Stuart Broomer
GGRIL. Façons. Tour de Bras, microcidi014; Phillipe Lauzier, Éric Normand, and John Butcher. How Does This Happen? Tour de Bras / Ambiances Magnetiques, AM247 CD. Through his singular drive, devotion, and inventiveness, Éric Normand has made Rimouski, a small Quebec city over 500 kilometres from Montreal, a thriving centre for free improvisation. He has an improvising orchestra, GGRIL (Grande Groupe Régional d’Improvisation Lib[...] Read more
Hübsch, Martel, Zoubek. Otherwise; Cyril Bondi / Pierre-Yves Martel / Christoph Schiller. tse. Pierre-Yves Martel is a musician and sound artist of the greatest subtlety, which is evident in his choice of a principal instrument, the viola da gamba, a Renaissance–baroque instrument roughly equivalent to a cello, but one that has six strings and frets—guitar-like features[...] Read more
Christopher Fox. Topophony. Ilan Volkov is responsible for some remarkable mergers of composed and improvised music, having conducted some of Roscoe Mitchell’s first Conversations with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra in 2016, combining transcribed improvisations with live ones. In the previous year, Volkov[...] Read more
Sarah Davachi. Gave in Rest. Calgary-born and currently resident in Los Angeles, Sarah Davachi has quickly developed a significant reputation creating music that is ambient, minimalist, and highly compelling. She recently spent a summer in Europe exploring her fascination with the acoustic properties of ancient churches[...] Read more
The Cluttertones with Lee Pui Ming. Leeways. Bassist Rob Clutton has been composing for his group the Cluttertones for over a decade, modelling his work for a quartet that includes trumpeter Lina Allemano and guitarist–banjoist Tim Posgate, with Ryan Driver playing analog synthesizer and singing. The approach is unusual,[...] Read more
Brodie West Quintet. "Clips." There’s something different afoot in saxophonist Brodie West’s quintet, its singular construction of a jazz combo with alto saxophone, piano, bass, and drums—as traditional as Brubeck to that point—and a departure from the norm with a second set of drums. The sound[...] Read more
Festival de International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 34th Edition. As spring erupts in the Centre-du-Québec region, so too does FIMAV, the festival of exploratory music that’s been running since 1984. “Eclectic” barely describes the four-day event. Its scope ranges from near-silent to deafening, from the ineffable to the ridiculous[...] Read more
Bonneau / Heward / Thomson. 4 X 3. This is a trio of Montreal improvisers with an unusual configuration of instruments and a rich, if not that well-known, backstory. John Heward has a long history as a drummer—including partnerships with saxophonists Joe McPhee, Glenn Spearman, and Joe Giardullo[...] Read more
Peggy Lee. Echo Painting. Composer and cellist Peggy Lee has made major contributions to Vancouver music. She’s active in free-improvisation and chamber-music settings and much between and beyond; however, her identity grows much more distinct in her roles as bandleader and composer. She regularly leads octets[...] Read more
Keiji Haino and John Butcher. Light Never Bright Enough. It’s not unusual in improvised music to find unlikely partnerships onstage. English saxophonist John Butcher and Japanese singer-guitarist-percussionist Keiji Haino might seem like such a pair. Much of Butcher’s work is refined exploration of the saxophone’s sonic[...] Read more
Ensemble SuperMusique. Les porteuses d’Ô. In its first twenty years under founders Danielle Palardy Roger and Joane Hétu, Montreal’s Ensemble SuperMusique has established itself as Canada’s most broadly exploratory midsize ensemble (here numbering thirteen), investigating and combining contemporary composition,[...] Read more
Tyshawn Sorey. Verisimilitude. Depending on where you find him, Tyshawn Sorey might appear as a jazz drummer (the Vijay Iyer Trio or the group Paradoxical Frog, with Ingrid Laubrock and Kris Davis), as a new-music percussionist, a multi-instrumentalist (playing piano and trombone) or as a composer. Like George Lewis (with[...] Read more
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