Following a series of shows that took place this summer in Canada, Queen Mab, with Marilyn Lerner (piano), Lori Freedman (clarinets) and Ig Henneman (viola), brings their tour to Europe throughout Fall. Queen Mab will be performing on September 29, 2005 at Flora Theater in Delft, The Netherlands; on October 2, 2005 at Loft in Keulen, Germany; on October 3, 2005 at Overtoom 301 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; on October 4, 2005 at Zaal 100 in Amsterdam; on October 5, 2005 at Rote Fabrik in Zürich, Switzerland, on October 7, 2005 at Stiftung Musikkultur in St Johann in Tirol, Austria; on October 8, 2005 at Jazzgalerie, Nickelsdorf, Austria; on October 9, 2005 at Metelkova/Club Gromka in Ljubljana, Slovenia; on October 10, 2005 at the Student Centre, Zagreb, Croatia; on October 12, 2005 at Studio RAI RadioTre (live concert) of Rome in Italy, on October 14, 2005 at Iato il Cantiere in Rome; and on October 15 octobre, 2005 at Bleu Boeuf Toulon in Puget-Ville, France. The trio concludes this tour in The Netherlands: on October 20, 2005, Queen Mab will be at Studio Grasland in Haarlem and on October 21, at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam.

Outstanding new music ensemble featuring six guitarists from Quebec performing the compositions of Mauricio Kagel, John Cage, Claude Vivier, Martin Levasseur and (ensemble member) Francis Marcoux. Montréal-based experimental guitarist Antoine Berthiaume left me with one of these fascinating discs and I am most grateful. I have had a fondness for guitar ensembles since hearing the Four Guitarists of the Apocalypso Bar (also from Quebec) and their sort of offspring, Fred Frith’s Guitar Quartet. As far as modern classical music goes, pioneers like Glen Branca and Rhys Chatham have also paved the way.

L’Hexacorde utilize mostly acoustic and one electric guitar(s), bass guitar and charango. They open and close this disc with pieces by influential composers who are rarely associated with guitars, Kagel and Cage. Mauricio Kagel’s Rrrrrr… is for a cycle of 41 pieces all with titles beginning with “r”. It features acoustic guitars played delicately, with slightly twisted folk melodies. Canadian composer Claude Vivier was a rather mysterious figure who studied with Stockhausen and died very young (at 35). Vivier’s piece, Pulau Dewata (“Isle of the Gods” in Balinese), is a fascinating one. Influenced by Balinese music, it is a collection of haunting fragments, intricate and with unexpected twists and turns. Martin Levasseur’s Empreintes magnolia is short, yet a unique in its structure. Layers of sparse acoustic and electric guitars play a series of enchanting melodies that evolve and remain connected as well. Francis Marcoux, who plays electric guitar in this ensemble, contributed “Obstinaton”, which deals with tight ostinato patterns played slowly in intricate layers. Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes was written for prepared piano and here is played by prepared guitars, with objects placed between the strings. It is contains the same mysterious, alien, exotic sound that Cage coaxed from his prepared piano. The fractured rhythms sound just right. Closing with Cage’s In a Landscape, a delicate and lovely work, where certain notes are sustained and ring melodic elegance.

A totally unexpected avant-prog monster! This is a very young band with four multi-instrumentalists covering violin, turntable, electronics, mandolin, piano, keyboards, guitars, drumkit, trumpet, flugelhorn and percussion in various combinations. This rich timbral palette is deployed in the service of thorny, ambitious constructions ranging across an Art Zoyd / Univers Zero sound alternately subdued and much more aggressive than these groups, buoyant Miriodor jaunts, pastoral fusion, pyrotechnic prog-fusion, crazed free jazz violin solos, pedestrian avant-jazz, post-Kagel deconstructionism by way of free improvisation, etc. While heavily tending towards a somewhat conventional jazz or prog foundation, this group is extremely unusual in the extent they use harsh and experimental elements. It hits the avant-prog prototype dead-center and will be a serious revelation for fans of the genre. With its intricacy, playfulness, and occasional manic abandon, it carries on the abandoned tradition of Debile Menthol.

I can’t help but feel that post-modernism this brash and fabulous can only come from Quebec, and, indeed, Rouge Ciel represents something of a new generation emerging from the astoundingly fertile Musique Actuelle scene in the Montréal area. The label, Monsieur Fauteux, is a subdivision of Ambiances Magnetiques and the album was even produced by the great Joane Hétu. Even with Rouge Ciel’s much stronger rock emphasis, the stylistic collages are rather similar to Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms (a special favorite group of mine), rarely adapting an idiom wholesale. For example, even with a handful of truly out free jazz violin and piano solos, the rhythm section never shifts into a free jazz mode, sticking with fairly simple and regular accompaniment instead. It’s this kind of rootedness in easily grasped structures combined with adventurous elements that defines that happy medium most avant-prog fans yearn for. For all their brashness and variability, Rouge Ciel spend a lot of time in some prog or post-jazz comfort zone or another, great places to be when it’s done this well. Stepping back from the specific aesthetic choices of the ensemble and considering a wider musicological context, maximal postmodernism as a general possibility that Rouge Ciel nicely exemplifies is rather rare and in itself unlikely to be anything less than thrilling, but there’s a serious gap that deserves to be acknowledged between thrilling and transcendental. Rouge Ciel and Dangereux Zhoms don’t reach the transcendentalism of the two pinnacles of maximal postmodernism looming above all others, A.D.D. Trio and Gregg Bendian’s Interzone, and it’s easy to see why: Rouge Ciel’s postmodern synthesis is primarily quotational and cumulative, whereas those two towering singularities of creative music rarely leave a trace of their sundry atomic inspirations. It’s a difference between escaping categories and multiplying them. Correspondingly, Rouge Ciel doesn’t attempt to travel the other historically witnessed path to transcendental maximal postmodernism, the jump-cutting of Naked City. These theoretical remarks are only meant to put my roiling enthusiasm for Rouge Ciel in perspective and avoid hyperbole. The bottom line is that this disc knocked my socks off and I had to play it three times in a row because I was so flabbergasted to discover such distinctive and elite avant-prog!!! They have one earlier release from 2001 I’ll be checking out ASAP.

Futurist audio art duet morceaux_de_machines is touring the Pacific in October 2005. The duet will perform at the Electrofringe New Media Arts Festival in Newcastle (Australia) on October 1 — 3, 2005, at the Disorientation event in Sydney (Australia) on October 5, 2005, and the 7th Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth (Australia) on October 6 — 16, 2005. Finally, morceaux_de_machines will play at the Vancouver New Music Festival (BC) on October 22, 2005.

Demain et dimanche, la deuxième édition des Escales improbables prend d’assaut le quai King Edward du Vieux-Port de Montréal.

L’événement éclectique conjugue cette année autant de disciplines diverses que le théâtre de marionnettes, le chant lyrique, le cinéma et surtout la musique. Des musiciens-performeurs interprètent des œuvres du compositeur Michel Smith à partir de machines-instruments ambulants. Nicolas Brault fait tomber des baleines du ciel dans un film-conte animé. Jean Derome et SuperMusique proposent une expédition de canot-camping allégorique le long d’une rivière imaginaire. Les côtes gaspésienne et italienne se croisent dans Cargo, théâtre d’image et de marionnettes. On découvre ces performances extravagantes et audacieuses en déambulant au bord du fleuve, comme une invitation au voyage.

Ce CD contient une quinzaine de musiques du trio d’improvisateurs Bethiaume — Sirjack — Teale. Si Quentin SirJack (piano et percussions) et Antoine Berthiaume (guitare et percussions) œuvrent sur des instruments acoustiques, Norman Teale ne se contente pas d’enregistrer et de mixer le tout, mais fournit aussi une prestation électroacoustique discrète. Sur ces courts morceaux (de une à cinq minutes), on découvre un travail (qui relève avant tout de l’improvisation) sobre et juste réalisé par des musiciens qui — tout simplement — (s’)écoutent.