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Louis Dufort is one of the four composers taking part to Sixtrum's concert « Lights ! » that will be premiered next January 19 at Claude-Champagne hall in Montreal.

For the occasion, Louis offers us a new work, written specifically for Sixtrum, using electronic percussion. As with his colleagues for this concert, Jean Piché, Sylvain Plhu and Dominic Thibault, his work will be based on the relationship between two media, music and video.

For the second time, Sixtrum will perform Beat by Sylvain Pohu during the January 19 concert. The premiere of the piece was given during the Elektra Festival last April 2010.

Based on the interaction between music and video, Beat also allows msicians to imrprovise, not only sounds, but also images. The composer thus explores another aspect of the medium, as he explains in this video.

Next January 19, we will play a concert totally devoted to videomusic works. What is videomusic? Jean Piché, one of the composers involved in that project and professor at University of Montreal's faculty of music, gives us a definition of this art form in this Conversations post.

So in this concert, we will present four new works written by four composers from Quebec: Louis Dufort, Jean Piché, Sylvain Pohu and Dominc Thibault. Each of their pieces will use electronic percussion instruments that will control not only the music, but also the video projected on a large screen.

The youngest of these composers, Dominic Thibault, has accepted to take part in a kind of "making of' or mini-documentary on his work. During the next few weeks, up until the performance of his piece, we will have the opportunity to follow Dominic through the process of the composition and the work with the members of Sixtrum on his new piece.

We had been discussing with Jean Piché about a videomusic project involving live percussionists for a few years. Actually since the beginning of Sixtum. The project was then to be presented at Elektra, which had commissioned Jean Piché for a new work. But for different reasons, we were never able to schedule it.

Then this past year, the time came and we participated in the pre-opening concert of Elektra 2010 last May 5 with two videomusic works, K'ANCHAY by Jean Piché and Beat bye Sylvain Pohu.  We enjoyed the experience, so much that we decided to program these very interesting works again in our 2010-2011 season (January 19), and added to new works for the same medium, one from well known composer Louis Dufort, adn the other by a younger composer, Dominic Thibault.

Conversations, is the tile of our blog – this funny word that seems born out of a cross between a temple-lock attack and a water-gong resonance.

Just like any conversation, ours will involve many interlocutors, and lke any conversation, these will at times be serious, profound and inspired, and at other times lighter, almost playful, or even opiniated, fevered and obstinate.. Bawdy ? No, you've got the wrong wensite : Sixtrum is written with only one « X » !