Montréal’s creative music scene is not exactly a hotbed for violists, or anywhere else for that matter. Fortunately, we have Jean René as the local representative of this underrepresented string instrument. Jean René is best known for his contributions to projects led by René Lussier, Michel F Côté and Jean Derome. René performed for the second consecutive Off fest with his quartet Et Quart, featuring Joshua Zubot (violin), Nicolas Caloia (bass) and Pierre Tanguay (drums) at the Casa del Popolo. The quartet performed a mix of René’s own compositions, several from his latest solo viola release Fammi (&records) as well as others’. The quartet performance was easily as quirky as the studio solo album. Note that unlike the studio solo recording, René did not appear to make use of any electronic manipulations to his viola in live performance. The ensemble sounded very well integrated and thoroughly absorbed in René’s sound world. Very pleasing to the ear was the relationship of Zubot’s crystalline tone versus René’s very wooly viola tone, all against a backdrop of Caloia and Tanguay’s foundation. The performance was mainly about the compositions, but left room for the musicians to improvise, and in Zubot’s case, replete with a tremendous display of virtuosity. This is a group that needs to be recorded.

On the short list of name guest performers participating in this year’s festival, French double bassist Joëlle Léandre is surely the best known to anyone interested in the area of freely improvised musics. On the second evening, this musician was heard in two separate sets: starting off with a rather perfunctory half hour solo outing, Léandre was joined by the local Ambiances Magnétiques collective of free improvisers (7 in total comprised of its most usual suspects, Jean Derome, Lori Freedman, Joane Hétu, Jean René, Bernard Falaise, Danielle Palardy Roger, and a relative newcomer to the crowd, trombonist Scott Thompson. After the very well attended opening night double bill, turnout on this evening was rather thin, in spite of much advance billing and promotion. Because of this, there was a lack of atmosphere felt in the usually warm confines or the Lion d’Or, an old-theater space with much character to it. After more than three decades of professional activity and countless solo performances under her belt, Léandre’s musical world is well-established by now, and she offerred her usual fair, bowing for the most part (expected from any classically trained player) and indulging in her semi-onomatopeic vocalese while sawing away on her strings. She has recorded several solo albums over the years, and any of these are far more inspiring than this performance was. After the pause, she melted in the background with the ensemble, though she contributed one piece as an opener to the proceedings. This and the remaining numbers (one even played twice) were more like compositional frameworks, guiding the players according to a number of loosely defined parameters. Listeners familiar with this kind of ‘open-ended’ music making know that misses are inevitable, even if they hope to get enough hits to make the evening worthwhile. Truthfully, the latter were in short supply on that night, leaving us with a little too many of the former.

Le saxophoniste Damian Nisenson et la coqueluche montréalaise SoCalled (voix, claviers, accordéon et échantillonneur) ont foulé les planches du Lion d’Or avec un bonheur palpable et une musique à la croisée du jazz, du hip-hop et du klezmer, afin de célébrer le Yom Kippur faisant, selon Nisenson, «ce qu’ils font de mieux: de la musique», et ce, au grand plaisir d’une foule essentiellement jeune et particulièrement enthousiaste. Les artistes, accompagnés de Bernard Falaise à la guitare électrique, Jean-Félix Mailloux à la contrebasse et, une fois de plus, Pierre Tanguay à la batterie ont fait preuve d’une bonne humeur et un charisme si fou qu’on ne peut leur pardonne d’avoir trop usé de tape-à-l’oreille, de progressions trop peu variées, augmenté d’une sonorisation élevée aux limites de l’ouïe humaine. La virtuosité de Nisenson, qui maniait deux instruments à la fois, en mettait malgré tout réellement plein les yeux. Certains moments étaient toutefois d’une sensibilité remarquable, notamment une ballade que SoCalled a interprété en yiddish, ou le rappel où les musiciens sont descendus dans la foule.

Jean Derome, égal à lui-même, prend le jazz au sérieux. L’appréciation de sa démarche artistique déjantée et intellectuelle exige effort et ouverture d’esprit. Le saxophoniste, qui se produisait en trio avec le contrebassiste Normand Guilbeault et le batteur Pierre Tanguay, a poussé à fond les limites des mélomanes en nous présentant des pièces issues de son album Danse à l’Anvers. Il les a entraînés avec audace à travers maints styles et époques, de Louis Armstrong au free jazz le plus débridé, des standards aux techniques les moins conventionnelles. Le musicien, toujours dans les règles de l’art, parle dans son instrument, sort les sons les plus stridents de son alto, explore l’atonalité. Il prend malgré tout le temps, avec humour et générosité, de guider en parole son public, lui offrant des aperçus judicieux de l’histoire et de la littérature jazz. On ne peut non plus passer sous silence sa maîtrise technique et de sa virtuosité enviable, particulièrement rafraîchissante au saxophone baryton, duquel il tire un son chaleureux. Somme toute, une excellente prestation. On regrette seulement un peu de ne pas l’avoir entendu à la flûte, son premier instrument!

There is a 99% chance that Tiari Kese is in fact Michel F Côté; but let’s run with the mythology, as it’s as wistful as the music.

Kese, a Bulgarian piano prodigy, began his career at age seventeen under the tutelage of Stockhausen, the latter composing a set of Klavierstücke just for him — and that’s Kese posing as Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. He later became a world-class interpreter of Satie and John Cage (Cage also wrote pieces specifically to be performed by Kese). However, he didn’t begin recording his works until meeting Côté who serves as a performer on, producer of Ave.

And he also plays the French horn!

Fittingly, Ave is a murky, organic concrète based on shadows and slight of hand. Kese’s source materials consist of various room ambiences strung together with juxtaposition, piano and trumpet (performed by Ellwood Epps) that come in and out of focus (turn up the music during moments of seemingly inactive sound clouds and track fade-outs or you will miss something) and Côté’s shimmering electronics, his penchant for overdriven microphones and the occasional thump; the percussion is less frantic than some of Côté’s œuvre, but acute and intense like the sounds one would make while trying to claw out of a box. On the fourteen-minute opener (Unit Vector In Vratsa), these elements weave together, Kese’s Debussy-esque planing (sic) and Côté’s mechanical piston sounds serving as signposts to tie the form together. Бойко Борисов is an intricate drone journey from light to bright to dark to midnight; the last word resembles the reverberation of a piano slam, though heard in slow motion. The hints of rudeness from the first work are exploited on Marge Brute Du Ƒ: accompanying each piano note and chord is a slightly delayed, highly screeching burst of feedback to counter Kese’s tender procession; counterpoint ensues, a dry reversed series of notes and a fog you have to squint your ears to enjoy enter the fold, and the ostinato ends carried by the synthetic child of acoustic keyboard and feedback parents. From here, the pieces fold over in a palindromic fashion, culminating with Reichmann Sum For S, a finale that pays homage to the opening theme, then filters it to the background to make room for a string quartet coda, everything eventually unraveling into a sighing, steamy hiss.

From a horoscope blog: “A dream of playing the piano yourself predicts success in all your plans and hopes, unless the instrument was damaged or out of tune, in which case you can expect some difficulties and delays along the way. If you dreamed of hearing piano music beautifully played by someone else, it is a promise of better financial times ahead.”

Difficulties, delays and success: per usual, Côté’s imagination turns out all these things.

L’ultimo intenso respiro di una grande figura musicale vissuta indebitamente nei bassifondi del mercato discografico d’elite. Un mese prima della sua scomparsa il trombettista Bill Dixon si è esibito all’ International Festival di Musique Actuelle di Victoriaville 2011, assieme a una impressionante formazione di ottoni. Lo scorrere musicale altalenante e dal possente impatto emotivo, diviso in due sezioni e con un breve epilogo, ripercorre le fasi creative della sua carriera, la sua tromba, come uno scandaglio dimensionale, ci fa rivivere le ricchezze e l’evoluzione del suo linguaggio sperimentale attraverso l’abbraccio avvolgente delle cangianti stratificazioni armoniche. La conduzione risalta la forza e la potenza dell’organico trombettistico di indubbio valore, sorretto a dovere dall’energica sezione ritmica composta da Ken Filiano e Warren Smith. Purtroppo i problemi di salute di Dixon si erano già manifestati, costringendolo a pre-registrare il solo. Emozionante il suo discorso debolmente sussurrato, ma saturo della sua profondità d’animo… Bye Bill.