A pianist and keyboardist based in Montréal, Guillaume Dostaler is what you can call a trusty sideman. He is a favorite collaborator among Ambiances Magnétiques artists and has appeared on records by Jean Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage, Joane Hétu, Patrice Desbiens and Nathalie Derome. His work with international artists has been limited, mostly because of his preference to remain in Montréal, but he played with Lawrence “Butch” Morris on his visit to the city. He is a gifted pianist with a mind opened to new ideas.

Dostaler had a classical music upbringing and studied piano at the renowned École Vincent d’Indy in Montréal. He started playing professionally in the early 1980s with a number of ensembles, mostly in jazz and new music, but also briefly performed funk. His first gigs included Karen Young, René Lussier, Lepage, and Derome. His seat in the latter’s avant-jazz group Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms throughout the 1990s is what brought him the most attention. With this group he recorded three CDs for the label Ambiances Magnétiques (Carnets de voyage, 1994; Navré, 1995; Torticolis, 1998) and appeared in dozens of jazz and new music festivals across Canada (Montréal, Vancouver, Guelph), the United States (Edgefest in Ann Arbor, Michigan) and Europe (Moers in Germany, Banlieues Bleues in Paris, France).

When Morris came to conduct a Montréal ensemble in 1995, Dostaler enlisted and so appears on the document Conduction 23 (1996, NewWorld). But his talent both as a cutting-edge improvisor and imaginative sideman are better illustrated on Derome’s witty Je me souviens and Hétu’s minimalist Musique d’hiver. He also toured Quebec as part of performance artist/singer Nathalie Derome’s trio for Les 4 Ronds Sont Allumés.

Deux nouvelles sorties pour l’étiquette montréalaise No Type, qui fait surtout dans l’électronique à risque. Formé d’Aimé Dontigny et Érick d’Orion, tous deux du collectif Napalm Jazz, morceaux_de_machines travaille un art numérique où l’improvisation se mêle au bruitisme. Sur liberum arbitrium, les compositions ressemblent à des fresques abstraites où un univers assez étrange et sombre émerge de cette matière sonore plutôt complexe. Pas toujours facile à suivre, morceaux_de_machines mise beaucoup sur les principes de superposition et d’accumulation. Tel un véritable magma de textures paradoxales, le résultat fascinera quiconque s’intéresse à une musique improvisée non orthodoxe.

Peut-être un peu plus accessible, Frédérick Blouin, qui utilise le nom Œuf Korreckt, propose une musique de facture assez minimale et délicate. Les titres s’enchaînent sans pour autant imposer une signature originale. C’est un peu le défaut de ce disque, qui n’arrive pas véritablement à se démarquer d’une musique plus tout à fait expérimentale. Loin d’être désagréable, Œuf Korreckt aurait avantage à mieux approfondir une démarche encore à l’étape préliminaire.

Although active as a professional guitar player since the end of the 1970s, Canadian Rainer Wiens has constantly been falling through the cracks ofthe recording industry, leaving very little trace of his work and only since he moved to Montréal in the mid-’90s. Except for a couple of free improv records and participations in projects by members of the collective Ambiances Magnétiques, Wiens’ music has been related to the stage (dance, theatre, new opera) and thus remains largely undocumented.

Wiens studied guitar with John Becker, Allan Torak, and Tony Bradan. He also studied improvisation and jazz harmony with New York pianist and noted educator Barry Harris. This private instruction prepared him for every possible work in the jazz business and soon Wiens was working the Toronto club circuit as a sideman for a constellation of local names. In 1978 he formed the left-field jazz group Silk Stockings. It toured throughout the 1980s, making appearances at various jazz festivals in Canada, but also in England and Hungary. During that period the guitarist forged himself a personal form of expression, abstract but with a lot of charm. He makes extensive use of the prepared guitar, often approaching the instrument more like a Gamelan ensemble than something with six strings.

Since the late 1980s, his focus shifted toward a collaboration with artists from other fields. The 1990s saw him writing small-scale operas with librettist Victoria Ward (“Homeless,” “Down Here on Earth”), scoring music for films by Barbara Sternberg (“C’est la Vie,” 1997; “Like a Dream That Vanishes,” 1999), and collaborating with dancer Lucie Grégoire. He co-founded with Jan Komarek the Sound Image Theatre where he supplied music for many productions.

In the mid-’90s he moved to Montréal and hooked up with the musicians of Ambiances Magnétiques. His solo album Bonunca Dream Music, self-released in 1995, was picked up for distribution by the collective’s label. A trio session with longtime partners Malcolm Goldstein and John Heward (Chants cachés, 1999) helped bring some attention to his work. Heco-founded the group NOMA with trombonist Tom Walsh and by 2002 was leading his own group Follow Follow.

Active since the mid-’80s, Montréal jazz bassist Normand Guilbeault splits his time between post-bop jazz sessions with his Ensemble and more cutting-edge avant-garde jazz as sideman for various artists related to the collective Ambiances Magnétiques. His most ambitious project to date is the historical jazz opera Riel: plaidoyer musical / a musical plea, for 15 musicians. He is co-founder of the OFF Festival de Jazz de Montréal, an alternative, counter-event of the Jazz Montréal Festival.

Guilbeault first got noticed on the Montréal jazz scene in the groups of pianist Jean Beaudet and drummer Bernard Primeau in 1985. From the start, his ease of play, elegant improvising and clean sound were appreciated. He soon recorded his first studio session: Primeau’s Perspectives, released in 1987. Performances and recordings alongside Yannick Rieu, Nelson Symonds and François Marcaurelle followed before the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the bassist formed his Normand Guilbeault Ensemble in 1988. First a quartet comprising trumpeter Ivanhoe Jolicoeur, clarinetist Mathieu Bélanger, and drummer Paul Léger, it expanded to a quintet with the arrival of trombonist Michel Ouellet in 1991. Guilbeault’s intent was to have a bass-led group in the vein of Charles Mingus’ and Oscar Pettiford’s, with a repertoire of compositions by bassists. But with the years, the group developed its own repertoire, gradually moving out of jazz standards and into something more contemporary. A first album, Dualismus, came out on Red Toucan in 1994, the same year the Ensemble won the DuMaurier Jazz Award at the Montréal Jazz Festival. Two more CDs with Jean Derome as guest followed in 1995 and 1996 on Justin Time. The Jazz Report Magazine from Toronto declared the Ensemble Best Jazz Acoustic Group of 1997.

Derome opened a door to the avant-garde scene and the bassist’s interests began to shift. His playing grew freest while retaining a strong jazz flavor. By the mid-’90s Guilbeault had completely renewed his roaster of collaborators and become a trusty sideman for most key Ambiances Magnétiques artists. He contributed to Derome’s large-scale projects, Michel F Côté’s soundtracks and his group Bruire, Robert Marcel Lepage’s free jazz trio, and René Lussier’s ensemble. Supported by the label, he created his Riel at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 1998 and toured it in Canada for a couple of years. A recording came out in 1999.

In 2000, Guilbeault joined forces with Marcaurelle, Jean Vanasse and Pierre St-Jak to organize the first OFF Montréal Jazz Festival. Born out of a profound dissatisfaction with the official event’s focus on big international stars, the OFF programmed local jazz musicians, premiered encounters and presented left-field music the real festival disregarded. The OFF was back the next year with support from the alternative press.

Geneviève Letarte is an artist before being a singer. Her musical career is only one of many facets she has integrated to her art. A poet, novelist, lyricist, and performance artist, she is loosely associated with the Montréal avant-garde music collective Ambiances Magnétiques, but also with the poetry/spoken word scene (both francophone and anglophone). Her albums are few and far between.

Letarte was born in Quebec City in 1955. At age 20 she went to Paris to study literature and cinema for two years — at the time an obligatory sojourn for Quebecer intellectuals. She had already started to write for various literary magazines (her name would appear in La Vie en Rose, La Nouvelle Barre du Jour, Estuaire, Moebius, and the New York magazine Bomb, among others). She launched her professional career in 1982 with her first interdisciplinary performance “Transit Station” (also the title of her firstbook). The next year she presented “Sirène Serpent Zoulou,” a show of music and poetry with Serge Boisvert. From there she developed a growing interest in music. She briefly collaborated with the all-female group Wondeur Brass with which she shared a feminist philosophy, but her first musical break came in 1987 when Ambiances Magnétiques member René Lussier invited her for a guest appearance at his duo concert with guitarist Fred Frith at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Lussier and drummer Michel F Côté (also of AM) helped her write, arrange, and produce her first album Vous seriez un ange (“You’d be an angel”), released in 1990 on the collective’s label.

During the next decade Letarte juggled writing, songwriting and performance art. She wrote the lyrics to La légende de la pluie, a 1992 performance and album by Justine, Tenko, and Zeena Parkins. She appeared at the Victo festival (1990), the Vancouver Jazz Festival (1995), and a number of poetry events in America and Europe. 2000 saw her focus again on music, first with a word/sound performance with electroacoustic artist Chantal Dumas, then with a new CD, Chansons d’un jour, co-written with guitarist Claude Fradette (of Les 4 Guitaristes de l’Apocalypso-Bar).

Born out of the Montréal-based avant-rock group Wondeur Brass, Justine pushed further the ideals of challenging, thought-provoking feminist rock established in its previous incarnation for another ten years. The group released three albums during the 1990s and toured Canada, the United States,and visited Europe twice. Three of its musicians are members of the collective Ambiances Magnétiques, so the label released all their albums.

Wondeur Brass started as a sextet in the early ’80s. By 1987 the group had been scaled down to a quartet. Bassist Marie Trudeau had joined the three original members saxophonist Joane Hétu, keyboardist Diane Labrosse and drummer Danielle Palardy Roger. That line-up released Simoneda, reine des esclaves in 1987.

Upon starting work on a new opus in 1989, the girls decided it was time for a change. The new music taking shape was turning out to be more complex, intricate, and driven by a stronger will to improvise and make things interestingly dangerous. Thus Justine was born. The first album under the new name, (Suite), came out in 1990. It included guest appearances by Japanese singer Tenko and American harpist Zeena Parkins. In 1992, Hétu, Labrosse and Roger brought them back for a quintet project, La légende de la pluie. Although it doesn’t include Trudeau and sounds softer, more introspective, it can be considered as the second album by Justine. Around the same time the “real” quartet appeared on stage in an Ambiances Magnétiques showcase which yielded the live CD Une théorie des ensembles.

In early 1994 Justine toured Europe, visiting many former communist countries. Back in Montréal in June they recorded Langages Fantastiques “live in the studio” — the recording of (Suite) had stretched over ten months. After its release later that year things slowed down as group members focused on individual projects: Roger on the children tale L’oreille enflée, Labrosse on a solo album (La face cachée des choses) and a duo with Michel F Côté, Hétu on a new group called Castor et Compagnie. Justine stayed together for another three years and performed at the 1997 Ring Ring festival in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) alongside Ground-Zero, Palinckx, and Kampec Dolores (a previously unreleased song was included on the commemorative compilation Ring Ring 1997). After that tour the group disbanded. Hétu, Labrosse and Roger have continued to contribute to one another’s projects.