All of Montreal flocked to Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on Thursday evening for the grand premiere of Symphonic Riopelle, a show that producer Nicolas Lemieux has been working on for four years. Produced in partnership with the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation and benefiting from the strengths of the OSM, this multimedia concert consecrates the undeniable victory of the visual arts over music.
The immense winner of Symphonic Riopelle is Marcella Grimaux. The visual designer and responsible for the staging took over from Gabriel Poirier-Galarneau who was initially to lead the project. The quality of the projections of Riopelle’s works, their choice and the dynamic sequences on a configuration of various LED screens of various sizes not only creates a visual narration following the creator’s journey, but generates a movement and keeps the attention awake. The most marvelous poetry invites itself in the last painting, “Aeternitas”, on an idea of flight relayed by the costumes of Marie Saint Pierre.
Beyond the projections, the five sections are linked together by short excerpts from interviews allowing the “sequences” to be launched with a few strong ideas or witticisms from the lips of the painter and sculptor. The stage itself is bathed in rays of light in bold and varied colours.
Certainly, one can consider Symphonic Riopelle like a “sound and light show” putting a dynamic accent on the work of a genius. Assured victory of visual art over music! From this point of view, the show is a great success, as the “eye bath” is a source of happiness and emotions.
Progressive regression
What should we expect from the music? That it pleasantly supports this visual spectacle or that it tries to raise Riopelle’s height or, at the very least, to relay it?
The “dive into the heart of the artist’s work” would be done “to the rhythm of a musical creation signed Serge Fiori and Blair Thomson”, we were told. This tandem was formed by Nicolas Lemieux. He then engaged the Orchester symphonique de Montréal, the Petits Chanteurs de Laval and the Choeur Temps Fort, as well as conductor Adam Johnson. We emphasize and repeat: this is not the OSM’s artistic project for Riopelle’s centenary. We don’t know if there will be another one. But the OSM is a service provider here.
Accuracy is important since there is necessarily a gap. On the visual arts side, it is the fulgurance of a visionary genius. On the musical side, we are talking about a cinematographic type of know-how which, through the original colors (steel drum), feels some modernism in the first two parts, even if it goes around in circles in choral rehearsals while we are talking of irrepressible momentum and global refusal at the end of the 1st section.
The gap between Riopelle and Fiori/Thompson widens halfway through the show, from the middle of the 3rd tableau. The more we advance, the more we regress and we have the impression of finding ourselves in the film Visitors by Jean-Marie Poiré, you know, the return of guys straight from the Middle Ages! The sound framework of Visitors is forged by the composer Éric Levi, also an eminent linchpin of the ERA group, whose New Age choral universe imbibes here too a posteriori Symphonic Riopelle.
The project wanted “both the musical creation and the visual environment [fassent] echoes the great periods of the artist’s life”. The visual environment yes. Couldn’t the musical creation heard, at least in large part, have just as well accompanied a ” biopic by Maurice Richard or, as far as the historical saga is concerned, by François-Marie-Thomas-Chevalier de Lorimier?
The frame of Blair Thomson, extremely competent, does not harm the approval of the beautiful spectacle which proceeds in front of our eyes, but it could not be the object of the displacement with the spectacle or the purchase of a recording. This aesthetic choice confirms the strong comeback in several forms of music. new-age “, the most visible so far being that “in hollow” or adult instrumental music without spiritual aim (Stréliski, Blais, etc.). Such shows cultivate an “en plein” form, with choirs and orchestras. As long as we understand and admit that it’s showbiz and commerce, without any other claims or attempts at semantic kidnappings, everything is fine.