The 11e edition of the Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques (MNM) festival, under the aegis of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), will be held from February 23 to March 5 on the theme “Music and spirituality” and will welcome, in addition to ten -seven concerts, symposiums and conferences with artists from here and elsewhere.
The SMCQ’s new artistic director, Ana Sokolović, is delighted with a return to theaters after the virtual edition of 2021. She even conceived this MNM 2023 as a great mix of music and ideas.
“I was delighted when I learned of the theme set up by Walter Boudreau for this edition. Spirituality is very important in our society. What we want to do during this festival is to ask ourselves questions about that,” Ana Sokolović tells us.
The programming has therefore been enriched. “I felt the need to add a symposium around this. A one-day symposium was certainly planned, but we added another symposium from February 23 to 25, two study days and a conference. I do this in collaboration with my research chair in opera creation. »
Music and transcendence
The public will be able to rub shoulders with “composers, musicologists, but also researchers, philosophers and anthropologists” discussing “the important themes for our society in connection with the theme”. “Discussing with the scientific committee, we realized that the theme should not be ‘Music and spirituality’, but ‘Music and transcendence in the air of post-humanism’. »
In the eyes of Ana Sokolović, “the goal of the SMCQ is to talk about subjects of our time that are not detached from tradition. We are the tradition, but we continue, and so we ask ourselves important questions about this post-humanist era: what is happening with the ideal of the heterosexual white male devoid of physical mutations? Where we are ? Others will be able to answer much better than me. I am interested in the thing and I ask questions. »
The musical variation of these major concerns will involve, on February 23, an opening by the meeting of two traditions with an orchestra and four Inuit and Breton singers. Mixed sounds will be united in a creation by composer Katia Makdissi-Warren performed by the Obiora ensemble and the SMCQ ensemble, under the direction of Cristian Gort.
The First Nations will also be honoured, on February 24, during a concert at the Maison symphonique: Notinikew by Andrew Balfour, a composer of Cree origin, which highlights the story of Aboriginal soldiers fighting for freedom in Europe during the First World War, but deprived of their rights and freedoms upon their return home.
The goal of the SMCQ is to talk about the subjects of our time that are not detached from tradition.
Among other strengths, Goldgot(h)a by Walter Boudreau on poems by Raôul Duguay and, on March 2, a joint Messiaen concert by the Ensemble de la SMCQ and I Musici with Louise Bessette under the direction of Jean-François Rivest. Among the invited artists, the French ensemble Court-circuit (February 26), the Milanese ensemble mdi (March 4) and the accordion virtuoso, Snežana Nešić.
Ana Sokolovic also associated the surprising new composer in residence of the SMCQ, Eadsé. Even though this Wendat singer-songwriter comes from the pop world, the artistic director sees great potential in her. “I met her during a project as part of my research chair. She studied at Laval University and UQAM and is very interested in classical music. I teach her, we meet often and talk about the possibility of merging the knowledge of classical music, from which contemporary music comes, and the indigenous music that she knows and carries as a heritage. I recognize myself enormously in that, because it was precisely when I arrived in Canada that I began to discover my own roots in the Balkans, from which I develop idioms in a contemporary style. I also encourage Eadsé to use the Wendat language. It’s a dead language, and I would like it to be able to use certain words, certain texts to bring them back to life through music. »