Sixtrum Newsletter - Fall 2010

Content:

- Sixtrum 2010-2011 : a diversified season

- The 2009-2010 season : synopsis of a busy season

- Follow our latest news releases on our website

- A recent addition to Sixtrum's website : Conversations
 

Sixtrum 2010-2011 : a diversified season !

The 2010-2011 season of the Sixtrum percussion ensemble, in residence at University of Montreal's Faculty of Music, will bring a rich contribution to Montreal's music season. On program: concerts produced by Sixtrum and in collaboration with its partners — SMCQ, NEM, Le Vivier — as well as close to 40 children's concerts, coproduced with the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada.

September 2010, 7:00 pm
Salle Paul-Desmarais du Centre Canadien d’Architecture
De rythme et de timbre – Sixtrum's soloists

Sixtrum will perform a concert of compositions by Iannis Xenakis, part of a series of programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary (2010), which explores the fundamental role of drawing in Xenakis’ work. Works for solo, duo and trio by composers Gérard Grisey, Dominic Thibault, Polo Vallejo and Fabrice Marandola will complete this program on the theme of timbre exploration and polyrhythms for percussion.

October 19 and 20 2010, March 26 2011
Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges,
Maison de la culture Ahuntsic et
Théâtre Outremont
Le Conseil des Arts de Montréal en Tournée presents Pléïades

Sixtrum will perform a commented concert presenting an overview of the contemporary repertoire for percussion ensemble : rhythms, melodies and colours through four works by composers Iannis Xenakis, Claude Vivier and Julien Grégoire. Sixtrum will introduce the listeners to the different families of percussion instruments, while also presenting the work of each of the performed composers. This concert, along with the comments, will be staged by Michel G. Barette.
 

October 2010, 8:00 pm
Salle Pierre-Mercure – Centre Pierre-Péladeau
Participation the SMCQ concert, Halloween Party

Sixtrum will join Quasar and the SMCQ musicians under the direction of Walter Boudreau for the premiere of Irons by canadian composer Wolf Edwards and for a seldom played work by Serge Garant, Amuya, of which the original version was written for a film presented at Expo 67 in the Man and the Polar Regions. Power and excess will meet in this dangerously seductive concert !

20 November 20, 2010, 8:00 pm
Salle Claude-Champagne of University of Montreal
Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon

Sixtrum wlecomes in its regular concert season the french ensemble Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon, five passionate and demanding musicians who have succeeded in maintaining an ensemble dedicated to percussion keyboard instruments.

Mixing marimbas, vibraphones and xylophones, and always in the pursuit of excellence and communication with the public, the group's musicians explore and surpass genres, forms and techniques.  Revisiting traditional repertoire, and encouraging composers to write new compositions, the ensemble has created a varied rerpertoire of transcriptions and new music.

This five musicians orchestra has played in different venues from Lyon to Shanghai with a repertoire that ranges from Bach and Ravel, to Zappa modern composers.

In Montreal, Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon will perform Éric Satie, Claude Debussy, Gérard Lecointe, Gavin Bryars and Thierry Pécou.
 

January 19. 2011, 8:00 pm
Salle Claude-Champagne de l’Université de Montréal
Videomusic

Imagine a very large screen overlooking 6 musicians standing in a shaded area, each equiped with an electronic percussion interface. Sixtrum will present hybrid videomusic works written by composers Jean Piché, Sylvain Pohu, Dominic Thibault and Louis Dufort. The artistic and technological research holds a prominent place in this project since the works performed will use new real time coordination techniques between music and image.
 

Elektra 2010 - Conception photo

February 18, 19 and 26 2011
Montreal/New Music Internation Festival

Sixtrum will take part in the prestigious opening (Drumming by Steve Reich with O Vertigo Danse) and closing evenings of the MNM festival (Un Train pour l’Enfer by Denis Gougeon and Lettre posthume à Conrad by Michel Longtin, with the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne).

April 2011, 8:00 pm
Salle Claude-Champagne of University of Montreal
Ligeti – Father to son

If Gyorgy Ligeti, the father, is considered as an icon of the 20th century music, the work of his son Lukas Ligeti, percussionist and composer, il a little less known, much more oriented towards improvisation and electronic media.

However, when one listens to his percussion quartet Independence, one must notice that the father's writing techniques and their polyphonic intertwinings - inspired by African music and the work of ethnomusicologist Simha Arom - form a strong basis on which was built his son's creativity.

These polyphonies wil echo the virtuoso transcriptions of John Rea, written especially for Sixtrum, of six of the magnificent and difficult Etudes for piano. To complete this program dedicated to musical filiation of the Ligetis, the song cycle Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel (one of the very last works of Gyorgy Ligeti, composed in 2000), will reply to a revisited version of the 100 metronomes of Symphonic Poem (1962).

This concert is part of the Saison Le Vivier. Buy the Saison Le Vivier card and get a 50% reduction for this concert.

November 2010 to June 2011
How Great Turtle Rebuilt the World

In collaboration with the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, Sixtrum presents again this year an original show for young audiences, 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.

Two versions of this program are offered, depending on available space and needs:

• a version involving 3 players (Joao Catalao, Kristie Ibrahim and Farbrice Marandola)
• a version involving 6 players and lighting (Joao Catalao, Julien Grégoire, Philip Hornsey, Sandra Joseph, Kristie Ibrahim and Fabrice Marandola)

Check our website for show dates.

2009-2010 : synopsis of a busy season

Sixtrum's 2009-2010 artistic season was structured around six major concerts given in Quebec and in France, and completed with the creation of a new young audiences show, presented live 24 times. Sixtrum has also premiered no less than six new works, four from Quebec composers, and one for the first time in Canada.

This past season has allowed the ensemble to develop its repertoire and its notoriety, with collaborations with some of the major players of the Quevec contemporary scene, such as Le Vivier, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), and Elektra 2010. Sixtrum also toured in the south of France to take part in a prestigious music festival, the Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo.

During the 2009-2010, Sixtrum has also explored new forms of expression with percussion instruments, such as Videomusique and a new form of commented concert with musician and host Catherine Perrin at the Orford Arts Center last July.

Follow our latest news releases on our website

Did you know that percussionist Sandra Joseph joined Sixtrum this year, and that she has been selected as candidate for the TROMP internation competition in Eidhoven?

Follow all news releases concerning Sixtrum's activites and members on our websute. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to get those news right on your desktop.

A recent addition to Sixtrum's website : Conversations

Sixtrum now has its own blog, Conversations.

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.

Conversations between Sixtrum's musicians, writing in their own name, and all those with whom they daily communicate to build their repertoire, their concert season, even their instruments: composers, performers, instruments makers and with you, our site visitors and readers, attentive witnesses of the music world.

So join in the conversations by writing your comments, expectations and wishes.

Hoping to read you soon!