas, I think the idea of putting the harpsichord at the center of chamber music, and then the concertos, was really new at that time. In a sense, he initiated the idea of the duo or trio sonata, which his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, took up as did Mozart and Beethoven later. There is a real sense of progression from there. It is also worth remembering that Bach and Handel were the great keyboard players of all time. It’s really amazing that they were born in the same year, just a few miles apart, and never seemed to meet. So I’ve played these sonatas many times over the years, but it was very nice to rediscover them with Silas (Wollston), our keyboard player, and we spent a lot of time playing them together with him and my wife and I.
PAN M 360: Your wife is flutist Rachel Brown.
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: Yes! When we got married some years ago, we already had most of the household items that we needed and we thought what, because people always want to give you something for your wedding. So we decided to ask people if they wanted to contribute to the purchase of a harpsichord. And so we ordered this beautiful instrument. Which is lovely because the band comes to our house for rehearsals. We don’t take this harpsichord out very often, so it doesn’t get abused. So the instrument doesn’t travel except for studio recordings. Silas loves to play this instrument, he keeps coming to our house to rehearse. It’s great to see him having so much pleasure with the harpsichord.
PAN M 360: The second trio sonata on the program is “The Musical Offering”, BWV 1079. What about it?
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD:This is one of those epic Bach pieces that is demanding of both the listener and the performer in terms of the intellectual effort required to listen and appreciate. There are so many amazing aspects to this piece and it refers to that fascinating story of JS Bach going to visit his son Carl Philipp Emanuel at the court of Frederick the Great. Apparently, the son had been told that his old Bach had arrived. While there, JS Bach admired the brand new keyboard instruments. It also seems that Frederick the Great tried to test Bach by imposing particularly difficult themes on which he had to improvise, and he succeeded in making a three-part theme on the spot. But he apparently said that an improvisation on a six-part theme was beyond his abilities. That he had to work on it, which of course he did. So this Trio Sonata has a large-scale construction, a very special moment in the middle of the work. It is indeed very difficult to play, but very challenging. It’s extraordinary music that is unlike anything else.
PAN M 360: Did you build this program specifically for the Montreal Bach Festival? Or are you presenting this program in many places?
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: We’ve performed it before, but we thought it was particularly appropriate for the Montreal Bach Festival. We are, of course, the London Handel Players and we have a very strong connection to the London Handel Festival, which was founded in 1978. Twenty years earlier, the same organization had founded a Bach Festival in which we participated. So we share these two great passions for Handel and Bach. But the founder of the Handel Festival also founded a Bach Festival 2025 years before, which I still direct myself, so the bar can handle its two great passions and I think it’s, we have so much fun bringing the two composers together. They are contrasting figures in many ways, Handel being obsessed with opera and Bach never having the chance to write an opera, I mean write in an operatic style at that time.
PAN M 360: As English musicians, isn’t it an extraordinary exercise to play Handel and put him in relief with Bach?
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: Absolutely. Handel was a man of the theater and Bach was a man of the church. And to put the two in relief is a fascinating contrast. Having grown up in London and having seen so many places where Handel worked, it’s amazing to be in those spaces where we know he worked. Handel was such an important figure in London, so dominant but not in an unpleasant way. Of course, he had a few clashes with musicians, but he was such a positive influence and had a wonderful sense of humor. It is said that he often spoke in several different languages at once, and that his German accent never disappeared. But you know, he traveled a lot and was interested in singers and how to approach them. And he had this ability to strike you with emotion, and that’s particularly obvious in the second part of the program for this concert.
PAN M 360: You are talking about Da tempeste il legno infranto and Se pietà di me non senti, arias from his opera “Cesare in Egitto”, HWV 17.
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: Right. When Rachel did her research at the British Library, she found all these arrangements of Handel’s arias for flute. John Walsh was her publisher and saw an opportunity to make money from his most popular arias so that people could play them at home. Of course, there was no such thing as a recording, and this was the only way they could hear again the pieces they had discovered in Handel’s operas or oratorios. And it’s amazing how direct Handel is with his emotions. He really tugs at the heartstrings and knows how to persuade you of tragedy or great joy. We love playing the arrangements of these arias, we recorded some years ago and have explored a number of new areas since then. So there’s a lot of fun to be had playing these arias, and then Tilas will play Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in F major, HWV 427, and then you’ll hear the music of the other great keyboardist on the program, Bach’s Trio Sonata in G major, BWV 1038. These pieces all represent an enormous challenge for the performers.
PAN M 360: How do you see the collective sound of the London Handel Players and the individual sounds of each of the key players progressing?
ADRIAN BUTTERFIELD: The adaptation of the ensemble to the baroque flute has been important. Having played with Rachel for so many years, I felt it was essential to listen to the sound of the flute and adapt the sound of the strings to it. With an oboist, for example, it’s a completely different sound and the strings have to play differently, because the sound of the baroque flute is softer in general. But we’ve been doing it this way for several years and I hope we’ve found a good blend.
PROGRAM
George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) Sonate en trio, opus 5, No. 1, in A major, HWV 396
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) Sonate pour violon et clavecin No.6, in G major, BWV 1019 Sonate en trio from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
George Frideric Handel Suite pour clavecin, in F major, HWV 427 Da tempeste il legno infranto et Se pietà di me non senti, from Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17
Johann Sebastian Bach Sonate en trio, in G major, BWV 1038
ARTISTS
London Handel Players Rachel Brown, flûte Adrian Butterfield, violin Gavin Kibble, cello Silas Wollston, harpsichord
Based in Vancouver, BC, alternative rock group Kamikaze Nurse is finding inspiration in unlikely places. On their sophomore album Stimuloso, the band pairs heavy guitar riffs with KC Wei’s forceful, droning vocals, forming an eerie fairytale with moments of bliss and periods of ravaged emotion. Kamikaze Nurse brings the intensity of a forest fire to tracks like “Work + Days” and “Stimuloso,” and playful energy to songs “Never Better” and “Come from Wood.” The band’s range is vast, and yet the album sounds cohesive and intentional.
Each member has their hand in other facets of the Vancouver art scene, from John Brennan’s sound installations to KC Wei’s editorship for the film and literature review magazine STILLS: Moving Image Tract. Literature, poetry, and film are some of the source materials for the band’s lyrics and explosive sound.
Comprising members of different ages and experiences, the band connects on their shared love of being at home. Cats, for example, feature prominently on the album in songs like “Pet Meds.” Layered on top of rapid drumming, Wei and vocalist/bassist, Sonya Eui delicately weave together a mix of chanting, spoken word, and animalistic noises to create a bizarre narrative journey. In “Boom Josie,” a track dedicated to guitarist Ethan Reyes’ baby daughter, the band expresses the fear and euphoria of new life.
On Stimuloso, Kamikaze Nurse uses diverse interests to their advantage, composing a sonically rich and lyrically interesting record. Ahead of their performance at M For Montreal Pan M 360 talked with Kamikaze Nurse about domesticity, David Cronenberg, and sharing success with other Vancouver artists.
PAN M 360: What was it like writing and recording Stimuloso at home during the pandemic?
KC: Yeah, that was a very long, long drawn-out process. It felt like we wrote maybe, like, four of the songs before the pandemic. And then, before the pandemic, I think we were planning to just keep on writing and had this idea for, like, ‘Yeah, let’s go, let’s make a second album.’ But with the pandemic, we did take, four months off, basically, when the first wave happened. And it just felt like we were stuck in limbo, like, you know, everyone else in the world for a while. But then, we just did mostly in this room for, like, the instruments. And so we just would try to find the time when, you know, our neighbours weren’t jamming, and just record parts, piece by piece.
That took a few months. And it was also us trying to figure out, you know, how to set up the mics and mixing and everything. So there were a few songs we had to do over and over and over again. And then after that, we went to the recording studio to just finish the vocals. And that took, like, a day or two days. Yeah, how was it for you guys?
Sonya: I took more time off during COVID than the rest of you from what I recall, because of my job. So I remember coming in, and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna play some songs.’ And they were like, ‘We’re recording now.’ I felt very confused about what was happening. It was nice, I liked it.
Ethan: Yeah, it was fun. It took so long to schedule, like, weeks in advance to book to come in and do overdubs for just one song. At least for me, because it took me a really long time to write my parts. And most of my parts were just written, like, as soon as I sat down and John pressed record. Like, ‘OK, let’s figure this out.’ It was a really unique way to do it. In some ways, I almost like doing it that way better than our previous album, which was just live-off-the-floor kind of recording. Doing it this way, there was a lot more control over the writing process and just, like, perfecting things.
PAN M 360: Many of the songs on this album involve fixtures of domesticity. How did you find rock in home life?
Sonya: I don’t even know if it was. I mean, obviously, I think the baby and the cats happened in the pandemic, some because of the pandemic. I don’t know about the baby, but certainly the cats.
Ethan: That wasn’t pandemic related. That was just blatantly accidental. It could have happened at any point.
Sonya: I think it would’ve happened this way anyway, to be honest, we just had a lot of cats on our minds. That was the big thing.
Ethan: Did you guys get all your cats during the pandemic?
KC: I didn’t.
Ethan: You had Jiffy.
KC: But like, Motya was a stray and just came into our place one night and had a fight with Jiffy for his food.
Sonya: I don’t know, I think it was just a phase in life.
KC: I think the domesticity, I mean, I’m personally quite like a homebody person. Or, I don’t know, now that I’m thinking about it, there are a lot of things relatable about the mundaneness of life or something. And for it to inspire a rock album, I think it makes sense to me. I mean, that’s where maybe it came from, like, speaking for myself.
Sonya: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s weird to say but we’re all different ages. Some pretty drastically, actually. The common thing with all of us is we’re all very home-oriented, I would say. Family and all that. Because I don’t know how much just in terms of daily experience, I don’t know how much we would have in common otherwise. We would, but the dramas and the emotions are different.
KC: Yeah, that’s really interesting to think about. We come together and play together as a band and we draw from our pretty different daily lives. Just in terms of the lyrics or the songwriting. I wonder if I have more to say about that. It’s interesting that you picked up on like domesticity as a kind of the theme of the album. I think that’s cool. Like, more and more, I think I’m more used to hearing, like, you know, the death and decay and love for our creatures and stuff like that. But just like, actually, the domestic is such a powerful space. And maybe it’s cool that, like, this album conjures that, because that’s not usually not typical of rock music, I guess.
PAN M 360: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It is very atypical but in the best way possible. KC, you didn’t start playing music until you were 26, after attending art school. You’ve recently returned to academia as a PhD candidate. How does your fine arts background affect your music?
KC: I think maybe it’s like an attitude towards, playing in a band where I didn’t play an instrument until quite late. So I’m not going to shred as hard as people who have been playing obviously, for a really long time. So I have to figure out how to write songs and create them in a different way. And I think that’s where being an artist kind of gives me the confidence to just even try that. And then I guess, being an artist helps me, I guess bringing different interests into the music from literature or movies or something. So writing things in a way that like, I didn’t grow up listening to music or like live bands and like playing in live bands. So I think my approach is a little bit from a different angle. So maybe that’s what makes the songs a little bit unique. I mean, we all, I think, bring very neat elements to it, but that’s where I guess I come from.
PAN M 360: Tell me about your relationship to David Cronenberg, particularly his film’s influence on your song of the same name, “Dead Ringers.”
KC: Oh, yeah, I’ve watched it. It’s my favourite Cronenberg film. I haven’t seen all of them. I haven’t seen the new one yet, but like, every time I watched that one, it’s just so sad. Have you guys seen it? Oh my god, it’s like, it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I think we had the riff for the song for a while but it wasn’t until … Maybe like the timing of watching the film and then being like, ‘Oh, it’s time to write lyrics for the song.’ It was just very emotionally affected. If you guys want to watch it, it’s on Netflix, I think. I mean, yeah, have you watched it? Are you into David Cronenberg?
PAN M 360: I’m a big David Cronenberg fan. What about it, in particular, did you find sad or at least emotionally evocative?
KC: Well, I guess just the love between, like the very twisted codependent love between the brothers. And then the kind of love interest just kind of screwing up their, like, I don’t know, their dynamic, and how in the end, they return to each other, but in this most tragic way. It’s like being on two sides of existence, but together. It’s like they’re basically … I love how in the film though, it’s like, there are certain scenes that are so visual. Because they’re wearing red scrubs and that crazy claw art that when he goes to the gallery he’s transfixed by, and anyway, it’s just, I’m not sure. I’m trying to think about the lyrics now and how they relate, but it’s kind of more the emotional place I was in when, and how that emotional place kind of opened up kind of like a way to write lyrics. Because I’m not writing about my own experience, or like, my own pain. It’s more kind of like the pain or the feelings that come around through another artwork, which I find really that it’s kind of like, the goal of art for me, or like, you want it to make you feel something that you’re unable to feel without it. So I think that’s kind of where I was coming from when writing lyrics and just kind of wanting to continue that flow of energy. Like, if that film made me feel this way, to write the lyrics to the song this way. Maybe if somebody hears that they’ll be… it’ll invoke something. It’ll open up something for them.
PAN M 360: Sonya, does your background in classical music influence your approach to rock? Is this rebellion?
Sonya: I think I always knew. I mean, I got into classical music because that’s a very easy way to get into music. But I grew up in a very rocking family. So I think I always knew that I would be doing something like that. But what I will say, I mean, obviously, a classical background makes a lot of things easier. It makes understanding music easier. I don’t know, just even like, especially playing with this band, playing with John especially. Being in the rhythm section with John who has a very solid background, academic background in music makes it very easy for us to connect.
PAN M 360: Electroacoustics, right, from Concordia?
KC: Yeah, and definitely jazz. He’s a very jazzy guy.
Sonya: Like that part’s fun. I feel like me and John get to play around a lot with time signatures and rhythms. Which is not always the case in rock bands. So I guess, to sum up, my classical background makes rock music extremely fun to play with people who also have a similar background, then you can do so much with that. And also, like, technically, it’s really cool to get better. Like, I feel like I have the ambition to be better at my instrument because it was like, beat into me, figuratively and literally.
PAN M 360: “Work + Days” plays with the anxiety of making a living. When does making and playing music feel like work to you?
Ethan: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. It feels like, playing music can be both a really freeing experience and a nice, nice way to kind of let go of the stress of work and making a living, but can just as easily feel like an obligation as well. It’s hard to strike a balance there. Especially when you’re just really busy and have a baby and have to work full time and like it sucks having to feel like you need to carve out, make an effort to carve out time just to, like, let go. Like, that should just happen. I wish we were all neighbours and had a jam space in the basement. You can just, like, chill and do that every night just, like, you know, hang out and play music. Like, I have to drive half an hour down here [to the studio].
PAN M 360: Yeah, it sounds like turning a creative job into a sort of structured, nine-to-five where you have to actually figure out when you’re going to get your shit together and join up and play.
Ethan: Yeah, my 100% favourite parts of being in a band are practicing and being on stage. Literally every single other part of being in the band I don’t care for. Recording, I don’t care for. Dealing with the label. Dealing with the label is the worst part. If we could find a way to just practice and play shows, that’d be amazing.
Sonya: He won’t shut the fuck up about this baby.
PAN M 360: Yeah, Josie. How is she doing?
Ethan: She’s great. She turned a year and a half today.
PAN M 360: Oh, happy birthday, or half birthday!
Ethan: We got her a smoothie for her half-birthday.
PAN M 360: A smoothie?
Ethan: She got a banana smoothie and we went to the swing set.
KC: Let’s write a rock song about that.
PAN M 360: Your most recent music video for “Never Better” was animated by Lianne Zannier, an artist based in Vancouver. What drew you to work with her?
KC: Oh, we’re friends. We used to be co-workers at this art centre. And Lianne spent a lot of time in Montreal and New Brunswick. It was just mostly a friend connection. And John really wanted to make an animated music video. And we did two music videos already. So I think we didn’t have any more ideas about what we wanted to do as music videos. So Lianne kind of stepped in and just kind of gave her idea or her concept. So we just went with it.
PAN M 360: I don’t know if this is intentional, but it sounds like you’re naturally creating this sort of mutually beneficial ecosystem with artists in your circle. Has this come up in other instances that you can think of?
KC: I mean, maybe with the art rock stuff, because I used to do this concert series in Vancouver, where I’d just invite people. It was a monthly concert night that I would program and stuff. And I would just ask people to come to play. I didn’t think it would be anything, but it ran for three years, maybe more than three years. And there’s, like, 32 iterations of it. And over time, I kind of feel like you can’t be, and I don’t want to be, a band that succeeds without sharing it as much as I can with my friends or the community I care about. It’s really hard sometimes. We’re all constantly exhausted. And we do get asked to play shows sometimes. And we’re either not in town, or super busy, or super tired. I’m a bit self-conscious about ‘community’ because it can be such a loaded word. Like building it to make it, and sustaining it over time. It can feel super positive, and we do it because we love it and need a community to thrive in, but it can also be exhausting and messy, and they change over time. People come and go, and communities need to grow and evolve.
PAN M 360: You’ll be playing M For Montreal soon. What do you hope audiences feel when they listen to your performances?
Sonya: Pity.
KC: Orgasm.
Ethan: I hope the front row is just like, like, dudes who are like, ‘Oh, this music is so sick,’ and they just go ‘Whoa” for the whole set. That’s all. I don’t really care what they’re feeling. As long as they’re like ‘this music, rocks.’
Kamikaze Nurse play Café Cléopâtre on Nov. 18 w/ Ariane Roy & l’Escogriffe on Nov. 19 w/ Sunglaciers and a Surprise Guest
Balaklava Blues blends EDM and trance with ancient Ukrainian folk songs, backed by a significant multimedia show. With the carnage taking place in Ukraine right now, their show is also about revolution and giving a huge F-you to Putin, but also preserving Ukrainian folk songs that are thousands of years old and sharing them with the world. The trio is made up of husband and wife, Mark and Marichka Marczyk, and their bandmate/friend Oskar Lambarri.
Before their performance at M For Montreal, Balaklava Blues did a short and tumultuous guerrilla tour to Ukraine. The idea was to play music in Ukraine, but also take a trip through checkpoints and destroyed villages to visit Marichka’s brother, who was stationed by Izium. They traveled with a humanitarian aid colony through a war-torn Ukraine, but the most dangerous part of their trip was ironically in the centre of the nation’s capital, Kyiv, on the morning of October 10. Russian air strikes landed rockets a mere 2 blocks from the hotel the band was staying in.
Our conversation with Mark and Marichka Marczyk was a heavy one, but could also be called inspiring. People in Ukraine are not letting this war define them and though much of the day is for the war effort, Mark especially, was surprised to see people go on with their daily lives. “They’re pissed off this is happening, but they’re not letting it control their lives,” he says. It just shows how important music is in these times, including Balaklava Blues’ new album, LET ME OUT. We chatted with them about their origins and their musical importance before their performance at M For Montreal.
PAN M 360: I know you’re both in The Lemon Bucket Orkestra but how did Balaklava Blues form?
Marichka Marczyk: It’s a kind of continuation of this project [Lemon Bucket] because the Balaklava Blues is mostly dedicated to what happened after the revolution.
Mark Marczyk: If I take a more philosophic approach, music is like a reflection of the life that you’re living and the feelings that you’re going through. And I think at that time, what Marichka was talking about, after the revolution, and then into the war in Ukraine, our life started to look drastically different than it had to that point. And the music that we were playing wasn’t reflecting that life anymore. We needed a new outlet to be able to have to process deal with and explore creatively. For me as a Canadian, I was sort of first got thrown into like the middle of a revolution and then war and then working with the diaspora to support that in ways. And then, for Marichka as a refugee, and as a Ukrainian now living in Canada as an immigrant … there’s a whole bunch of different layers that we needed to unpack. And so we created Balaklava Blues to do that.
PAN M 360: And you two met during the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014. What was that experience like? Did you know you were both musicians?
Marichka Marczyk: We didn’t even talk about music until much later and then we sang one song together and were like ‘Oh my God’ this is a perfect match.
MarkMarczyk: She knew that I was a musician because I was at the time recording musicians, like traditional folk musicians, to include in the score of a film. So there was that initial point of contact. But it sort of went outside of all that. When you’re in the middle of protests of that scale, that ended up being a revolution that actually successfully overthrows a corrupt president after a serious amount of violence and loss. And that ends up leading to a war that is now turning into the biggest war in Europe, since the Second World War, music is like a soundtrack to that.
I can be sensationalistic about the revolution and tell you about the burning barricades and the riot cops and the guys that were being shot by snipers. Or shoveling snow into barricades or we can be romantic about it and talk about the painting of the shields and the free tattoos, dancing to stay warm under the underpasses, and people sharing food and everything that they had, and clothes and everybody pitching in. You know, there’s so there are different ways that you can sort of paint it, but the bottom line is it left a huge, huge impression on us.
PAN M 360: And you recently went back to Ukraine and a day after you played there was a bombing not like maybe a couple of blocks from where you were standing. To me, being here in Canada, it’s crazy to me that live concerts are still happening during war. I’m happy to hear that they are because people need distractions and to feel united, but a bomb dropping a day after you play a concert is insane.
Marichka Marczyk: Yeah it is, but it’s as you say important. It’s very important, but it’s not about feeling you know, united when we’re playing music in the frontline. I think what we realized it’s about is feeling like you’re home. It’s reminding you of home. When you’re in that absolutely different world with different roles and different relationships, everything is just crazy different. You’re living a different life. And you’re kind of in it for eight months and you start to forget about like how to be normal, normal regular people live in normal life at home hearing some music.
Balaklava Blues playing FME, Rouyn-Noranda
PAN M 360: So did that feeling of wanting to bring home through music lead to the decision of going back to Ukraine? Marichka, I know your brother is on the frontline as well.
Marichka Marczyk: Yes to visit my brother who is fighting, and play for him and his friends.
MarkMarczyk: You know, before we went, we did a big fundraising concert so that we could buy a truck for Max and his battalion, and then we went on with the humanitarian aid convoy to the frontline to deliver that stuff. But for me, what was actually the most emotional and maybe illogical, but the most human part of it was the way Marchika described it to me originally when she told me we should go. She said, “I want to bring him a piece of cake.” Because the thing that he said he wanted, most of all, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, bring me a bulletproof vest, or I need warm winter clothes. It’s like, ‘I want a piece of cake. Baked from home.’
PAN M 360: And you two brought that cake all the way through the checkpoints?
MarkMarczyk: Yeah. Imagine Marichka traveling for the 23 hours that it took to get across the country through 40 block posts, on like rickety roads going through all sorts of detours because bridges had been bombed. And she has this cake on her shaking on her lap. Then getting to this busted out, complete ghost town, to the gas station, with bombed-out vehicles that are all being torn apart for spare parts, and where they’re stationed. And being like, ‘Here you go, here’s a cake and a hug’ and just this like, moment of joy and everybody eating the cake and us playing traditional music, with the fire going, and some like food being barbecued.
PAN M 360: Going back to that feeling of home Marichka was talking about.
MarkMarczyk: Exactly. That feeling of we know this isn’t normal. We’re away from our home. Our family is in Poland. Everybody is uprooted in one way or another. And whether it’s on the frontline or in the centre of the city, or in a cave that’s also being bombed, people want a sense of home. Feeling ‘I’m not alone. My life still has a sense of normalcy. It’s not only darkness.’
Marichka Marczyk: It was really emotional for me to visit my brother because it was like three years since I had seen him. And then here I am with this cake.
PAN M 360: I’m sure in moments like that it’s really hard to process what’s actually going on and then when you go back and you’re no longer in the thick of it, you can.
MarkMarczyk: Oskar, our drummer, and third member, was actually smoking on the balcony in the hotel when the rocket hit Kyiv. So he saw it coming and hit the building. But it’s hard to react. It was like ‘OK I guess we should go to the bomb shelter. Some people are just continuing with their normal life. Then we went to Portugal to perform at WOMEX [a big international world music festival] and Oskar was smoking on the balcony again and he comes back and says ‘It just hit me.’ There’s still a similar European vibe to Ukraine and Portugal, and he forgot where he was for a second. And he just kept looking up expecting to see something explode.
PAN M 360: It’s also heartbreaking, but also powerful to hear that people in Ukraine are still going on with their daily lives and not just living in fear from a bomb attack.
MarkMarczyk: It’s more of a determination. Because when these bombings are happening, like you see, people are pissed. Like they’re upset and it’s a thing that is empowering as you said. It’s not letting that anger turn into fear or apathy or depression. They’re turning that anger into action, determination, and willpower. it’s a very like both individual but then also a collective decision that ‘We will win. That feeling is unbelievable. ‘I’m just gonna go do my own thing because these people aren’t going to fuck with me. Or somebody else will be like, ‘We’re going to win but right now, I need to get in the bomb shelter because I can’t do anything because I gotta survive so I can kick ass. Or I’m gonna join the military and fight right now, even though I’m a beekeeper in my normal life.
PAN M 360: Getting into music, and this new album, LET ME OUT, these songs are a reworking of traditional Ukrainian folk songs. Marichka I know to school for ethnomusicology so you must have a database of these traditional songs?
Marichka Marczyk: Yes. What we did when we collected them was canoeing in the summer, like the whole summer, to different groups of people to collect the songs in the river. So we would just stop to be making the camp and collect the song in the villages. And we did that year by year, in the summer only. And so this is a collection not only by me but from my different ethnomusicologists. These songs are about calling different gods and spirits or calling summer or spring, or like a lot of songs about love. But of course, there are also tragedies and it can in some cases be because of oppression, oppression from a political force.
PAN M 360:And where did the idea to add EDM and trance music to these traditional songs come from?
Marichka Marczyk: Well, I am living in this tradition of passing down songs for almost 30 years, in my life, like deeply. So I have this, this soul spirit. So this is my life. And like, in my artistic life, I always did something with these songs, but mostly just think it like in their original form. But then, when I met Mark, we decided, like, let’s combine these two different cultures.
MarkMarczyk: There’s a political and emotional reason for wanting to continue to go deep into these Ukrainian songs. But like hip-hop and trap, they come from really traumatized cultures. Right? And what’s amazing about it is that they come from these traumatized cultures that turn that pain into joy and power. EDM is on a completely different spectrum but also the same. It takes the boredom of the middle class, a suburbia kind of thing, and turns it into this sort of like roller coaster ride that is predictable yet very powerful with these aggressive sounds. Dubstep is tied to metal as well, and it felt like something worth exploring in the context of war. That’s why we named the band Balaklava Blues; because blues is the ultimate form that sort of did that. Started with people that were basically singing through the worst possible experience that any human can feel, and then turning it into a source of empowerment, expression, and humanity. That’s just what we wanted to achieve with our music and what we feel Ukrainian music has in it and what we wanted to share.
In Montreal, the second half of November has been the peak period for the excellent Bach Festival for the past fifteen years, and the concert on Thursday promises to be one of the most remarkable in its schedule: from Germany, the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart welds together a baroque orchestra and a choir, the Gächinger Kantorei, making for a perfectly matched early music ensemble.
Led by Hans-Christoph Rademann, the ensemble has earned an international reputation for its Stuttgart Bach style, which experts recognize as emotionally charged and virtuosically precise.
To get us up to speed on the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart’s Montreal stop at the Maison symphonique this Thursday, 7:30 p.m., PAN M 360 talks with tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson, who plays St. John the Evangelist in JS Bach’s St. John Passion, BWV 245, composed by the cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig shortly after he took office and premiered on Good Friday, April 7, 1724. Here we are on November 17, 2022 and the masterpiece remains a masterpiece of the Baroque period in the field of sacred music.
PAN M 360: JS Bach is the central composer of this ensemble, but you are also involved in many types of Baroque?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: Yes, I would say that Bach is definitely central, and Baroque music is at the heart of the ensemble. But Mr. Rademann can also conduct Haydn, Mozart or Schumann.
PAN M 360: What is your personal connection to the St. John Passion?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: Well, there is probably no work that I have sung as much as this one. I’ve done it in several ensembles, and also with dancers, in a reduced formation with two instruments or even with children. So it’s evolved with me for at least the last 10 years of my career.
PAN M 360: How do you situate this work in relation to other large-scale works by Bach?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: It’s a very dramatic work, almost suitable for an opera. Whereas Bach’s Matthew Passion, for example, is more contemplative. More sacred in a way. More spiritual than theatrical, although the St. John Passion is also very spiritual.
PAN M 360: So the role of the Evangelist would be much more “theatrical” than other dramatic incarnations of Bach’s passions.
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: Yes. In this St. John Passion, the singer has to have more weapons in his arsenal to portray St. John than is the case in the St. Matthew Passion. I think the arias in this work are also different in text and approach.
PAN M 360: If you compare this work to others by JS Bach, how would you rate its level of difficulty?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: I think that singing Bach is always very difficult. I’ve never sung a Bach Passion and thought it was very simple. I mean, actually, it’s always longer to master, it takes a lot more concentration and energy to bring the whole story to the table, whereas a cantata is much shorter, the message is shorter.
PAN M 360: And how do you see the performance of this piece by this ensemble evolving. Where were you before? Where are you now?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: After the departure of its founder Helmuth Rilling and the arrival of Mr. Rademann, the ensemble has changed significantly. Today, for example, the works are performed exclusively on period instruments. Rademann’s musical brain is completely different from Rilling’s. I must add that the former conductor was fantastic in his own way. But I didn’t feel that it was in the direction of today’s baroque revival, initiated by Johann Nikolaus Harnoncourt. And I think that this music is more accurately performed today, it is in my opinion more beautiful with period instruments. And today you have performers who focus on baroque music and who have necessarily developed an expertise in this sense. Of course, it’s a matter of taste, of course, but personally I think it’s much better in general. And I also like the theological dimension in his conducting.
PAN M 360: What do you mean?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: I mean that Rademann is really fascinated by the sacred text, by what is to be portrayed, by what Bach was thinking about when he composed the work in question. He is not only thinking about how the work should sound according to the instructions of his score, he is also thinking about the sacred text carried by the music. And so he pays particular attention to all the phrases, all the words pronounced by the soloists in order to translate the sacred text as faithfully as possible. This can be seen in the vocal inflections, for example, when Jesus appears before Pilate and the latter tries to persuade himself that he is higher than him and his god, that he is the person with the power. This kind of detail suggested by Rademann seems to me to be like gold dust that is deposited on the work thus interpreted.
PAN M 360: When conducting or playing the music of such a work based on a religious text, does believing in it really elevate the interpretation in your opinion?
BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: It is the same thing if you make of the opera ; you have to get to the heart of the script. You have also to get to the heart of the character or characters you have to play. You have to understand the context of the libretto and find a kind of truth for yourself as a performer, a truth sometimes related to your own life. So that’s what you have to do here with a text from the Bible. I’m personally very religious, Rademann is also religious as are other people in the orchestra. Others are not. In fact, you don’t have to be a believer or a religious person at all for this interpretation, you have to go deep into the theme of the work.
PAN M 360: Whether the members of your ensemble believe or not, most of them come from the German Lutheran tradition, that is, a great mystical connection between music and the sacred. So you are connected to this tradition yourself, aren’t you? BENEDIKT KRISTJANSSON: Yes, absolutely. My father was a bishop, so I was brought up in that environment and I still have the values of that. That said, belief is not a prerequisite for a great interpretation of a sacred text set to music. It is an individual choice and you choose what you want when you absorb that knowledge as an artist.
After spending a number of years living in southern Finland, Anna Näkkäläjärvi-Länsman decided to settle up north, in Nuorgam, where the Sámi people live. Anna has Sámi heritage from her father’s side, she wanted to reconnect with this culture. With a strong background in musical studies–clarinet, among other things– at the Tampere Conservatory and at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Anna’s interests initially lay in folk music from the region of Karelia. Then it evolved to joik, the traditional singing of the Sámis, which encompasses both pragmatic and spiritual components. So this is how the Ánnámáret project was born.
Anna will be performing with other indigenous artists at La Sala Rossa, this Wednesday afternoon. And later that day, she’ll play at Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus du Mile-End, for a concert arranged by Centre des musiques du monde. Pan M 360 talked to Anna Näkkäläjärvi-Länsman last weekend, a few hours before her long flight to Montréal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MoZbRa9ydQ&t=75s
Pan M 360: Hello Anna, are you in Nuorgam? How is the weather there?
Anna Näkkäläjärvi-Länsman: Hi! We’ve had snow, but now we’re afraid it’ll melt. Hopefully, the cold will last, so the snow stays.
Pan M 360: Joik is one of the traditional forms of singing, in Sámi culture. I guess the only part of it that we, North Americans, can relate to is the throat-singing component, which we hear in Inuit music here. But joik is complex and comprised of many more elements. Can you give tell us a bit about it?
Anna N.-L.: It is music but also social communication. In the old days, joik was an extension of the language. Some things were easier to discuss by joiking. Nowadays, it is predominately used as music. Joiking describes animals or persons, who are then described in the melodies. It is a special way of functioning. So I could be joiking you. Joiks are closely connected to the land. For instance, they could describe the herding of reindeer in a particular area. The lyrics can also be improvised. It is complex because there is so much improvisation in it. You have to rely on the style too, within a specific aesthetic framework.
Pan M 360: Your musical partner is Ilkka Heinonen, a classically-trained musician who plays the jouhikko, a Finnish lyre. How did you start playing together?
Anna N.-L.: As a teenager, I started joiking, but then I decided to learn clarinet. I wanted to make a career playing in an orchestra. So I started studying music at the Tampere Conservatory, then I went to Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Ilkka and I met in Tampere. I was interested in Finnish folk music, and so was he. So we started playing together and we went abroad. Then I felt interested in joiking again, so that was when Ilkka and I made our first experiments with the jouhikko; we I felt it would work well together. By the way, in Montréal we’re going to do some of the original joiks we did together twenty years ago! It’s funny because we were studying classical music very seriously, and we ended up doing something totally different.
Then we discussed how we would expand this, in order to make a full album, for arrangements and so on. So Ilkka talked to Turkka, who agreed to collaborate with us. It worked like a dream, really, because Turkka keeps his electronic elements intimate and simple, they don’t hinder the humanity and the organic aspect of the joiks and the jouhikko. Among other things, Turkka uses sounds that he recorded in the open air, in nature. He likes to experiment.
Pan M 360: The jouhikko has four strings and has to be played with a bow. I read somewhere it comes from Wales and is also used in Estonian music?
Anna N.-L.: Yes, it has three or four strings, it depends. We had the idea of using it when we were playing a folk song from Karelia, a region in Finland. While singing I thought I could also joik. It involved different vocal techniques. The melody was Karelian, but I was adding my thing to it. It somehow worked very well. The “Joik of the Bear” was among of the first ones we did together. I felt that my voice and the sound of the jouhikko made a good combination. Because the joik and the jouhikko are similar in that they don’t comprise big scales or chromatic elements. Only a few tones; we play with them and improvise.
Pan M 360: You’re singing in Sámi. Is it your mother tongue?
Anna N.-L.: I learned Sámi and Finnish both; my father is Sámi and my mother is Finnish. Multicultural families are quite common nowadays. So I’ve been speaking Sámi since I was a child. And while I was living in southern Finland, I tried to maintain and reinforce it as much as possible, given that I was far from any Sámi communities. Social media wasn’t very strong then. There was that Sámi magazine which I subscribed to.
Pan M 360: You will be taking part in Mundial Montréal Festival this Wednesday in the afternoon, but you’ll also do a concert programmed by Centre des musiques du monde later that day. Will the two performances be similar?
Anna N.-L.: No, the Mundial concert will be in a three-musician configuration, with Ilkka Heinonen on the jouhikko and Turkka Inkilä handling the electronics. And also my longtime friend Marja Viitahuh for the visuals. She’s using pictures that she’s taken up north, I hope it’ll make you travel! As for the Centre des musiques du monde concert, it’ll feature Ilkka and me as a duo, and there will also be solo parts. I’m planning on doing more traditional joiks, that evening.
Pan M 360: Nieguid duovdagat, which means “Dreamscapes,” is the name of the album you released last year. It certainly has an oniric or dreamy quality. It was very well-received, it earned you the Folk Album of the Year prize in Finland.
Anna N.-L.: Yes, and it was the first Sámi album to win that prize!
Pan M 360: Congratulations! Is there another one in the works?
Anna N.-L.: Oh yes, I’ve got many-many more joiks ready, we’re planning on recording the album next year. We’re going to perform one of those new joiks on Wednesday evening, as a matter of fact. Nieguid duovdagat was more about going back to our roots, looking to archives, searching for our ancestors, and wondering about the relationship between their lifestyle and ours. It’s a little bit like a crisis when you think about it. More like a dreamy world. But now my idea is to joik about things that are sacred in our lives, and have been for thousands of years. Like the land and the reindeer. About how things were before Christianity. What did people believe then, and how much of it do we still believe in today, in our ordinary lives? What makes the living Sámi culture?
Pan M 360: Well, thank you for this conversation, Anna, we’re really looking forward to hearing and seeing Ánnámáret on Wednesday!
Photo credit: Marja Viitahuh.
ÁNNÁMÁRET PLAYS LA SALA ROSSA THIS WEDNESDAY AT 3 P.M. FOR MUNDIAL MONTRÉAL (INFO AND TICKETS HERE), AND ÉGLISE SAINT-ENFANT-JÉSUS DU MILE-END FOR CENTRE DES MUSIQUES DU MONDE , ALSO ON WEDNESDAY AT 8 P.M (INFO AND TICKETS HERE).
Montreal’s ambient dream pop artist, Naomie de Lorimier, has performed within various projects in Quebec’s underground for many years, such as playing with Klô Pelgag, Joni Void, Laurence-Anne, and more recently, Jonathan Personne as well as Lumière. With her own project, N Nao—a collaboration between her writing partner, Charles Marsolais-Ricard, Lysandre Ménard (Lysandre, Helena Deland), Étienne Dupré (Duu, zouz, Klô Pelgag), and Samuel Gougoux (TDA, Corridor, Kee Avil, VICTIME)—de Lorimier creates haunting and meaningful dream pop that grips the heartstrings and soul.
Utilizing an array of samplers, acoustic guitar, and vocal delays, N Nao, feels like a performance from a siren, luring you in ever so slowly, to show you an imagined, but attainable world of tranquility and grace.
The latest single “La plus belle chose,” is the first offering of N Nao’s second album which is due March next year. Ahead of her performance at M For Montreal on Nov. 16 at Le Ministère w/ Bibi Club, Valence, and Witch Prophet, we spoke with Naomie one afternoon about this version of her new single, lucid dreaming, and now being a part of the Mothland family.
PAN M 360: Hi Naomie. Congrats on the new release. What led to this bigger band version of “La plus belle chose”?
Naomie de Lorimier: When I released the EP, the acoustic version was meant to be the demo for the album version. So I wasn’t supposed to release the older guitar and voice version. But I felt like I had to because I don’t know. Sometimes you feel like you have to do something. I really like those home recordings live with, like few instruments. This new one is actually two years old, but I just released it.
PAN M 360: The latest version is gorgeously mixed and very calming and very trancey. I love the sample of the strings.
Naomie de Lorimier: Oh thank you. That string sample started with a conversation with me and Charles Marsolais-Ricard who is like half of N Nao. Often we jam and he has ideas of samples to mix with my lyrics. It’s very interesting to have that relationship with him.
PAN M 360: So he’s the co-founder of N Nao with you?
Naomie de Lorimier: Exact. He’s been there from the beginning. But I mean, it’s my songs, like it’s my songwriting, but Charles is the first person who ever heard a song from me, you know? So he’s really like important in the history of the project.
PAN M 360: And for the creative process too?
Naomie de Lorimier: Yeah exactly. We always talk about music. We live together and we just like bounce and concepts and he’s like, art history master if I can say that, so from a conceptual aspect like he’s the core.
PAN M 360: You work a lot with found sounds in your music and use them as samples. Are these recordings you make yourself or do you pull from a sample library?
Naomie de Lorimier: I really play with the tapes. I have a Tascam 4-track and since the beginning of the project, I have recorded on tape. Just things from my daily life when I’m walking in the forest or when I’m at a park or when I’m skating. Tapes for me are super democratic. Like you can buy one for $1 at the Renaissance and I have like a few tape machines. So I use them as field recordings in our music. And like we have also a home studio so most of the album, maybe half of the recordings are homemade.
PAN M 360: So that is definitely part of your artistic process?
Naomie de Lorimier: Yes it’s very important for me. I like to collect things like flowers, rocks, and sounds. And you know, video, so it’s all part of the same archive. Like archival archeology? The field recordings are kind of more like a daily routine, maybe like a ritual of some sort. Because I’m mostly inspired by my dreams. And my research is really subconscious. So it’s a bit like, I’m doing it without knowing what will be the result. And then, like, when I re-listen to it, it kind of feels like it wasn’t me who made it. It’s a bit like with my video because I’m shooting with 8 mm. So, like, when I memorize it, two years later, I feel like it happened in a dream.
PAN M 360: You said you’re kind of inspired by your dreams. So do you like to write down your dreams after you wake up? Or do you kind of remember the feeling or the thoughts in them?
Naomie de Lorimier: It’s a really interesting question because you can become better at remembering your dreams. If you explain them to someone and if you talk about your dreams in your daily life, you will connect your conscious and your subconscious in a way. Like, right now we’re talking about dreams. So maybe in my dream, I will remember that conversation and it will be like a mirroring thing. So I like to tell them to my partner when I wake up. But also, when I used to be at Concordia, I tried to apply techniques. So like when you wake up, you don’t drink coffee, you go back to your dreams, and then you try to do a lucid dream.
PAN M 360: Yes lucid dreaming has always alluded me.
Naomie de Lorimier: I feel like that kind of training, it’s to become more porous, like the boundary between my conscious and subconscious realms. So when I’m unconscious, I feel like I can go back to that state. Like when I’m playing music and when I compose, I’m trying to go back to that state.
PAN M 360: So you lucid dream often?
Naomie de Lorimier: Well it’s hard to become a lucid dreamer ’cause it takes lots of training. But once I dreamt of like an installation, and I really felt like I got it, you know? And afterward, I remade it in real life, in my sculpture class. And that was the time that I was more close to it, but yeah, I’m not so good yet. Flying is super hard in the dream for example.
PAN M 360: Now that you’re part of the Mothland label, has that changed your artistic process in any way?
Naomie de Lorimier: My artistic practice hasn’t really changed, but maybe the only thing that has changed is that maybe I am more confident now. To have people that are really excited and trusting of what I’m doing. When I like, speak to them. I feel more surrounded. And having people around me makes me want to put more time into doing my art. So it’s been really nice.
PAN M 360: I’ve seen you live a few times and every time you wear the same dress and eventually spray water from my spray bottle onto yourself. It’s kind of like theatre in a way.
Naomie de Lorimier: Yes! I kind of like to apply my artistic background to my musical performance and like to blur the line between what is real and what is sort of dream-like. So the audience is kind of like ‘What did I just see?’ With the water, it’s like cleaning myself, feeling a bit like when you take a bath; it can be sensual in a way. And I am like a swimmer so when I do it on stage, I feel refreshed. And yeah, I just do it when I sing “Water and Dreams.” So I made that connection to that song.
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