Sometimes, the smallest tidbit of context can make a world of difference when it comes to interpreting art. One illustrative example that comes to mind is the powerful 1997 Derek Bailey and Min Tanaka Music and Dance album, where the listener is primarily attuned to Bailey’s guitar playing but even just a working knowledge of Tanaka’s presence helps establish a real-world setting in the mind of the listener.

Similarly, Ensemble SuperMusique’s 2019 Montréal Sonne l’image performance is also one of a multidisciplinary nature, and there is something about that framing that feels critical. Even if one doesn’t get their hands on a CD where the visual scores themselves are provided, the music takes on a new shape when the imagination can vaguely infer the imagery that is being responded to. This phenomenon speaks to a desire the spectator has to feel connected to the process itself, where the stage almost seems to disappear and the hierarchy of a concert hall vanishes. But what happens when one chooses to listen ignorantly, fixating on what we’ve been given rather than extrapolating?

The music itself has a definite determinate sway to it in terms of duration and select composed passages, but this is an inspiring display of collective improvisation. Throughout three movements, all individual elements are interwoven but there is never overt disruption. Everyone breathes together, and nobody takes a solo. Communal contributions take precedence over individual objectives. Patience and timing ensures fluidity.

Wo das Montréaler Ensemble SuperMusique agiert, bleibt Pop eher außen vor. Was nicht heißen muss, dass die elektroakustischen Improvisationen von Sonne l’image (Ambiances Magnétiques) schwer verständlich oder unzugänglich wären. Mitunter sammeln sie sich sich sogar zu richtigen Songs, um dann direkt wieder in freien Freakout auszubrechen.

Ensemble SuperMusique is a small Canadian orchestra focussing on contemporary and mainly improvised music. Joane Hétu is a member of the ensemble and has composed the first piece that is presented here, Cléo Palacio-Quintin and Viviane Houle being the other two composers. All three pieces were created as an interplay between musical score and moving images. Essentially, if I understood correctly, the score itself was the moving pictures. As Danielle Palardy Roger rightly remarks in the liner notes, the visual part is lost in the audio recording. Supposedly it lives on in the music, but this would not be discernible to the listener. The title of the release, Sonne l’image = ’Sound the image’ (even better in English, due to the ambiguity it introduces), maps out the concept. All compositions were recorded in one set in Nov 2019.

La vie de l’esprit (Hétu) kicks off with a vocal part then moves into a thoughtful piece of interaction between piano and strings or wind instruments and percussion. The music erupts into hectic parts that involve more instruments from time to time (why is not known to us). With nearly 15 minutes in length, the piece builds little tension as it moves between the quiet and intense parts with little musical motivation. Fewer instruments and more tension might have been beneficial to the audio side of this event, though I did like the interplay with the electronic sounds and voices in the last third. Aléas: Révélations des pierres muettes (=revelations of mute stones) (Palacio-Quintin) creates the tension by starting and ending drone-like with a deep, vibrating tone that is then overlayed with sparsely set notes, then whispered voices are added. Instruments drop more notes here and there as the level builds and the whispers become audible voices. And then everything subsides again into the drone. I can, actually, conjure up imagery for this one. First Words (Houle) also uses voices (is this maybe the connecting element?) in a more ’instrumental’ way than the other two compositions. Again, there is more consistency in the piece. It moves from vocal beginnings to wind, wind instrument, percussion, sinewave generator, strings and others playing phrases, not just single notes, with the different instruments participating in creating a continuous backdrop from time to time (well balanced, not too often) interrupted by outbursts. The nicest one is the drum solo in the second half. It ends with a beautifully balanced succession of solo vocal, flutes, a racket of everyone, ebbing off into to flute melody.