Histoires de gestes

How and to what extent is our perception of sounds conditioned by the gestures of a player? What happens if, suddenly, the sound that we hear does not correspond with the movement that accompanies it?

The history of percussion is nonetheliess one of gesture: the act of striking, of course, usually associated with percussion instruments, but also the acts of shaking, rubbing, scraping, plucking, caressing, massaging...

With these Histoires de gestes (Stories of gestures), Sixtrum is particularly interested in composers who use gesture as a basic, and sometimes mystifying, element of their works. Oddly, some of these works play with silent gestures, or at the the limits of silence, such as Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas paraddidles gather no moss by Quebec composer Myke Roy, premiered in 2009 by Sixtrum, that stages a "sound-mime" grappling with his musical imagination. The relationship with silence is also present in Gilles Mottet's works Oxymore and Jeux de miroir « where the listener and the player fill silence with references to their own experiences with the world of sound".

Painting with Breath, by New Zealand composer David Downes, uses sound created by bamboos and bullroarers that cut through the air, while Pièces de Gestes, by Belgian Thierry de Mey, choreographs the movements of five pairs of hands playing on tables.

Finally, Mémoires de peaux by French composer Bruno Giner contrastingly uses the pure and powerfull stroke movements, almost choreographic and highly virtuoso, of six percussionists playing drums.
 

PROGRAM

Stage director: Michel G. Barette
Lighting: Alexandre Pilon Guay
 

Histoire des gestes
Monday, November 7 2011, 8 PM

Société for Arts and Technology [SAT]
1201 boul. St-Laurent
Montréal

25$ / 10$ students
Tickets ADMISSION : 514 790-1245
Information : 514 343-6111 #5547

This concert is part of group Le Vivier's season.  

Excerpt from "Pierre qui roule n'amasse pas paradiddles gather no moss" by Myle Roy

Pièces de gestes Belgium composer Thierry De Mey is a work for 5 percussionists strickly based on gestures in a delimited space. Even if no sound is heard, each gesture has a mmusical dimension attached: rhythms, phrases, intensities, etc. Her are a few miutes taken from a rehearsal of Pièce de gestes.

Philip Hornsey, Kristie Ibrahim, Sandra Joseph and Fabrice Marandola rehearse "Jeux de mirroir" by french composer Gilles Mottet, with director Michel G. Barette.