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It brings us great joy to work with all generations of creators. Above all else, we aim to give them opportunities to express themselves without limits on their creativity. Here is a snapshot of some of the projects that have driven us this year!
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We are very grateful that school visits were permitted in March, and we were able to return to Stephanie Caron's classroom and lead creative workshops
with her music students. To stimulate their imagination, we performed excerpts from Tanya Tagaq's Sivunittinni and our own violinist Alissa Cheung's du nord - two works inspired by throat singing and a painting by Jean-Paul Riopelle, respectively. (Read our blog)
In small groups, the students developed new graphic scores or texts for the quartet, setting imaginary stories
to music. The teenagers' joy was palpable; everyone was busied in their corner of the auditorium with paper, pencil and imagination. We spoke a lot about COVID-19, loneliness, environmental concerns, the end of the world, but also about resilience and hope for better days. We felt privileged to have been at the heart of such intimate thoughts and that music could be a positive outlet for the expression of our youth.
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A student joins us in the performance of their work depicting the life cycle of a bee. Click here or on the image above to hear this work and all the other works created in this workshop.
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Exploration of timbre: ACTOR residency with Jimmie Leblanc and Robert Hasegawa
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Thanks to funding from Analysis Creation and Teaching of Orchestration, we have undertaken a multi-phase composition project with two composers from McGill, Chelsea Komschlies and Marilou Buron, two composers from l'Université de Montréal, Miko Sabatino and Schowan Tavakol, and two musicologists from McGill, Emanuelle
Majeau-Bettez and Jade Roth, guided by mentors Jimmie Leblanc (UdeM, composition) and Robert Hasegawa (McGill, theory). The objective of this research is to explore the plethora of timbral and orchestrational possibilities of the string quartet. The composers have found several sources of inspiration: Iranian folk music, synesthesia, water evaporation... The musicologists are documenting our sonic research and will write articles on this process of discovery. The works will be presented in concert in 2022. We look forward to seeing the new sketches during the second part of the residency in the fall!
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Showan Tavakol demonstrates to us some idioms of Iranian music.
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Young performers from Brandon,
Manitoba : Eckhardt-Gramatté
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Working with performers matters to us as well! A few weeks ago, the prestigious Eckhard-Gramatté competition held a string masterclass with students from the University of Manitoba, Brandon University and the Eckhardt-Gramatté Conservatory. The musicianship and interpretation was of a high standard and we had a lot of fun giving them pointers and tips.
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This coming fall we will be participating in the jury for the compeition, which will feature eight string instrumentalists performing contemporary works, of which 50% must be Canadian. Ian Cusson wrote the commissioned work for this edition. Join us for the finale!
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So close, so far: residencies and virtual workshops with the Birmingham Conservatory and New Works Calgary
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"How to stay connected to the music community," in the midst of a pandemic, is a question we've been trying to answer for over a year. Like other organizations, we have had the opportunity to work virtually on several
occasions. This spring, the Birmingham Conservatory (UK) invited us for a three-day residency, organized by composition professor Seán Clancy (2013 Composer's Kitchen alumnus). Scattered across two continents, we met in this virtual space; ourselves in Montreal; Seán in Dublin; the eight students in Great Britian, Germany and the Netherlands.
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We use a lot of locally sourced objects: can you identify them?
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We also had the pleasure of leading Land with no Maps, a series of two virtual workshops with New Works Calgary in which we explored the music of Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros and Catherine Mole, breaking down the art of text scores, the borders between production and improvisation, and the possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration that emerge from non-conventional score formats. In the second part of the series, we offered a workshop-rehearsal of experimental scores submitted by composers interested in trying out new ideas for string quartet.
Here too, the common denominator of these encounters was the joy of creating music together, albeit "on screen". The next step is to do similar activities in person, which we hope to do in the near future!
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Excerpt from a Grid by James Lowrie
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Upcoming: Composer's Kitchen 2021
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From June 21-25, we are finally diving into the Composer's Kitchen, postponed since spring 2020. We will start the residency virtually with composers in North America and Europe, and we are looking forward to meeting them and presenting their pieces in Gaudeamus in the Netherlands in September 2021!
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Meet the resident composers of Composer's Kitchen 2021
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Last chance to hear some of our online concerts! Listen to:
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Warmly,
Clemens, Alissa, Stéphanie, Isabelle
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