Nouvelle musique d’hiver

About this event

On 6 March 2003, as part of the Montréal/Nouvelles musiques festival, Productions SuperMusique will present a work by Joane Hétu with the Ensemble SuperMusique, Nouvelle musique d’hiver. This concert will be one marking the 30th anniversary of the inception of the Canadian Music Centre in Quebec.

Nouvelle musique d’hiver is a work for septet that Joane Hétu composed to blend acoustic and electronic instruments. Over the course of the four movements that make up Nouvelle musique d’hiver, the musicians will launch into improvisation from a conceptual canvas that Hétu created for the composition.

Joane Hétu brings a rock background to musique actuelle, through her work with Wondeur Brass and Justine; in recent years, she has distinguished herself through her explorations of the diminutive and the intimate. Her solo compact disc Seule dans les chants and her association with Jean Derome in Nous perçons les oreilles mark important steps in this process. In Nouvelle musique d’hiver, Hétu amplifies the microscopic aspect of natural sounds and incorporates the results with electronic and pre-recorded sounds that occur sporadically. Abandoning the tonal and melodic aspect of the first part of the Musique d’hiver triptych, in this second part Hétu presents us with an evocation of the sounds of winter through an amalgam of sonorities purged of musical intervention.

One of the most important aspects of musique actuelle is the coexistence of different musical trends, the new balance of power between the composer and the performers, and the participation of the composer as a performer of his or her own works. The freedom of invention that the artists of musique actuelle enjoy places the performers in a different relationship with time and with the performance: faced with a greater range of possibilities, the musicians have to be attentive and ready for every possibility.

Founded in 1979 and directed since by Joane Hétu, Diane Labrosse and Danielle P. Roger, PSM is an important player in the deve-lopment of musique actuelle in Canada. The originality of PSM is the fruit of its approach: to produce and present music without regard for profit, for the trends of the day, or for academic conventions, and in doing this to focus attention on the place of women artists in musical research and innovation.

PSM thanks for their support the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Montréal Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, The SOCAN Foundation and the Fonds de stabilisation et de consolidation des arts et de la culture du Québec.