Author Archives: Ryan Alexander Diduck

Play Recent

Shock & Awe

François Le Roux, Le Bal masqué and L’Histoire du Soldat, Bourgie Hall, 18 April 2024

François Le Roux performs at Bourgie Hall. Photographed for NicheMTL.

The Reuters News Agency photographer Mohammed Salem this week won the World Press Photo award for his snapshot of a Palestinian woman, Inas Abu Maamar, cradling the lifeless corpse of her 5-year-old niece, Saly, who reportedly was killed in an Israeli airstrike at Nasser hospital in Southern Gaza last October.

On the surface, it’s an aesthetically appealing image.

The cold and rigid textures of white marble and yellow sandstone behind the pair of women contrast their bodily figures, draped in blue, brown, and white textiles.

And yet another feature strikes the viewer on a more subliminal level: there is very little humanity to this photographic record of apparently human suffering.

The only hint we get of the subjects’ earthy identity is a snatch of Maamar’s hand emerging from her sleeve, gently caressing Saly’s enshrouded head. Otherwise, there is nearly no humanness evident in any recognizable corporeal features — an inverse, say, of the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning image that The Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captured of Phan Thi Kim Phúc running naked and screaming down Route 1 near Trang Bang immediately following an American napalm attack on South Vietnam in 1972.

In Ut’s historic image, the horrors of war were laid bare in black and white, visceral, and unmistakable. With Salem’s more current photo, everything that’s terrible about genocide is concealed, abstracted, wrapped up literally as if mummified. It’s an image sanitized of pain that invites viewers at once to look and to not really see.

During the Vietnam War, it was customary in the U.S. not to show dead soldiers’ bodies in the media. Visible suffering was a duty for the other side to bear.

But through the proliferation of shocking media images amidst wars in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Syria, the west no doubt fell victim to what the cultural theorist Susan Sontag in her book Regarding the Pain of Others defined “desensitizing horror.”

We’re frankly exhausted with looking at destruction and death. When there’s nothing else to look at, an image as enigmatic as Maamar’s requires an act of interpretation, forcing viewers to participate in discerning its true meaning.

Ensemble Urbain, Créations, Collectif MTL, 14 April 2024

Anita Pari and Joshua Morris perform at Collectif MTL. Photographed for NicheMTL.

How we signify internal pain entails a more symbolic vocabulary of representation. At a recent post-classical recital hosted by Ensemble Urbain, the composer and doctoral candidate Anita Pari chose to translate her own lived experience with mental health through music.

In a piece called “Escape for Cello and Piano,” Pari and accompanist Joshua Morris communicated sonically the experience of “persistent intrusive thoughts” — a phenomenon that everybody can experience, regardless of medical diagnosis or clinical disorder.

Ordering sound is one way to restructure any situation in which we find ourselves out of control. That’s why music — and art, more broadly — is such a successful therapeutic form, which we should consider before reaching for pharmaceuticals or other easy fixes.

Pari’s composition didn’t come off too conceptual, either; it wasn’t, so to speak, just a “one-note” performance. I found myself both aesthetically pleased as a listener, and emotionally moved as a person empathetic to those who find this life a struggle. What a wonderful place to put disordered energy.

Anybody who attempts to bring order into this world is going to scrape up against chaos. Anyone who tries to shine a light through darkness will inevitably cast a shadow.

Nary a Fang with Elizabeth Lima, No Hay Banda & Innovations en concert, La Sala Rossa, 15 April 2024

Jennifer Thiessen performs with Nary a Fang at La Sala Rossa. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Not to disparage “one-note” performances, the experimental quartet Nary a Fang delivered a transcendent concert at La Sala Rossa last Monday, revolving around miniscule microtonal variations on a single frequency. Like listening to a piano being tuned, it becomes evident that an infinite number of notes exist between notes — that one is many, and many is one.

With this realization, it’s impossible not to be fulfilled by a drone that ostensibly never changes. When we find whatever it is we’re looking for — in sound as in life — there is no more “more” to find.

The Spanish kabbalist Shem Țob ibn Shem Țob wrote in his Sermon on Wa-Yeħi in the 1480s:

“Those who love money can never have enough of it. But the reward that comes to those who engage in Torah and commandments will fully satisfy them, for this goodness spreads like the water of a brook. Just as the sunlight can illuminate the entire world without diminishing, so the goodness of the world to come will not diminish, no matter how many share in it.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra, Maison Symphonique, 19 April 2024

Yannick Nézet-Seguin conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra. François Goupil for the Orchestre Métropolitain.

A good conductor takes command of an orchestra, which is prerequisite. A great conductor can regulate the crowd with a wave of his hand.

While directing The Philadelphia Orchestra, his American charge, Yannick Nézet-Séguin after the first movement of Florence Price’s 4th Symphony on Friday night at Maison Symphonique gently and successfully instructed the sold-out audience to kindly hold their applause until the end of the piece.

It was a simple gesture, a subtle manual motion made without even turning around. But subtlety is most effective in a righteous demand for respect.

Is it possible that force isn’t the best way to overcome an army?

Wanda Koop, Who Owns the Moon, Musée des beaux-arts, until 4 August 2024

Left: Wanda Koop, Objects of Interest — Panel 4, 2023 and Objects of Interest — Panel 2, 2023. Right: a patron inspects Black Sea Portal — Luminous Silver, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery. ©️ Wanda Koop. Photographed for NicheMTL.

In preparation for painting, Wanda Koop lies on her back with eyes closed, often for hours, envisioning what each new piece should look like. Before a brush touches canvas, she has already formed a clear mental image of what the work will be.

“I love feeling that I’m always seeing everything in technicolour,” Koop told me at the press conference for her Musée des beaux-arts exhibition.

“It’s one of those shows where you should come by yourself and be quiet — like looking at the moon,” Koop suggests. “The eclipse is something that I speak to in my work. It’s something bigger than us.”◼︎

Cover image: Wanda Koop, Ukrainian Quartet — Power Plant, 2023, Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery. ©️ Wanda Koop. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Standard
999 Words

Before You Can Be, You Must Do

Dear Dale;

Literally some people have been commenting — favourably, I might add — on the fantastic logo you designed for me for NicheMTL. They’ve been saying how eye-catching it is, how it’s familiar somehow, how they’ve seen it around town on the stickers plastered on mailboxes and in the bathrooms of all the hippest places.

I wish that I could send them to you because you’d be getting an awful lot of extra graphic design business. But I can’t give them your email or your phone number or your Instagram. In fact, there is no way to reach you now because you died.

Dale Nigel Goble, April 29, 1972 ~ December 15, 2019.

You died just before the pandemic started, Dale, so you missed a pretty dark time. “Escaped” may be more apt. Maybe you got out while the getting was good.

But you were only 47 years old, and there’s no doubt that you had so much more life in you, so much more art to make, so many more smiles with which to lighten any dark time — even a time of plague, war, famine, and death.

It can’t stay like this forever. But there is no way to bring you back.

You were the first artist I ever knew who only made art, who didn’t have a square job. In Edmonton in the 1990s, that was a big deal. Nobody was just an artist in Edmonton. Everyone gave in and worked on the rigs, made enough money to buy a truck, get married, build a new house south of the Henday, and settle into the Alberta dream.

You and I didn’t do that. You moved west, and I moved east, but neither of us ever gave up on making art.

You got me my first studio, Dale, in the AIDS Driving School building on 81st Avenue. You were in the basement, screen printing t-shirts, and I was one floor up, making music. Your door was always open, and whenever I needed a rest, I could always count on coming downstairs for a smoke break, listening to Radiohead, or Björk, and having a conversation about what we were going to do when we were famous.

We used to roll out of bed at four in the afternoon and meet at Tommy’s for breakfast just before they closed. Or at Your Friends and Neighbours. Eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, and cigarettes in one of the back booths.

Then we’d head to “the stu,” as you called it, and work into the night. I always wished we’d had more time to drink coffee and smoke. But you were busy, and you taught me to stay busy.

Dale Nigel Goble, Dream Head, 1998, Acrylic on wood.

We did a lot of shows together, at Manifesto café, with Carol and David, and at the Works Festival in Sir Winston Churchill Square. I made music while you spray-painted graffiti on huge sheets of canvas.

Years later at the Tam-Tams in Montreal, I saw a DJ and a graffiti crew doing the same thing, and it made me think of you and me, not that long ago. Good ideas are timeless.

Maybe we smoked too much weed. You’re gone now so I’m not telling tales out of school by saying that you might have dealt a bit to pay the rent. But even the way you sold pot was artful, wrapping it in brown butcher’s paper and tying it up with twine instead of just sealing it in Ziploc baggies like all the other chumps. “Art supplies,” we used to call it. But in retrospect, we probably would have been more productive without those supplies. I am now, certainly.

Dale Nigel Goble, sign from The Special Shop, 1997, Acrylic on wood.

I remember driving with you and Sarah and Mark Ramsay out to Holly’s mom’s farm near Edson. We sat around the campfire and roasted Mundare sausage, when someone got the idea that we should run naked through the fields under the silver moonlight.

So, we took everything off except for our shoes and socks and felt the tall grass passing between our legs, laughing, chasing each other, not a care in the wicked world. I had never felt as free before as I did that night. Nobody told us what to do or not to do. I’ve never felt that free ever since, Dale.

You gave me paintings which I still hang with pride in my home. The Dream Head, the Special sign, and the 9×5 foot Cityscape that’s a bitch to move, never mind to mount. I almost got trapped behind the fucking thing once. This is your art, and it is dangerous.

Dale Nigel Goble, Cityscape, 1997, Acrylic on canvas.

I know countless people across Canada — and around the world — still have your pieces in their collections. Especially the Applebet, which made you a modest celebrity in nurseries and Mommy magazines.

Dale Nigel Goble, Applebet, 2010, Laser-cut wood.

You lived out your last days in the Cowichan Valley. I imagine the old-growth forest and the ocean air must have given you comfort as your illness progressed. You might have known you didn’t have much longer. But you still took the time to design a logo for me and my hairbrained scheme of starting a new publication, just as journalism itself was disappearing.

Unlike me, who’s an acquired taste, everyone liked you, Dale. You had that glint in your eye that hinted at some special secret. You always knew the right thing to say. It would have been your birthday on April 29th. I’m turning 47 this year. Sometimes I wish I could be dead, too. But it’s not my choice to make.

I remember in your studio you had all these aphorisms and daily affirmations hand-written and taped to the walls. “Before you can be, you must do.” I said I wanted to be an artist, and you reminded me, you are an artist — whenever you’re doing art. So, I don’t stop doing art, even when nobody’s looking.

Along with your logo, the cover image on NicheMTL.com is my tribute to you, Dale. The only window with a light remaining on, working after everyone else is asleep.

I’m still working. So, you can sleep now.◼︎

Cover Image: Dale Nigel Goble, Love Heads, 1998, Laser-cut wood.

Standard
Play Recent

All That Is Now

Enigma, Opéra de Montréal, Théâtre Maisonneuve, 9 April 2024

Performing from inside a cube appears to be the hottest theatrical trend right now.

The pianist Alexandra Stréliski began her sold-out two-night Place des Arts residency from a grand piano positioned within a giant box in January; Les limites infinies de la peau, a new work by the Montreal choreographer Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, was staged at Ateliers Belleville on April 11th and 12th from inside a pair of transparent boxes; and Enigma, the latest collaboration between the French composer Patrick Burgan and Franco-Belgian playwright Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt — a tense operatic psychodrama ironically centring upon a bizarre love triangle — unfolded at Théâtre Maisonneuve this week from a pulsing neon block that was meant to be intimate, but came off more claustrophobic.

There is something unsettlingly suffocating about witnessing performers trapped inside boxes, calling to mind the illusionist Harry Houdini’s great feats of escape from water torture cells. Of course, the box we least want to imagine being trapped in is a coffin, the final enclosure that will eventually, inevitably, imprison every last one of us for all eternity.

Still, in my opinion, the greatest stunt ever mounted which deployed a box for dramatic effect took place 40 years ago at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, when the late-night talk show host David Letterman — who turned 77 on April 12th — donned a suit made of Alka Seltzer and submerged himself in a plexiglass dunk tank.

Although there was ostensibly plenty of queasiness in the studio, the relief it provided was purely comic.

Alberto Porro, Tre di Bastoni, MFA Gallery, Concordia University, 10-12 April 2024

Alberto Porro, Cucco, 2024, Oil on canvas mounted on panel. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Seeking shelter from the rain, I stumbled on Thursday afternoon into the VA Building where, two decades ago, I began my undergraduate studies in cinema.

I was pleased to see that students haven’t changed much, still brimming with enthusiasm, groups of nascent artists hurriedly hanging their works between smoke breaks.

There was no Instagram in 2004, only Friendster. We chatted face-to-face, not via text. But reliving the past is not in the cards.

Simon S. Belleau, Répliques, Fonderie Darling, until 26 May 2024

Simon S. Belleau, Interfaces: bleu-vert, 2024, Archival pigment prints, recycled posters. Photographed for NicheMTL.

If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction; For it increaseth. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion: and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me. Thou renewest thy witnesses against me; changes and war are against me.

—Job 10:15-17

“We’re gonna do it anyway / Even if it doesn’t pay.”

—Gillian Welch, “Everything is Free.”

Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony no. 3 with Kent Nagano, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Maison Symphonique, 12 April 2024

“They’re much more civilized at Bourgie Hall.” Kent Nagano photographed by Antoine Saito for the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

Maestro Nagano’s return to Maison Symphonique was heroic indeed, the Orchestra firing on all cylinders, performing Stravinsky and Beethoven flawlessly.

However, the audience marred an otherwise magical evening, phone notifications dinging, people hooting and hollering between each movement, talking and gawking amongst themselves as if they were at home watching Netflix and not at the symphony.

My companion, a concert pianist herself, at one point leaned into me and said, “They’re much more civilized at Bourgie Hall.” I kept my mouth shut, not mentioning the sordid scene I’d witnessed there last June.

Total Solar Eclipse, 8 April 2024

“At the exact instant of totality, someone played Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” and I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at the aptness of this entire scene.” Total Solar Eclipse photographed for NicheMTL.

A few months ago, I watched a documentary about The Beatles, who somehow went from a Merseyside Skiffle band — rather niche back in those days — to the biggest Rock & Roll group in music history.

We always want to know the secrets to such meteoric successes, and one modest hint squeaked out in this behind-the-scenes clip: an acronym which must have served as a sort of axiom for the Fab Four: D.I.N. — or “Do It Now.”

I must admit that I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the total solar eclipse, which occurred coincidentally in Montreal on the afternoon of April 8th. All the preparations and the lengths to which some people went to be in the path of totality, travelling across borders and over time zones, seemed a bit excessive to me. Why get so excited for a natural phenomenon that would last only a few minutes, I wondered?

That particular day, I had just finished conducting an interview with a brilliant musician and composer, who will be performing in Montreal for the Suoni per il Popolo festival, (watch this space), when it occurred to me that all I had to do was walk outside and I could catch an uncomplicated glimpse of something rather rare and special. So, I grabbed my iPhone and headed to a secret little spot I know not too far from my apartment in the Old Port.

I arrived mere minutes before the moon was about to take its position outshining the sun. Whilst it was packed everywhere else, providentially, only a handful of kids and some old Quebecois stoners, drinking cans of PBR and riding around on their reduced mobility scooters, were at this specific place.

At the exact instant of totality, someone played Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” and I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at the aptness of this entire scene. Throngs of people gathered along the quays began cheering and tears spontaneously formed in my eyes as I realized that this event, if only briefly, had the power to unite everyone who had witnessed it. And all I needed to do was to walk a few blocks and take it all in.

If you have the chance to do something now, do it now. Strike up a conversation with that famous artist. Walk outside and gaze at a solar eclipse. Damn the torpedoes. Seize the day.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when everything that matters aligns perfectly, clicking into place like a jigsaw puzzle, and the universe in its vastness reveals itself in its own infinite beauty and endless possibility.

And then it’s done.

As quickly as it starts, it also ends. Life goes by pretty fast, so D.I.N.◼︎

Cover image: Simon S. Belleau, See me with your ears, 2024, Archival pigment prints, recycled posters.

Standard
999 Words

Join The Club

I have never been comfortable with the concept of clubs.

In school, I never joined the chess club, or the math club, or any sort of club for that matter. Clubs were for those who couldn’t make friends on their own. People who needed to constantly surround themselves with other people to feel validated as people.

Secret societies seemed even worse, the idea of initiation and ritual and adherence to arcane doctrines smacking of unnecessary conspiracy. If you want to be in a club, why not own it?

I would never be a member of any club that would accept someone like me as a member, the old saying goes. It’s often attributed to Groucho Marx, but Woody Allen stole it, and meant it. Now, there’s a club I wouldn’t want to join.

However, my most preferred type of sandwich has to be the club sandwich. In most restaurants, you don’t even have to show a membership card to order one.

A triple-decker, the basic club sandwich consists of sliced turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on three slices of toasted white bread, cut into quarters, toothpicks skewering the wedges in place. Some restaurants ham it up with ham and cheddar cheese, which is fine, but in my opinion excessive.

There is already such thing as a ham and cheese sandwich, which is perfectly complete on its own. I find that bacon plus ham is too much pork to put together on one plate. A good sandwich should only be constructed of a few constituent ingredients. And the beauty of the classic club is its simplicity. Less is more.

I have long searched Montreal for the best club sandwich, and a few old-school diners stand out. There’s Oxford Café on Sherbrooke in NDG. They’ve been around since 1944. Oxford makes their club sandwiches with real chicken, not prepackaged pressed turkey, so they score points for authenticity. A great club sandwich is worth travelling for. But unless you’re already in NDG, it’s a bit of a journey.

I also like Paul’s Patates in Pointe-Saint-Charles. They’ve been open since the mid-1950s and, depending on who’s working, you may receive your club sandwich in geometrically sliced segments that would impress Pythagoras. Paul’s has a distinctive neighbourhood joint vibe, with the stainless steel countertops and the (sadly non-functional) jukeboxes, which are nonetheless time capsules of Quebec popular music.

Another plus is their homemade Bertrand spruce beer. It smells kind of funky, but the original recipe is not too sweet, not too carbonated, and hasn’t changed much in over a century.

I highly recommend both these diners and the club sandwiches therein. But recently, I’ve been returning to Chez Nick in Westmount and ordering the club sandwich, fries, a side of gravy, and a ginger ale. The combination of that particular lunch in that particular place is perhaps my favourite thing in life right now. Chez Nick has been going strong for 103 years, and there is an unmistakable air of history there that is hard to ignore.

Nick’s is by far the most elegant of these diners, being on Greene Avenue, where bourgeois retirees congregate, and young upwardly socially mobile families bring their prep school kids. But there’s a down-to-earth atmosphere, too, that makes anyone feel immediately comfortable and welcome, no matter how fancy or how casual you might look.

Nick’s is already famous to most Montrealers. The author Louise Penny has written about it in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series, and frequently goes there herself for breakfasts when she’s in town. Other renowned writers have been regulars there, but I won’t name any names. Brian Mulroney used to stop in from time to time, and one of the staff recently told me that he once served Jean Chrétien.

Whenever I go to Chez Nick I feel like I’m part of this cast of illustrious and everyday characters. I’ve been visiting Nick’s for nearly 20 years, and it is the one restaurant in which I have never had a bad meal. I particularly love their club sandwiches which I customarily order dry, with a white paper container of mayo. That way, I can regulate the dressing in every bite.

There are lots of things that make Nick’s one of my favourite places in the city. The warm and long-time staff; the regulars, whom I’ve come to recognize and in some cases befriend; the ambiance; the legacy; the mythology. And of course, the club sandwich. But one thing I especially love about Nick’s is their gravy.

As a kid, it was a treat to go after school for a pre-dinner snack of French fries and gravy. My mom would habitually pick me up from class and take me to the local food court where we would order a basket of crinkle-cut fries and dip them in a tub of warm and salty brown sauce.

It was less routine that my dad would collect me, but I could usually convince him, too, to take me out for French fried potatoes. It was during one of these outings that I remember he gave me the news that he and my mom were divorcing. Certain things stick in your memory more than others, and that afternoon has embedded itself deeply into my experiential scrapbook.

I don’t recall it being particularly painful at the time, as one might expect of hearing such momentous news. Not to my 11-year-old self. It’s possible that the gravy and fries cushioned the blow. There’s a reason why we call some dishes “comfort food.” Disentangling sustenance from remembrance is an impossible task.

In my youth, I couldn’t wait to distance myself from my broken family. But I crave familiarity now, as the world appears to be coming apart at the seams.

Family comes in all different forms. It’s not just about genealogy. Long ago, my biological family was scattered to the wind. But I feel a sense of belonging at Nick’s, like I’ve found a club I want to be in.◼︎

Standard
All Dressed

Fear & Desire: in conversation with Kaie Kellough & Jason Sharp

For an awkward second, silence rings out on the FaceTime line.

I have just asked saxophonist Jason Sharp and poet Kaie Kellough, who dually lead the experimental Avant-jazz nonet, FYEAR, how their band’s name is supposed to be pronounced. Kellough turns the question back on me. “How would you pronounce it?”

Already, I feel as though I’m being tested. I tell the pair on the other side of the screen that I’d say: “F-Year” — as in, the year following A, B, C, D, and E.

“It could work that way,” says Kellough, “if it makes you more comfortable.” Knowing little of comfort, I persist with the enquiry.

“I’ve been saying straight-up ‘fear,’” Sharp informs, “the emotional state.”

“I’ve been emphasizing the ‘Y,’” says Kellough with a smirk. “There’s an extra vowel in there: Fyyyear,” he stretches out the syllable into two.

“It was coined during the pandemic, during the lockdowns. And basically, it comes from a very simple observation — that it was a fucked-up year. Hopefully it causes a little bit of uncertainty.”

FYEAR, from left: Jesse Zubot, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, Kaie Kellough, Jason Sharp, Joe Grass, Josh Zubot, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, Stefan Schneider, Tommy Crane. Frank Schemmann for Constellation Records.

Doubtless, nothing else in 2024 sounds quite like FYEAR’s self-titled debut recording. Generically, it’s an adroit and ambidextrous mix of improvisatory free jazz, chamber music, spoken word, electronic, and Afrobeat. The instrumentation of two percussionists, two violinists, two poets, a pedal steel guitar, and Sharp’s bass and baritone sax combine for a collaborative album as delightful as it is daring.

“This particular project has a lot of nods to a lot of different traditions,” Sharp tells me. “As a performer inside of it, I feel like it travels. It’s most enjoyable that way.”

FYEAR’s mission grew out of a partnership between Sharp and Kellough that began just as the Coronavirus crisis hit in 2020.

“About a year beforehand,” Sharp says, “we performed a version that was not quite fully composed and included fewer members, opening for Saul Williams at La Sala Rossa. That was the first iteration that had more of the defining seeds. Certainly, the vocabulary has been brewing for many years. But it finally catalyzed during Covid.”

FYEAR, “Pt II Mercury Looms (excerpt)”

Although FYEAR is technically Montreal-based, the three of us share a moment when we collectively realize that we all hail originally from Alberta — Kellough from Calgary, and Sharp and I from Edmonton.

During his teenage years, Sharp got a taste for the stage playing baritone saxophone in The Little Birds Big Band, a youth ensemble that performed regularly at the Yardbird Suite, Edmonton’s legendary jazz club.

“I remember around that time I went to see Steve Lacy play solo at the Yardbird,” Sharp recalls. “That was my first encounter with a more improvisational performance. Steve is such an influential musician. He seemed to span this world of classical music and jazz and improvisation. And he played this solo soprano saxophone concert, and I was riveted. It definitely left a mark on me.”

“It’s like getting that snowball that you’ve been pushing to lurch forward and roll on its own.” Pierre Langlois for Constellation Records.

Kellough discovered a fondness for the rhythms of language after reading the Harlem Renaissance poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes in high school English classes.

“It was poetry that referenced a musical tradition but also spoke about people’s everyday experiences,” Kellough explains. “Even if I’m a writer who writes very differently from Countee Cullen or Langston Hughes, I find that those were two writers who drew me into poetry, initially, and made me feel like it was something that was relevant in the world. Certainly, something that was relevant to me. Something that I might think of doing.”

Often, the metropolis that draws westerners is Vancouver; yet migrating east to Montreal was a notion that came separately to each artist.

“I fell in love,” says Sharp, “so I ended up landing in Montreal and getting married. But when I came here, I discovered a scene that resonated with me in a wonderful way. I didn’t know much about the incredible creative hub that is Montreal, but it’s shaped me greatly.”

Though for Kellough, the love affair was more with an inkling of French culture.

“I really thought I wanted to go to Paris, but Montreal ended up being closer.” Pierre Langlois for Constellation Records.

“I had seen this documentary on Bravo television about this French writer,” Kellough confesses. “I don’t even remember who the writer was, or what it was called. But it was this writer in the 1980s in Paris. He was in his apartment, and he was being interviewed by an interviewer in a black suit and a skinny tie, and they were both smoking cigarettes in the apartment. There was a shot of him out the window walking across a cobbled street coming back with a baguette. And I thought, oh man, that is it, that is it. I need to be in that apartment writing long, anti-imperialist tracts and going to get my baguette between smokes.”

Kellough laughs. “I really thought I wanted to go to Paris, but Montreal ended up being closer.”

Historically, Montreal has steadfastly been a bright sun that lures so many stars into its romantic orbit.

Sharp resumes reminiscing. “When I landed in Montreal, one of the first musical experiences I had that made me feel like Montreal could be home was meeting Sam Shalabi. Sam invited me to play in Land of Kush. That was the first time I sat inside of an ensemble full of rock musicians, improv musicians, jazz musicians. That record came out on Constellation Records and that was my introduction to the label. For this FYEAR record, I was just so grateful that Constellation was as excited about it as I was. I think Constellation is a very important musical nucleus in this city.”

FYEAR, “Pt VII Pure Pursuit (excerpt)”

They each arrived in Montreal for different reasons. Nonetheless, Kellough and Sharp have equivalently insightful visions about that elusive élan that stimulates great artists to create.

“There’s a momentum that exists,” observes Sharp. “It’s like getting that snowball that you’ve been pushing to lurch forward and roll on its own. Then you’re just guiding it. Once it starts to take shape, the choices become obvious. You have different options of going this way or that, but essentially once that momentum is established, it’s forming its own path. Then, that flow state happens.”

Kellough elaborates on the importance of simultaneous inspiration and reflection.

“I always feel it’s a very delicate thing, especially performance. It requires patience. Even though you may experience what you feel is a flow state, it’s important to reserve the time to come back and observe the results when you’re in a different mindset. It’s important to have that more critical, detached awareness. In the moment, it’s a funny thing, because you have to be invested in it. You have to feel it. But at the same time, you can’t fully trust that you’re going to produce good results. You can never get completely lost in the moment.”◼︎

FYEAR’s self-titled debut is released 5 April 2024 via Constellation Records.

Standard
Play Recent

Glorious & Free

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the hearts. —Proverbs 21:2

Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, Thomas Ospital, Maison Symphonique, 23 March 2024

It is high time that we address the problem of certain immigrants to Quebec, as it appears that Mr. Trudeau seems powerless to do so.

I’m not talking about asylum-seekers or people displaced by war and conflict beyond their control. I’m talking about those who come here unwilling to adapt to our culture, to speak our language, who feel entitled to access our services, our schools, our hospitals, our courts, without so much as a thank you.

I’m talking about immigrants who expect Quebec to bend to their way of life, rather than the other way around, immigrants who refuse to integrate and get along. We should return these ill-informed, ignorant, ass-backward people forthwith and en masse by the busload to the shithole country they come from.

I’m talking, of course, about Americans.

Nadah El Shazly, with Saudade, Centre PHI, 21 March 2024

Nadah El Shazly performs with Sarah Pagé at Centre PHI. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Immigrants built Canada. Yet, it’s not the immigrants that we typically think of.

The English, the French, and the Dutch colonized Canada by robbing it from Indigenous folks. But the Irish, the Scottish, Italians, Chinese, Ukrainians, Poles, the diaspora of Jews, and Arabs did most of the heavy lifting.

We bought stolen land, and upon it, built a nation. We are the cultural mosaic that Trudeau Sr. spoke of when he spoke of multiculturalism. We are Canada.

Future generations of immigrants will look back on us to see how well, or poorly, we welcomed them. How will they remember us?

The Things We Cannot See, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, 22 March – 11 May 2024

Rafael Y. Herman, Purpura Affectum,​ ​2022, inkjet print, 58” x 87”. Photographed for NicheMTL.

I am in love with the silence of the image. The world can be a noisy place, and cities, especially, are brimming with cacophony. Sirens. Horns. Loudspeakers. Busses, trucks, and cars with booming stereos. People shouting in every language. Even our own minds are almost always filled with the din of a thousand simultaneous thoughts.

When I find myself before an image, the first thing I notice is its silent fury. Images don’t need to speak. They say everything they need to say simply by way of exhibition. There is a profound honesty in the ability to communicate without words, to show rather than tell, to implant an idea as if by telepathy. Images broadcast on another frequency.

Janet Werner, Spiders and Snakes, Bradley Ertaskiran, 21 March – 4 May 2024

In Janet Werner’s recent paintings, what comes into focus is an artist at peace with her risky vision.

When I interviewed Janet Werner for NicheMTL back in December 2022, I thought that her work was about juxtaposing two images against one another or cutting an image in two and rejoining the splice. But it has evolved to represent the entirety of its mediumicity: the tape that holds two images together; the canvas folded over on itself. It’s as if the artist has once again taken a step back and incorporated herself viewing her own distorted images.

There is still a sense of violence to Werner’s new body of work. But in this collection of recent paintings, what comes into focus is an artist at peace with her risky vision. Werner has achieved a new plateau of confidence in her signature schtick, which takes it beyond a gimmick and into the realm of a bona fide post-modern art vernacular. It is both refreshing and challenging to witness an artist progress in real time. It forces the viewer to progress, too.

The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney (20 March 1939 – 29 February 2024)

Brian Mulroney understood that good leadership is about service — a concept that seems lost on today’s politicians.

An old adage espouses that if you’re not a radical in youth, you have no heart. But if you’re not a conservative as you come of age, you have no wisdom.

The late former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney introduced some deeply unpopular initiatives during his tenure, not least of which was the Goods and Services sales tax, otherwise known as the GST.

In 1991, when the GST came into effect, many Canadians saw it as a grab for cash, punishing citizens for spending their hard-earned money. But it was also necessary to come up with some sort of innovative revenue stream to fund government operations, one that would stimulate the domestic economy while keeping Canada competitive in an increasingly global marketplace.

Nobody likes taxes. But taxing people on what they spend rather than what they earn is a smart and fiscally conservative manner of doing both of those things, and Mr. Mulroney possessed the foresight to enact this particular tax and do it at the tail-end of his time as Prime Minister, effectively falling on his own sword for the sake of our nation’s future.

Brian Mulroney understood that good leadership is about service — a concept that seems lost on today’s politicians who are more concerned with their immediate public image than with long-term priorities that will outlive their political careers. Canada is in desperate need of a return to Mulroney’s brand of conservative wisdom.

It is not every day that you have the opportunity to pay your respects to a former Prime Minister. So, I braved the unseasonably bitter wind last Thursday and stopped for a moment at St. Patrick’s Basilica, where Mr. Mulroney was lying in state.

I wasn’t anticipating his family to be there greeting the public. But there they were, welcoming fellow mourners with gratitude and grace. Feeling a bit nervous in the presence of such a public figure, I shook Mila Mulroney’s hand and recited the usual formal niceties — that I was sorry for her loss.

Unexpectedly, Mrs. Mulroney held onto my hand for quite a while and spoke to me directly, thanking me for taking the time to come. And I realized that this was not just a formality for her. So, I told her that her husband was a good man who served our country with honour and dignity and thanked her and her children for their commitment to him.

Their commitment to him enabled his commitment to us.◼︎

Cover image: Janet Werner

Standard
999 Words

Unprepared Piano

I haven’t contributed much to human history.

I don’t have children and may never do, if my perpetual singledom, unemployment, and financial poverty continue on their current trajectory. I’m not good at business, nor keen on new technology, nor fond of predatory capitalistic practices — generally the characteristics that ensure upward social mobility in today’s society.

I write words by hand, which is something that my AI assistant continually tells me I should improve, by breaking my paragraphs into smaller chunks, and adding subheadings in order to lead my readers. Ostensibly, Artificial Intelligence doesn’t think much of us. Surely within a decade, AI will render my profession unnecessary, if there is any necessity to it now.

However, before artful writing fell out of favour, I elicited a minor stir at the offices of The Quietus, in January 2013, when one of the site’s editors noted that a word I had used in an article celebrating the 30th anniversary of MIDI came up a Googlewhack. That term was “claviocentrism” — referring to the centrality of the twelve-tone, clavier-style keyboard to Western musical traditions. My MIDI article constituted its first use. I knew this because I indeed invented the word, as none was previously sufficient.

This week, I had the good fortune to attend two very different concerts that returned the piano to my center of attention. No Hay Banda, the excellent Montreal-based concert series, which exists somewhere between a concept and a band, organized the first one, aptly titled “The Last Act of the Piano.”

The troupe’s three members — percussionist Noam Bierstone, keyboardist Daniel Áñez, and violinist Geneviève Liboiron — come from diverse backgrounds. But they somehow blend seamlessly in ethos, a veritable power trio of in sounds from way out.

No Hay Banda is renowned for staging exceptionally dramatic performances that push the boundaries of Montreal’s live music scenes. For better or worse, there is nothing else quite like what they do. It is impossible to overstate how challenging — even alienating — their concerts can be. No Hay Banda is truly art for art’s sake, audiences be damned. Easy listening, it isn’t.

Although, “The Last Act of the Piano” happily was both sonically and visually appealing, perhaps because No Hay Banda chose to focus upon Western music’s most familiar instrument, albeit in a profoundly experimental way.

The trio performed two pieces of 21st century post-classical piano music that were at once delightful and rare to experience in a live setting: Jennifer Walshe’s 2008 composition, entitled “Becher;” and “101% mind uploading,” the 2015 piece by Elena Rykova.

Rykova’s score calls for the instrument to be prepared with magnets, Scotch tape, and an optional sticker of X-ray radiation. No Hay Banda photographed for NicheMTL.

“Becher” is the contemporary equivalent of Mauricio Kagel’s post-modern 1970 album, Ludwig Van, reconstructing snippets of Beethoven’s compositions, running them through amplitude modulation and other forms of effects, intending to mimic the way that the composer might have heard his own compositions as his natural hearing deteriorated.

Jennifer Walshe, “Becher’s” author, stitches together borrowed scraps of popular piano compositions — from Beethoven to Coldplay and beyond — in a technique that emulates digital sampling, and which tests the virtuosity of any pianist performing the piece. But No Hay Banda’s Daniel Áñez tackled the task with incredible skill, doing justice to Walshe’s ambitious work, and doing so with the group’s signature David-Lynchian laconicism.

Without saying a word, all three members then donned medical scrubs and surgical gloves to perform “101% mind uploading,” which had the threesome operating upon the piano’s insides as if it were a patient undergoing an emergency appendectomy.

Rykova’s score calls for the instrument to be prepared with magnets, Scotch tape, and an optional sticker of X-ray radiation. No other band in Montreal would have the guts to rip out a piano’s guts in such theatrical fashion, and few other Canadian cities could muster enough of an congregation to support such an endeavour — a testament to both.

The week’s second claviocentric concert could not have been more different; comparatively speaking, more palatable to a wider patronage — the Russo-German pianist Igor Levit interpreting the works of Brahms, Mahler, and Beethoven at Bourgie Hall, on the venue’s recently acquired Hamburg Steinway grand.

Just being in the presence of this instrument was itself worth the price of admission, as evidenced by the sold-out crowd, who were enraptured with Levit’s shoeless performance. Apparently, he injured his foot days prior to the recital. But this lack of footwear in no way hampered his dexterity.

As I sat there recalling No Hay Banda’s wild concert, listening now to one of the world’s most celebrated pianists caressing this perfect instrument, it occurred to me that keyboards are devices that require human intelligence to bring out their best qualities.

The electronic musician Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, famously experimented with programming mechanical machines to trigger an analogue piano’s keys. A generation prior, the avant-garde composer Conlon Nancarrow produced player-piano reels that spat out extreme, impossible compositions. And MIDI, the computer protocol that digitally controls any imaginable instrument, has given rise to the niche genre known as Black MIDI, which attempts to pack the largest number of notes into the smallest time span.

The question, though, is why? Just because it is technically possible to exceed human skill doesn’t mean it should be done. And once it is, there is no reason to try and surpass it, as if in some robotic pissing contest. Less is more — in this sense, less machine means more human.

What I initially meant with the term “claviocentrism” was not what the word has come to mean to me recently. I coined it as a shorthand for a cultural logic that prefers pianos over, say, guitars, or drums.

But what claviocentrism means today is the ability of this wonderful instrument to gather people around it in something approaching harmony, something approximating peace, with an unmistakable timbre that is unquestionably beautiful, whether it is played with fingers, mallets, or magnets.

Maybe AI can parse information faster than we can. But can it invent useful words and innovate new musical forms? Is there still another act for pianists and writers?◼︎

Standard