«Pulau Dewata» by Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier's work Pulau Dewata is most certainly one of this composer's most often playted. Because of its conception, allowing many different types of instrumental ensembles to play it, a wide variety of recordings and versions with different orchestrations can be found.

Premiered by McGill Percussion Ensemble's 9 players in the seventies, under the direction of Pierre Béluse, a version often considered as the "official" one, the orchestration performed by Sixtrum was this time done by percussionist Fabrice Marandola. Fabrice has actually written 3 versions of Pulau, one for voice and percussion, a second one for 12 percussionists (which was performed on tour by Sixtrum and 6 french percussionists), and finally, this one, that will be performed during the Conseil des arts de Montréal tour this year, in a Sixtrum concert titled Pléiades.

Friday, March 2, 2012 - 10:12pm

In my previous post, the first of a series on the place of Sixtrum in the career of its performers, I asked the question: "What does Sixtrum represent in your career?" to Fabrice Marandola. For my second post of this series, the same question was asked to Robert Leroux during an interview on December 13th. Here is an overview of that interview:

Sunday, January 22, 2012 - 10:13pm

Whether it is through concerts of the Sixtrum Series, or of the Youth Series, or concerts on tour, Percussion Ensemble Sixtrum shines and makes contemporary music for percussion shine as well. To understand the impact of Sixtrum in the careers of its performers, I propose a series of blogs based on interviews with the musicians of the group.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 8:26pm

Last Monday, November 7th, percussion ensemble Sixtrum presented the concert Histoires de gestes at the Society for Arts and Technologies (SAT). The concert was based on pieces which exploited in different ways, the concept of gesture in music.