Mardi Spaghetti celebrates a year of twirling improv at Le Cagibi.

The front room of Le Cagibi, the comfortable, funky neighbourhood café at St-Laurent and St-Viateur, is normally populated by students and post-university types huddled over their laptops. But for the last year, the back room has been the scene of Mardi Spaghetti, a Tuesday night improvised music series curated by Josh Zubot, Philippe Lauzier, Pierre-Yves Martel and Gordon Allen. The series brings together musicians, often in whimsical combinations, and each one of the four organizers is responsible for one Tuesday per month. The musicians come from disparate musical worlds — jazz, musique actuelle, rock — but improvisation is the common thread, according to Allen. In the year since the series began, more than 100 musicians have taken part. This coming Tuesday, March 3, Mardi Spaghetti is marking its one-year anniversary with a party and a number of special events, including a reprise of Martel’s “toiletronics,” a performance from inside the washroom that sits beside Le Cagibi’s stage, and an improvisation in the alley by Allen. Allen, the trumpeter with the porkpie hat and crooked grin, has practically been a one-man scene-maker since arriving in Montréal from Guelph a couple of years ago, as he’s also one of the people behind L’Envers, the performance space at 185 Van Horne that’s been running since September. He’s proud of what Mardi Spaghetti has accomplished. “Because Mardi Spaghetti is happening every week, it’s in the back of people’s minds, so it’s now part of the fabric of the neighbourhood and that café,” Allen says. “It’s intimate, with a small stage, and the room has a particular feel to it. It’s like the back room, not the dungeon. Because of the big windows, there’s a view from the street, and people stop by and listen because of that. There was already a good level of activity in Montréal for improvised music, but this series has made the music more visible, quite literally.”

Saxophonist Philippe Lauzier, drummer Thom Gossage and violist Jean René will be in residence at L’Arsenal in Metz (France) with choreographer Isabelle van Grimde for her new work Les chemins de traverse. The premiere will take place on February 25, 2009, at the Schouwburg Theater in Arnhem (The Netherlands) followed by four concerts from March 3 to 6 at L’Arsenal.

Drummer Isaiah Ceccarelli and saxophonist Philippe Lauzier will be performing in Oslo, Norway, on January 30 and February 1, 2009. The first concert, in duo setting, will be at the [sic!] series at the Sagene kulturverksted. The second concert, at the Sound of Mu, will find them playing with Norwegian musicians Kim Myhr on guitar and Martin Taxt on tuba.

Antoine Berthiaume, Guido del Fabbro and Mélanie Auclair as well as Philippe Lauzier, Corinne René, Amy Horvey and Rémy Bélanger de Beauport will be at Le Cagibi on Tuesday December 16, 2008 as part of the Mardi spaghetti weekly series for creative music.

Founded in 1994, Nicolas Caloia’s Ratchet Orchestra releases its first title, recorded live at La Sala Rossa in November 2007. Featuring 30 of Montréal’s finest improvisors, including Gordon M Allen, Chris Burns, Alexandre Grogg, Pierre Labbé, Philippe Lauzier, Damian Nisenson, Jean René, Sam Shalabi, and Joshua Zubot, the Ratchet Orchestra lolls between the sublime and the ridiculous.

Disparition de l’usine éphémère is the first release from a quartet consisting of prominent improvisers from Québec and Norway: Philippe Lauzier, Pierre-Yves Martel, Kim Myhr and Martin Tétreault. The peculiar combination of old and new instruments renders a poetic image of a faded, bygone industrial plant.