Fall Hightlights: Contemporary Music

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SMCQ

This fall, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, Canada’s oldest concert society dedicated to contemporary music, presents the eighth edition of its Tribute Series. After Katia Makdissi-Warren, José Evangelista, John Rea, Denis Gougeon, Ana Sokolović, Gilles Tremblay and Claude Vivier, it’s German-Indian composer Sandeep Bhagwati‘s turn to have his vast repertoire celebrated. From orchestral compositions to chamber music, multimedia creation, musical theatre and opera, Bhagwati stands out for his great versatility and mastery of different instrumental idioms.

The first concert is scheduled for Sept. 24 at Salle Pierre-Mercure, with Amitiés et étrangetés presented in partnership with the Vietnamese Cultural Centre of Canada. Seven soloists from different musical and geographical horizons will be gathered around Exercices d’étrangeté I (2023), a new creation by Bhagwati. Drawing on their own cultural and musical backgrounds, the musicians will rediscover their instruments in a variety of musical settings conceived by the composer.

The Tribute Series continues on Nov. 4, 5 and 6 with À la croisée des pianos, a marathon of eight piano performances. Five guest pianists will share a program of works by more than 20 male and female composers. Among these works, Bahagwati’s triptych Music of Crossing (2015-18) will be performed by internationally-renowned pianist Moritz Ernst. Pianists Daniel Áñez, Brigitte Poulin, Philippe Prud’homme and Erik Bertsch will tackle works by Marco Stroppa, Serge Arcuri, Silvio PalmIeri and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others.

www.smcq.qc.ca

Salle Bourgie / Arte Musica

Salle Bourgie will be celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the birth of György Ligeti (1923-2006) in style with the Ligeti Festival, a series of events in tribute to the great Hungarian composer taking place on Nov. 4 and 5. An excellent opportunity to (re)discover a seminal repertoire of the 20^th century, from his youthful essays inspired by Hungarian folklore to the radical experimentation of his mature period.

The festival opens Nov. 4 with a lecture by Benjamin Levy, American musicologist and leading expert on Ligeti’s work. The program continues in the evening with Ramifications (1968), Kammerkonzert (1970), Six Bagatelles for wind quintet (1953) and Trio for violin, horn and piano (1982), four works performed by the Ensemble of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Ligeti Quartet and the Ensemble de l’Université de Montréal et de l’Université McGill, conducted by Jean-Michaël Lavoie. The Ligeti Quartet returns the next day for the presentation of a selection of works from Nouvelles études, including those by Nicole Lizée and Ana Sokolović.

Also on the program are Ligeti’s first and second string quartets, and the North American première of a work by his son Lukas Ligeti. The festival concludes in the evening with a recital by renowned pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who will perform Ligeti’s Musica ricercata (1953) and Six études (1985), Beethoven’s Bagatelles(1824) and piano studies by Chopin and Debussy.

www.mbam.qc.ca

Le Vivier

Le Vivier and Quatuor Bozzini join forces for the Quatuor Bozzini and Sattoko Inoue concert on Sept. 21 at Espace Orange in the Wilder Building. The quartet will welcome the Japanese pianist for a presentation of works by Jimmie Leblanc, Akemi Naito, Yuji Itoh, John McLachlan and Paul Hayes. On Oct. 24, France’s Ensemble Variances joins Montreal’s Ensemble Paramirabo for Pulse, a concert in which pulsation and circularity are the watchwords. The musicians will perform a creation by French composer Thierry Pécou, as well as Steve Reich’s Pulse (2015) and three creations by Cassandra Miller and Missy Mazzoli.

www.levivier.ca

Molinari Quarter

The award-winning Molinari Quartet kicks off its new season on Sept. 8 at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal with Music and Nature. The program for this bucolic evening includes Quartet No. 2, Waves (1976) by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Widely known for his pioneering soundscapes, Schafer also boasts an extensive instrumental repertoire that deserves to be discovered. The quartet will also perform New Yorker Quinsin Nachoff’s Quartet No. 1 (2018), as well as Shostakovich’s 11^th and 12^th string quartets.

On Dec. 1, the quartet will present Dances, a concert full of vitality and movement. The evening will open withReqs (Danse) (2016), a work by Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh originally composed for the renowned Kronos Quartet. Debussy’s Quartet in G (1893) and Bartók’s Quartet No. 4 (1928) will also be performed.

www.quatuormolinari.qc.ca

Codes d’accès

A wind of change is blowing through Montreal’s only organization entirely dedicated to emerging new music creation, as Code d’accès begins the new season with a new artistic director. Composer and performer An Laurence succeeds Simon Chioini after more than five years of loyal service. The programming reflects this change of guard, with the presentation of the new thematic concert Melting Links on Nov. 30 at CIRMMT’s Music Multimedia Room. Dedicated to electroacoustic creation, this collaborative concert will feature creations by Alexis Blais, Roxanne Melissa Guerra-Lacasse and Jean-Philippe Jullin, as well as a co-creation by Kasey Pocius, Tommy Davis, Greg Bruce and Maryse Legault.

The first event of the season takes place on Sept. 13 at L’Orbite café, with psyché, a program of mixed compositions by Louis-Michel Tougas, Charlotte Layec, Tom Lachance and Emmanuel Lacopo, focusing on the processes of cognition, memory and emotion.