About his String Quartet No. 4 (2021), Swiss composer Jürg Frey (b. 1953) laconically observed, “ My music is slow, sometimes static, often delicately shifting between standstill and movement. And yet, after more than an hour, this music has arrived at another place.” Music critic Alex Ross aptly compared Frey’s music to a “Mahler Adagio suspended in zero gravity.”

One of Canada’s leading string quartets, Bozzini specializes in contemporary music with an impressive 36 releases to date. Fostering a long and deep working relationship with Frey, their premiere recording of his sprawling five-movement Quartet No. 4 is a remarkably poised musical testament to their collaboration. Beginning with whisps of sound the Bozzini morphs into a virtual, though still totally acoustic, orchestra. From pianissimo sustained string chords ghostly instrumental resemblances emerge; they sound like a French horn, harmonica, woodwinds, bandoneon and a soft pipe organ in succession. In Frey’s expansive soundscapes, timbral colour takes centre stage in the sonic field.

“… little happens — it is this atmosphere from which my music emerges and to which it always returns,” explains the composer.

Listeners can choose to lay back and relax in Frey’s sound world observing the timbral transformations, the attractive chord and shifting mood changes. But then — just as we were enjoying the slowly scuttling clouds on a sunny Swiss summer day — those mysterious insistent pulsed cello pizzicati at the very end emerge to remind us of … what? … the passage of time?

I looked at some images from the great early surrealist artist Francisco Goya while listening to the new release of quasi-improvisatory pieces by Jean Derome. Somehow the one activity made the other more terri-fying. It’s hard to express praise or admiration for this composer’s output, but the effectiveness of his creativity is undeniable. This is high-concept and/or/but high-quality artistic material.

Derome provides a visual reference to Onze Super (petit) Totems: pictures of his own somewhat crude sculptures; protections, per the liner notes, against various evils. A through-composed sectional work, the totems are distinct sonic explorations, with one or two segues. The first one is full of mad birdsong alternating between chaotic twittering chirps and sustained chords of close treble voices, punctuated by deep huffing yells that spur the switching between those textures.

The Tombeau de Marin Mersenne provides relief of a kind. Three movements (Tombeau, Rigaudon, Galope), materially determined by the arcane formulae of a16th century math-ematician. At first blush they just seem a bit mechanical and dispassionate. Perhaps that’s the point. I’m not sure how flattered I’d be by this Tombeau if I were the ghost of Mersenne, but Derome has a fascination with the crossover of music and math. The inaptly titled Galope hobbles from slightly up-tempo to the near opposite, like a click track disturbed by the percussive interjections to continuous running hemi- or semi-quavers in the piano.

The title track features improvisatory responses to a middle C doinked or plunked out at varying intervals, a sort of torture for any mind given to expectation. Allowing one’s thoughts to warm up around the steady pitch is a more receptive attitude. And stay away from Spanish painters.

The trumpeter [Axel Dörner] sports the same headgear on BeingFive, a 2022 session from the German capital, convened by Canadian bass clarinetist Lori Freedman, which also features Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion), Andrea Parkins (accordion) and Christopher Williams (bass). Together the five musicians generate constantly morphing sound worlds, comprising selfless individual contributions. That approach attains its apogee on Miniatures, a sequence of ultra-concise vignettes linked by silent pauses, as much part of the kaleidoscopic fabric as the sounds. The extended techniques wielded by all involved are rendered yet more indeterminate by the electronics utilized by Dimitriadis, Dörner and parkins, such that the question of who does what becomes irrelevant. Not that the trumpet is inaudible — its strident skitter and breathy smears can be readily discerned at times on Amusic, a cut like its near namesake Amusic Bis, which almost has a rhythmic dimension thanks to Williams’ pizzicato and Dimitriadis’ regular pulsation.

Swiss composer Jürg Frey — who turned 70 last year — has had a long association with the Montréal-based new-music specialists, the Bozzini Quartet, writing three quartets for it across a span of 20 years. That closeness and mutual understanding is more than evident in the Bozzini’s sensitive, thoughtful account of his hour-long, five-movement Fourth Quartet from 2020.

It’s a remarkable piece: sparse, reflective, often just a step away from silence, and sounding as though classical gestures have been boiled down to their bare bones, ready for close inspection and contemplation. The Bozzini treads an expert path between almost mechanistic consistency across Frey’s sometimes barely changing musical ideas, while playing up subtle distinctions of light and shade, consonance and dissonance. Indeed, Frey makes more than a few nods to traditional quartet writing in the piece — for example in the second movement’s folk-like drones and ornamentations, and its rich minor-mode triads, which sound shocking after so much dissonance and so many unconventional sounds. The Bozzini embraces the breadth of Frey’s language with such conviction — and, it has to be said, such stamina and sustained intensity across his lengthy paragraphs — that the results are never less than persuasive.

It’s a work that repays close listening and reflection, and Frey could hardly have hoped for a performance of greater insight.

Keeping a record company functioning for 40 years is an achievement. Doing so with a label that is dedicated to releasing experimental music of all kinds is even more noteworthy. But since its founding in 1984, Montréal’s Ambiances Magnétiques (AM) has done just that and to date has put out almost 300 albums of ensemble, jazz, song, poetry, improvised, jazz, rock and noise sounds under the rubric of what the Québécois call “Musique actuelle.”

Explaining AM’s genesis, which very quickly grew to include nine participating musicians, AM label director Joane Hétu says: “Those were the days we wanted to do something different. We were all musicians and we thought we were best-placed to manage our music.” Any other label that put out non-mainstream music was either affiliated with a university or produced straight-ahead jazz. “There was no opening for the music we did.” In fact, a couple of the collective’s members, who eventually included André Duchesne, Jean Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage, Diane Labrosse, Danielle Palardy Roger, Michel F Côté, Martin Tétreault and Hétu, had tried to release projects on two micro labels, which soon went bankrupt. Hétu, who is a saxophonist, vocalist and composer, has released 40 different albums on AM. Annually, the label puts out a certain number of CDs — a number that has increased and decreased over the decades — with physical product now distributed by Distribution Ambiances Magnétiques Etcetera Inc. (DAME), an affiliated company founded in 1991. Since AM is a non-profit enterprise, Hétu explains, the for-profit DAME allowed the company to apply for grants, first from the Canadian and then the Québec government.

Individually, members of the collective can also apply for grants to help produce their albums. Each has the right to release albums on AM, while Hétu decides which non-members record for the imprint. Besides herself, the staff is limited and sometimes shared with a local electric-acoustic record company. Montréal percussionist/composer Danielle Palardy Roger, who has been part of the collective since 1985, and has 20 AM releases, had been involved in ongoing musical projects with Hétu even before that. “I belong entirely and voluntarily to this label,” she affirms. “Ambiances Magnétiques represents a very high-quality sound and musical experience and it has built up a superb reputation for producing and distributing its records.” While she has had discs released on other labels, she says,“I’ve stayed loyal to Ambiances Magnétiques because, in my opinion, it’s still the one that best meets my needs and objectives.” Adds Hétu: “artists are responsible for recording their music, mixing and editing. They provide their album master to us and DAME takes care of the mastering and production of the album such as cover design, printing and CD duplication. DAME also offers promotion and distribution services.”

Since DAME now receives an annual grant from the provincial government, 50% of AM’s releases must be by Québécois artists. The few non-Québécois represented are what Hétu calls “friends and acquaintances.” DAME has never had the means to respond to all the requests to record from artists around the world. “Unfortunately, given our small team, I opted to never respond to these requests; it’s easier that way. It’s a shame, but DAME can’t do more,” she says. One person who has recorded for AM is Toronto-based pianist / composer Marilyn Lerner, who over the years has put out about 30 albums, mostly jazz-oriented discs on various imprints. On AM she’s represented by four sessions, a solo piano disc and three with different groups. “The artistic vision of Ambiances Magnétiques is superlative, the best experience I have had to date,” she asserts. “It’s a fabulous label, progressive, has a wonderful design team, is easy to work with and chock full of amazing talent on the roster.” Lerner adds that in her estimation, Hétu has promoted and fostered young talent beside presenting works by the more established artists. “I feel that Joane really appreciated my music and if the project I was doing felt right for the label she put a lot of effort into producing and promoting it,” Lerner adds. “There may be more value in considering the huge contribution Ambiances Magnétiques has made to the artistic and cultural life of Québec, Canada and worldwide in showcasing the phenomenally creative talent in the improvised or musique actuelle scene. It has provided international exposure for the many artists, myself included, who are fortunate enough to have projects on this label.”

As for production and distribution, there’s a preference for CDs over other formats. As Hétu confirms: “CDs seemed so much better. Less expensive to produce, more music for each album and less expensive to post. We were excited to drop the vinyl format.” AM has released two LPs in the last few years, but its other main outlet is downloads. An agreement with digital distributor The Orchard has AM product on major services, and its music is also available on Bandcamp, currentcd.com, and its own actuellecd.com web shop. As far as sales go, 75% are from physical product. Hétu says her main job is making available via AM/DAME “great music” that is “so rich, particular, personal, avantgarde and alive by the strength of our community and by the strength of extraordinary musicians.”

Since it’s the artist/leader on each album who chooses the ensemble and repertoire, she never interferes with their choices. However, she says “I’ve always had a concern for fairness that I’ve never really achieved. Women musicians in new music are still under-represented, and we’ve been promoting the place of women in our community for a long time.” She has tried to apply this credo to her own projects and makes sure to include female musicians as often as possible. The Ensemble SuperMusique, directed by Hétu and Roger, for instance, which is represented by twelve AM releases has, since its 1998 founding, included an increasing number of women in its ranks.

La Montréalaise Susanna Hood, musicienne et danseuse, lançait l’été dernier une campagne de financement pour produire un enregistrement de la performance unPacked que la chanteuse avait montée avec son trio (Tania Gill au piano, Kayla Milmine au saxophone soprano). Remercions les donateurs d’avoir permis de concrétiser l’édition de cette réinterprétation, aussi vitale qu’essentielle dans le propos, de la suite Packets (1995), composée par le regretté pilier du jazz d’avant-garde Steve Lacy, à partir de poèmes écrits par l’actrice et dramaturge Judith Malina, cofondatrice du Living Theatre, phare du théâtre militant et engagé. Entre jazz contemporain, art lyrique et musique contemporaine, la démarche (et la voix claire, nuancée) de Hood inscrit dans notre époque ces mots qui, résumait alors Lacy, parlent «du théâtre, de la vie, de la mort, de la naissance, du vieillissement, de la douleur et de l’errance d’être une femme». Et de théâtre (de l’opéra?), unPacked en est farci, ces chansons éclatant grâce aux échanges vigoureux entre les trois interprètes.