Sixtrum announces its 2011-2012 Season

Sixtrum Percussion Ensemble

2011-2012 Season

For immediate release. Sixtrum Percussion Ensemble's 2011-2012 season was announced today. On the program: concerts in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada, produced by Sixtrum or in collaboration with new partners -  the Society for Arts and Technology, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and vocal ensemble VivaVoce -, a tour in Western Canada and 60 children's shows, coproduced with Jeunesses Musicales du Canada.

September 21 2011, 9 PM
Society for Arts and Technology
Drumming by Steve Reich

After last yesr's success of La vie qui bat during the MNM 2011 festival, Sixtrum presents once more this major success by american composer Steve Reich in a particularly dynamic Montreal venue, ths Society of Arts and Technology. Composed in 1970-1971, Drumming plays with the perception of time using the obsessive repetition of short rhythmic cells, and the phasing of the cells one against each other.

A landmark of the american minimalist movement, Drumming represents the ultimate refinement of this phasing technique initiated by Reich in some of his preceding works: It's Gonna Rain and Come Out for tapes, as well as Piano Phase for two pianos.

November 7 2011, 8 PM
Society for Arts and Technology
Histoires de gestes

The history of percussion is 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 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. Pièces de Gestes, by Belgian Thierry de Mey, choreographs the movements of five pairs of hands playing on tables, while Strings Attached by American-Autralian composer Erik Griswold maked the players experiment with different sound gestures, for instance using strings attached to the percussion sticks. Live sound sculptures!

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

January 26 to February 1, 2012
Canadian Tour in Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria

During its first Western Canada tour, Sixtrum presents a repertoire made up of major percussion percussion works which could be considered as  Sixtrum's "classics", and account for the most often requested by different concert producers: Aikea and Pulau Dewata by Claude Vivier, Third Construction by John Cage ands the Peaux movement from Pléiades by Iannis Xenakis.

March 15 2012, 8 PM
Venue to be announced
Pulau Dewata, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Boulez/Eötvös

in a concert dedicated to composer Pierre Boulez, under the direction of Peter Eötvös, the OSM invites Sixtrum to present in counterpoint to Boulez's Répons and Varèse's Déserts a work by Claude Vivier. Sixtrum will perform its version of Pulau Dewata, orchestrated by Fabrice Marandola, a member of the ensemble.

 
May 4 2012, 8 PM
Redpath Hall
Birthday Cage Happy John !

Collaborating with a vocal ensemble has been part of Sixtrum's projects since the beginning of the ensemble. Unfortunately, voice and percussion repertoire has not been much developed in québec. This new collaboration with Viva Voce (dir. Peter Schubert) has made possible the presentation of two new canadian works Chris-Paul Harman et Brian Cherney, in a concert that will also include works by John Cage such as  4² (for voice), Third construction (percussion) and Imaginery Landscapes #4 (12 radios). TKRDG, by Scelsi (1968) pour men's voices, three percussions and amplified guitar, as well as Pulau Dewata in a version for choir and percussion orcjestrated by Peter Schubert and Fabrice Marandola, will complet this original pr.

Peter Schubert et Fabrice Marandola will host the concert and suggest a few listeming keys to guide the audience through the presented works.

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November 2011 to June 2012
La Grande Tortue
How Great Turtle Rebuilt the World

In collaboration with the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, Sixtrum will perform again this year an original children's show, How Great Turtle Rebuilt the World.

How Great Turtle Rebuilt the World is a musical show for children, created by Sixtrum with director Michel G. Barette. Created in the Fall of 2009 in co-production with les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, the show has already been presented to 5000 audience members in schools and theatres.

This show has been created in the form of a theatre of objects, which leads to the discovery of the diverse personalities of the percussion instruments – and their performers! – in an atmosphere that alternates between moments of quiet intimacy and frenzied rhythm. Our hero is also represented by a percussion instrument, the hang, similar in form to the actual animal.

How Great Turtle Rebuilt the World

is a shoe for both children and grown-ups that will be performed in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes, in theaters and schools.

About Sixtrum

Sixtrum

is a professional percussion ensemble in residence at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal.   Created in 2007, the ensemble reunites Montreal percussionists João Catalão, Julien Grégoire, Philip Hornsey, Kristie Ibrahim, Sandra Joseph and Fabrice Marandola. Each member brings to the group years of experience in all areas of percussion. Together, they share a desire to renew and develop a repertoire for percussion ensemble introduced in the second half of the 20th Century.

The diversity of Sixtrum’s projects takes them from classical concert halls, to stages at international festivals, to school gymnasiums. As part of their mission for the development of percussion in Canada and abroad, Sixtrum strives to explore the extraordinary sonic universe of percussion through traditional concerts for percussion alone, as well as in more spectacular events including collaborations with creators and performers from other artistic disciplines
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Information:

Robert Leroux
Sixtrum Percussion Ensemble
robert.leroux@sixtrum.com