Photo credit: George Dutil
At the time of posting, the program of this concert was not quite complete, but it will include:
Entre chien et loup, by André Hamel…
For baritone saxophone and real-time digital processing
…su Innocente X…, by Donald J. Stewart…
For saxophone quartet
La Ballade de Mon’onc Ovide II, an original by Quasar and guests
For saxophone quartet, electric bass and Babel Table.
At the risk of repeating ourselves, let us specify that everything will be played live, with all the risks that this entails.
Marie-Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard will be at the Réserve phonique, the band’s rehearsal space in the Ahuntsic neighbourhood, André Leroux will be at home in La Petite Patrie and Mathieu Leclair will also be at home in Ahuntsic.
Guest musicians Jean-François Laporte, on the Babel Table, and Éric Normand, on electric bass, will also be live from the Saint-Michel and Rimouski neighbourhoods respectively.
Quasar (ˈkwāˌzär): noun – Astronomy. A massive and extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy, and typically having a starlike image in a telescope. It has been suggested that quasars contain massive black holes and may represent a stage in the evolution of some galaxies. Origin: 1964 contraction of quasi-stellar radio source. – Oxford Dictionary
Since 1994, the name also designates a Montreal saxophone quartet dedicated to the creation and promotion of contemporary music.
It is worth noting that its members have remained the same since its founding: Marie-Chantal Leclair, soprano saxophone, and artistic and general director; Jean-Marc Bouchard, baritone saxophone and director of operations; Mathieu Leclair, alto saxophone and administrative director; and last but not least, André Leroux, tenor saxophone, also very active on the Montreal jazz scene, notably with François Bourassa as a regular member of his quartet, with the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal, Michel Cusson, James Gelfand, and the late Vic Vogel.
Although the group has been in existence for more than 25 years, winning six Opus Awards, premiering more than 150 works with composers from here and elsewhere, and performing across Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Asia, and in a dozen European countries, it remains little-known in Quebec.
Meeting with Marie-Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard, partners on stage and off
How did it all begin? What were their first musical emotions?
Marie-Chantal remembers her father playing the organ in the family living room, and that he loved the mambo. A little later, when the band was frequently on the radio, she liked the Supertramp pieces that featured saxophone solos. In grade 10, she remembers playing the Rocky theme on the saxophone, and experiencing a true epiphany. Also, by the age of 12, she knew she wanted to study music. And when she began her studies, her eagerness to learn was such that, “by the third week, I had gone through the year’s method manual,” she recalls.
In Jean-Marc’s case, it was Ian Anderson’s flute in Jethro Tull that first caught his attention. So much so that he quickly began taking lessons. Then, one day, his teacher, who also played the saxophone, gave him a demonstration of his know-how on this instrument. “Wow,” he recalls, “the sax sounded as loud as ten flutes!” Jean-Marc bought one soon after.
Although Jean-Marc and André met at CEGEP, and started playing together at that time, it was at Université de Montréal, in René Masino’s class, that the four members of Quasar met.
Since the repertoire of music for quartet was quite limited – apart from the great classics, of course – their teacher encouraged them to mingle with the students in the composition classes. Thus, as Marie-Chantal says, “it is not so much works as the musical practice of creative music that led us in this direction.”
PAN M 360: But why a saxophone quartet, why did you choose to be in a group?
Marie-Chantal: Because it’s more fun to be in a group than to be a soloist. As long as you put energy into a project, it’s more fun and stimulating to be in a group. At the same time, it’s not anonymous like in a big orchestra. When there are four of you, it’s a bit like being four soloists.
Like us, our goal is not to champion the saxophone, but to do interesting music projects, it remains a vehicle that offers a lot of possibilities. With the four saxes, the sound palette is really wide. There’s an amazing blend because it’s the same family of instruments.
PAN M 360: How was the name of the band chosen?
Jean-Marc: There’s still a dispute about who came up with the name, because we can’t remember, it’s been too long. But what we do remember is that we wanted a short, bilingual name.
Marie-Chantal: It doesn’t matter who came up with it, the important thing is that there was a consensus on the name. I can still remember sitting at the table with an open dictionary… There was also a joke about being the astronauts of the world of sound… the notion of the cosmos, of research, of exploration of a still unknown world…
Jean-Marc: There was also the question of the consonance between quasar and quartet.
At the time of Quasar’s arrival on the Quebec music scene in 1994, there were very few chamber music ensembles dedicated to creative music: the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (now ECM+) was founded in 1988 and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) in 1989. It was only afterwards that the Quatuor Molinari (1997), the Trio Fibonacci (1998) and the Quatuor Bozzini (1999) were added.
PAN M 360: Were there any moments during these 25 years when you felt like going in musical directions other than contemporary music? Were there any temptations or proposals from outside?
Marie-Chantal: As we’re versatile – creation is a term that encompasses a lot – our project, us, it’s not just to make ‘contemporary music’ à la Boulez. It can also be improvisation. Sometimes we’ve done things a little more…
Jean-Marc: We played The Nutcracker, for example, because we had to make a living.
Marie-Chantal: Superb arrangements, mind you.
Jean-Marc: We take the gigs that come by. If someone wants us to play “Rhapsody in Blue”, we’ll play it. But the reason we’re still here is that we’ve always put the artistic project first. If you try to wear too many hats at the same time, at some point, what’s your identity? Our identity is clear: we’re a creative group, but if opportunities arise…
Marie-Chantal: The group has its integrity, but we’re not purists.
Jean-Marc: Our job as performers is to bear witness to what’s going on. It’s not just this composer or this school…
Marie-Chantal: We also have a kind of mission in relation to our community, that of musicians, listeners and creators, we have a duty to be open.
This responsibility to the community was apparent from the first concert, which included four premieres, and has never been questioned since. Indeed, collaborative projects have accrued over the years, both with composers from here (from Jean-François Laporte, Tim Brady, and Denis Gougeon to André Hamel and Michel Frigon, as well as Monique Jean and Simon Martin, to name but a few), and from abroad.
Marie-Chantal: Quasar is definitely more exploratory now than it was in its early days. There are things we do today that would not even have been conceivable 20 years ago. Through contact with composers, through exchanges with them and the sound research we’ve done together, our palette has broadened, the group has developed a language, its own language.
Jean-Marc: There’s also the fact that electronic music has had a growing influence on instrumental music, and in return, instrumental music has begun to influence electronic music.
Marie-Chantal: In the same way that improvised music began to influence written music through cross-pollination.
PAN M 360: With regard to the dissemination of creative music, have you noticed any changes over the past 25 years?
Jean-Marc: Yes, there has been a major change, it was the death of Radio-Canada radio. Hélène Prévost [who hosted the new-music program Le Navire Night, one of the many programs dropped during the “Lafrance-Rabinovitch reform” in 2004, which sounded the death knell for the CBC radio’s cultural channel] was one of the first to encourage us. If she knew, for example, that we were giving a concert in Jonquière, she would ask a team there to go and record it. At the time, it was common for Radio-Canada to travel and record two or three Quasar concerts every year.
Our first record was made thanks to Radio-Canada. We recorded it in Studio 12, for a whole week, in great conditions, especially for a young band like us who was just starting out.
This sudden change of direction by the state-owned company had a major impact on the dissemination of so-called creative music such as Quasar. All the more so as this rupture had a perverse effect: as it was suddenly no longer broadcast, this music was no longer as “visible”, and the coverage it had enjoyed until then in the print media also ceased.
Marie-Chantal: Except that we worked a lot on self-releasing. Quasar produces its own concerts. Our model is not unique in the world, that’s for sure, but in Europe it works much less like that. There’s more money to subsidize the work of artists, it’s true, but the structures are bigger.
If we decide to do such and such a concert next year, we don’t have to convince a producer-broadcaster to take our show. We can say, we believe in this project, and then we do it. It gives us a lot of artistic independence.
After that, we have to be accountable to the public, to the people who give us grants, of course, but we’re more independent. In fact, the quartet has been incorporated since 2000. We’ve also worked hard, establishing production partnerships, with the SMCQ, for example, with Code d’accès, with Sixtrum, with SuperMusique….
Things improved recently when the budgets allocated to culture and the Canada Council for the Arts were increased [with the arrival of a new government following Stephen Harper’s]. That too had an impact, and it’s not insignificant. But before, because the creative music community is quite poor, people who worked together were more cohesive. That’s how le Vivier [of which Marie-Chantal is the current Chair of the Board] came into being [in 2007], people were used to working together.
PAN M 360: About le Vivier, what do you think has changed since its arrival?
Jean-Marc: In fact, the positive impact of le Vivier is just beginning to be felt. The organization is now better structured, better organized. Concert attendance figures are on the rise. We’re on the right track.
Marie-Chantal: The idea is that groups like ours can focus on the artistic dimension of their work and that the presenter organizations are more concerned with publicizing the concerts and getting people in the venues, which is still a challenge. It takes time to get there. It takes sustained work, for audience development.
We’re aware that we’re not making music for the masses, they’re not going to invite us to do the half-time show at the Super Bowl, but there are still a lot of people who are curious.
We went to play at C2 Montréal, we did the opening number of the conference with Jean-François Laporte’s instruments, and people were tripping. Even when we were out in the regions, people liked it.
For the past three years, the quartet has finally had a place to rehearse on a regular basis, three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Initially, Marie-Chantal feared that this schedule would be too restrictive, but the group quickly realized that this measure was much simpler than organizing rehearsals on an ad hoc basis, which always raises the same age-old problems of availability.
Also, as Jean-Marc says, “it takes up space, but once it’s been sorted out…”
“It changed our lives!” Marie-Chantal concludes.
PAN M 360: What is the most difficult thing you find in your job?
Jean-Marc: It’s the organization, the logistics…
Marie-Chantal: Nothing’s ever taken for granted.
Jean-Marc: When you have to devote a lot of time to it, you don’t have enough time to rest, and in the long run, it’s exhausting. When we don’t have time to do our work in a calm and relaxed manner. And of course, on tour, with even more logistics?
PAN M 360: What gives you the most pleasure?
Marie-Chantal: Playing!
Jean-Marc: The first glass of wine after the concert.
Marie-Chantal: It’s when you feel the current is flowing with the audience, that’s the fun.
PAN M 360: Are there countries where the audiences are particularly receptive, where the current flows more easily?
Marie-Chantal: We did a concert in St. Petersburg, I wailed so loud…
Jean-Marc: On that tour [Russia and Estonia in 2014], it was sold out every night.
Marie-Chantal: So we were in St. Petersburg and we were playing a piece by Glazunov – we always have interpreters on those trips – I was talking to the audience, but in English, I was explaining that for us Quebecois, coming to play like that in their own country, in a country with a great musical tradition… and people were listening, I felt them so present, I became super moved…
In Estonia too, it was special.
Jean-Marc: Yes, it’s the place with the most choirs in the world. There’s a choir festival in the spring, I think there are 10,000 of them, a huge choir.
There was a time when this was the only context in which citizens had the right to speak their language, because under the Soviet regime, they were obliged to speak Russian at all times, but when the time came to sing – and they are a nation of singers – they could express themselves in their language.
On that tour, we went to nine cities, some of which were not very populous, but it was always full, the mayor was there, the children in the front row….
Marie-Chantal: When there’s a concert, it’s important for these people. Sometimes there were even people standing because they’d sold too many tickets.
Jean-Marc: Often in the central squares in those cities, the statue you see is not a politician, but a musician, with his accordion for example.
Marie-Chantal: Yeah, in Eastern European countries, music is important. It was touching.
PANM 360: What are your plans for the 26th season?
Marie-Chantal: We have international exchanges planned, that’s interesting. One with the Basque countries, musicians and composers, and another with the city of Hanover. We go there and they come here, and we work together on pieces.
Jean-Marc: Commissions for Quebecois, commissions for Germans…
Marie-Chantal: There’s also the return of Je ne suis pas un robot at the Gesù in December [the revival of the “tragicomic experimental technopera-ballet” that in addition to Quasar brought together Jérôme Minière (music, texts and dramaturgy), Jean-François Laporte (music, instrumental design) and Marie-Pierre Normand (set and costume design), presented at the Éthel parking lot in Verdun in the summer of 2019].
Jean-Marc: In October there’s a play by Thierry Tidrow, a Franco-Ontarian who lives in Dortmund, Germany. It’s musical theatre, but more musical than theatrical.
As part of the MNM festival, there is also a one-hour work by Walter Boudreau, a saxophone quartet. It’s a revival of a work called Chaleurs, which was composed [in 1985-86] for a ballet by Paul-André Fortier, but this time without dance.
Marie-Chantal: We’re going to be hot regardless.
And this Saturday, April 25 at 4 pm, don’t forget, there will be the live concert – the third broadcast on the group’s Facebook page.
