For the 12th edition of Festivalissimo in Montréal, Damián Nisenson, along with Bernard Falaise, Jean Félix Mailloux and Isaiah Ceccarelli, will present a concert of improvised music alongside Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s 1926 silent film Faust. The concert will take place on March 24, 2009.

As part of John Geggie’s popular ongoing concert series, now in it’s eight consecutive year, the Ottawa-based double bassist has inivited Montréalers Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba), Denis Plante (bandoneon) and Pierre Tanguay (drums) to join him for the fifth concert of his 2008-2009 season. Inspired by tango, baroque and improvised music, the concert takes place at the Fourth Stage of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on March 21, 2009.

Here, Ottawa-based bassist and composer John Geggie is joined by drummer Nick Fraser and Marilyn Crispell on a set of 14 compositions recorded in November 2006. The pieces, most of which are collaborative efforts of the three musicians, ring with a dark-tinged authority that does not eschew playfulness and the joy of discovery. From the fractured walking bass line accented by progressively more dissonant note clusters from Crispell that breaks into a game of musical hide-and-seek on Run-Away Sheep, to Geggie’s arco line that weaves in and out of Crispell’s undulating four-note figure, and Fraser’s expressive stick work on View From the Bridge, this is music that is dedicated to a high level of group interaction while scrupulously avoiding cliché — definitely worthy of attention.

Apparemment enregistré en concert en Europe, le programme reproduit ici présente un «portrait sonore du fleuve Saint-Laurent», dans un style qui n’est pas sans évoquer Le Trésor de la langue de René Lussier ou l’ambiance brumeuse des symphonies portuaires. Road movie pour les oreilles, ce «portrait» tient davantage de la dérive situationniste, sans véritable destination, que du voyage à proprement parler. Des enregistrements d’ambiances sonores et de brefs intermèdes musicaux plus ou moins abstraits se glissent entre les propos de riverains rencontrés tout au long de la route; le tout forme un cinéma sonore très suggestif, qui coule dans l’oreille comme un long film tranquille.

Viola da gambist Pierre-Yves Martel will give a solo recital of improvisations inspired by Sephardic songs from the renaissance. The concert will take place on March 20, 2009, at Tabaret Hall as part of the Alumni Series of the University of Ottawa. Martel will also perform this same programme at L’envers in Montréal on March 18.

Bomata, Jean Félix Mailloux’s latest recording featuring clarinetist Guillaume Bourque and percusionist Ziya Tabassian, will be launched at Quai des brumes in Montréal on March 24, 2009.