Dossiers

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. Sixth subject in our series: Alain Trudel, conductor and artistic director of l’Orchestre Symphonique de Laval.

REFRAIN, ou le Regroupement des festivals régionaux artistiques indépendants, was born in the midst of quarantine, in April 2020, when many festivals were shaken by doubt, distraught, not knowing if their events would take place. It was at that time that Patrick Kearny, general director of the Santa Teresa festival, had the idea of founding an associative structure to promote small and medium festivals in Quebec.

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. Fifth subject in our series: Véronique Lacroix, artistic director of l’Ensemble contemporain de Montréal.

Profoundly innovative and enormously influential, Italian composer Ennio Morricone is simply the most important name in music for motion pictures – a name now uttered most disconsolately, following the Maestro’s passing on July 6, 2020, at the age of 91. He left us with hundreds of film scores to his credit, spanning all genres (and production budgets!) and marked by many musical moments that have haunted the memories of generations of film and music lovers.

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. Fourth topic in our series: Julien Proulx, artistic director and conductor of the Orchestre symphonique de Drummondville.

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. Third topic in our series: Walter Boudreau, conductor and artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec.

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. Second topic in our series: Jean-Philippe Tremblay, founder of L’Orchestre de la francophonie.

Cancellation, postponement, de-quarantining, a possible second wave… What will autumn look like? How to reconcile concerts and social distancing? In our new dossier series, we’ve asked the artistic directors of Quebec classical ensembles and orchestras a few questions, to get a sense of what’s in the works. First topic in our series: Normand Forget, artistic director of Nouvel Ensemble Moderne.

There are some sweet sounds for a swell cause to be found on the current release from the Latin-leaning but globally minded label Shika Shika. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean assembles diverse talent from across the region, united in their knack for reconciling local tradition and transnational tech trends – and a determination to preserve winged wildlife at desperate risk in their own backyards.

The Polaris Music Prize, which annually honours and rewards albums by Canadian artists, unveiled its Long List of 40 albums on Monday.

Exactly 20 years ago, an unprecedented orchestral display of contemporary music, since unequalled, took place at the foot of St. Joseph’s Oratory: La Symphonie du millénaire. Walter Boudreau, Artistic Director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) had imagined this collective work being performed in front of 50,000 spectators, a sort of mini-Woodstock of contemporary music.

Who would have thought that music streaming would drop globally by ten to 20 percent since the beginning of the pandemic? Didn’t it seem that a confined population would listen to more music? And… who could have predicted that classical, jazz, and ambient music would rise against the tide?

Composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki, certainly one of the most prominent musicians of the last six decades, died recently of “a long illness” that apparently had nothing to do with COVID-19.

A Cameroonian of Douala and Yabassi descent, Manu Dibango was the first great African musician to perish from Covid-19 at the venerable age of 86. Flagship artist of pan-African culture, he was at the forefront of all forward motion, from his connecting with compatriot Francis Bebey in the 1950s until his tragic death on Tuesday 24 March 2020. At the turn of the 1970s, Papa Groove (one of his nicknames) was already uniting the main African styles in vogue at the time – afrobeat, highlife, soukouss, etc. – and he was a pioneer in the development of a new style. This funkadelic groove, post-James Brown and contemporary to George Clinton, with its jazzy and Afro-Caribbean flavours, was also marked by an authentically pan-African approach developed by the Cameroonian multi-instrumentalist.