Starting May 13, the Victoriaville International Music Festival (FIMAV) will mark its fortieth anniversary in excess: at the top of the bill, the creation of Basileus, an oratorio in four acts bringing together around fifty musicians on stage under the direction of composer Pascal Germain-Berardi. The Horizon Ensemble (brass), the Forestare Ensemble (guitars), the Sixtrum Ensemble (percussion) and the Growlers Choir will accompany the soloists who will embody this tragedy inspired by the fall of the empire of Alexander the Great, theater of a meeting between metal and classical music – two genres that the conductor considers “totally compatible”.
“Composers like [l’Autrichien Anton] Bruckner, Beethoven, Robert Schuman, [le Russe Dmitri] Shostakovich and Frantz Liszt found raw energy in their music, in the expressive excess of music, analyzes Pascal Germain-Berardi. Several of them also injected anger and protest into their works, characteristics that are also found in metal music. Then take Igor Stravinsky, his sense of rhythm, the small, very concentrated, very energetic musical forms; I see a lot of similarities between metal and classical music. »
But in these things as in many others, Pascal Germain-Berardi sees more clearly than we do. “You have to know my personal journey to understand” these links that he sees and which illuminate his professional journey today, he says.
Born in Ville-Émard, “in the poor neighborhoods of the South-West”, the conductor became the first member of his family to complete his secondary education, through the Petits Chanteurs, of which he was a member for 9 years at 17 years old. “My baptism of classical music,” comments the conductor, who graduated from Notre-Dame College.
“Thanks to the Little Singers, I had academic support that was not found in the schools in my neighborhood; almost none of my childhood friends finished school. It was because I was taken out of my environment that I succeeded, so much so that, for years after high school, I studied a lot of psychology and sociology. »
It was during his studies that he fell into extreme rock. “What metal brings me is catharsis. I experienced a lot of frustration in relation to a shock — we sometimes talk about experiencing a cultural shock, I experienced what I call a socio-economic shock. Suddenly, I came across people who came from wealthy families, or whose parents were educated. I noticed the helplessness and the backwardness of my family — an economic backwardness, not an intellectual one. Realizing this was a burden for me. But the energy, the adrenaline of metal, relieved me,” explains the musician who, in the same breath, notes that metal appeared in disadvantaged neighborhoods in England and the United States.
He answered the call of music again during his graduate studies in psychology, which he abandoned to obtain a bachelor’s degree in singing, a master’s degree in composition, then a doctorate in conducting, while leading the group death/thrash metal Archetype (one album, Assignment, published in 2016). “It was a bit inevitable that all this baggage would end up coloring my musical projects,” confides Pascal Germain-Berardi.
These life and music experiences converged during the 2018-2019 season. “During this season, I worked with the Horizon Ensemble, I gave my first concerts as conductor of the Forestare Ensemble, and it was at this time that the Growler’s Choir gave its first concerts,” says -he. I have accompanied the howler choir, founded by the composer Pierre-Luc Sénécal, since the beginning: he came to look for me because he knew that I had a background as a professional chorister, that I had had a metal group in the past and that I was doing musical direction. Following these concerts, a little light went on behind my head: Brass? Guitars? Metal voice? Maybe there is something to do with all this? »
Michel Levasseur, co-founder of FIMAV and, until last year, artistic director, was one of the first to hear it in the same way. This excess is also, to some extent, his own. “Michel was excited about the project, he was one of the first to support me. » It is in a way his musical legacy, since the 40e edition will also be the first of his successor, Scott Thomson, who took office seven months ago.
The videographer and screenwriter Sylvain Johnson, a long-time friend of the conductor, signs the libretto for Basileusa very Shakespearean story of war and family heartbreak with “its Greek tragedy side”, summarizes Pascal Germain-Berardi.
“The story takes place in a fictional era, but inspired by the period following the death of Alexander the Great. Upon his death [en 323 avant J.-C.], the lands he had conquered were divided, causing an era of political uncertainty. In our story, a head of state, the Matriarch, sets out to conquer neighboring lands, but it escalates into a war that lasts for decades. Her two children, Agis and Ades, are caught up in this conflict, and her grandson finds himself at the heart of this generational conflict. In the story, the child symbolizes a new perspective, the potential to see the world from another perspective in order to try to change it. The message of the work is to try to recognize that our different origins should be a source of wealth rather than conflict. »