The Festival international de musique contemporaine de Victoriaville (FIMAV) will present Saturday evening the world premiere of the performance of the young Ensemble Infini, founded in the midst of a pandemic. A wall of saxophones, electric guitars, harp too — it’s shaping up to be a free jazz storm in the Carré 150 cultural center. And on drums, the venerable Guy Thouin, spiritual father of free jazz in Quebec, who, at 83, has never lost the desire to discover himself through improvisation. “Playing free is dangerous, it’s living without making any compromises”, says the mischievous musician during a long interview with The duty.
As soon as we arrive at his home in the Rosemont district, Guy Thouin leads us to the basement where he has installed his DIY drum kit, urging us to sound the gong four feet in diameter suspended behind – an imported Japanese-made instrument by percussionist and honorary professor at the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal Robert Leroux. “There are only four like that in Quebec,” exclaims Thouin. Fortunately, the basement is soundproofed, otherwise the Saint-Lambert city council would have already called an emergency meeting.
During the pandemic, Thouin invited his young colleagues to jamming with him in his basement, depositing the recordings of these moments of musical life on YouTube, a series called From the Basement. Almost all the young friends of the Ensemble Infini have been there, including saxophonist Aaron Leaney; the two jazzmen launched last March on the label Texan Astral Spirits Lockdownextremely rich and kaleidoscopic album recorded in November 2021 at the Hotel2Tango studio.
Faced with so much vitality, we bow down: at 83, the pioneer of free jazz in Quebec, co-founder of the Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec, member of Infonie and the orchestra of L’Osstidchois in admirable physical shape, if not for this Lenoir thorn that he has been dragging around for a year and which prevents him from playing the double bass drum as much as he wanted. He is excited at the idea of returning to Victo to present this project undertaken by guitarist Raphaël Foisy’s “le p’tit tabarnouche”, who had assembled a first iteration of the ensemble for a performance during the presentation of the restored version of the documentary. The Unfinished Infonia (1974), directed by Roger Frappier.
“Hey, this is thefun, I have four daughters with me! he jumps. Two saxophonists, Andrea Mercier and Elyze Venne-Deshaies. At the piano, Belinda Campbell, “it’s Cecil Taylor,” he says, mimicking nudging the keyboard. “And my little Marilou [Lyonnais-Archambault] on the harp, with its effects pedals. I said to him: “You are going to put the harp everywhere on me!” That’s the sound of Infinity! They are all amazing musicians. »
And he has seen incredible musicians pass by since his debut in the 1960s, playing at Baril/The Barrel, opened in 1965, rue de la Montagne, south of Sainte-Catherine. York who engaged the orchestras there. [Avec le Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec]We played there on the weekends. Archie Shepp went there, I met Sunny Murray there [batteur, pionnier du free jazz]He told me : Guy, why don’t you come to New York ? »
At Casa Pedro, another haunt of jazz musicians located at the corner of Crescent and Maisonneuve, Charlebois and Louise Forestier landed to listen to the Quartet: “Robert was coming back from California, he was into Zappa. They listened to us, then approached us: “We are looking for a band to give life to L’Osstidcho”. “Bassist Maurice Richard quickly turned it around, remembers Thouin: “Eat shit, we don’t play that, 4/4! Except that I thought to myself that there might be something to do with this project. » It is Thouin that we hear on the drums on the classic recordings of Lindberg, California, The end of the world…
Then came Infonie, with Walter Boudreau and Raôul Duguay, a tour with the Grands Ballets Canadiens all the way to the United States, then the observation that Guy Thouin was no longer free at all. “I sold all my instruments, except my gong, which I had entrusted to my mother. Gone to live in India, leaving the music behind, which nevertheless caught up with him: Thouin ended up studying the art of the tabla in Calcutta. The classic musical instrument of the Asian subcontinent sits proudly in the ” basis by Guy, in Rosemont.
Back in Quebec, he rediscovered his musical tribe, collaborating on stage and in the studio with Raôul Duguay, Bertrand Gosselin, Jean-Pierre Zanella, resuscitated the “New” Free Jazz of Quebec and founded the heArt Ensemble. Saturday night’s concert will showcase his compositions, rearranged for ten musicians, then atomized into the heat of the performance action.
“Good free jazz, I feel it when the performance takes a direction, comments Guy Thouin. When you feel there’s a search behind, like they used to [le saxophoniste] Charles Gayle—he used to play under the bridges! – And [le mythique batteur] Milford Graves. These guys were working their business — they weren’t coming out of the music program at McGill, the university where Thouin himself worked.
“Everything that trained musicians learn, they have to unlearn to play free jazz, abounds the veteran. Young people learn Coltrane by heart, they learn the standards, they even learn how to replay the solos. When they arrive in my basement, I give them an instrument and tell them: “Play it”. It’s hard, it’s convincing them to work even harder to find their inner voice, their own personality. When I give them a solo, what I’m actually giving them is the chance to find themselves. »