Catching the Big Fish

Traceable, Nubian Néné, MAI, 15 January 2025

Great art makes space for ideas.

It might be interesting to learn about an artist’s personal life, or to consider the cultural context within which their artwork was conceived. But what is actually important about any work, whatever medium or form it takes, is whether it cultivates deliberation.

After the affective impact is experienced, what is left are trace elements of contemplation.

Mahler’s Sixth Symphony with Payare, Maison Symphonique, 16 January 2025

_{Maestro Payare conducts the OSM’s performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony at Maison Symphonique. Gabriel Fournier for the OSM.}

Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. There is always a drop, like the yin and the yang, of one inside the other. It is impossible not to recognize the sadness behind a frantic laugh, or to find calamity a bit hilarious.

An apocryphal story that circulated about Twin Peaks concerns the pilot episode’s premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 1989. At the most devastating moment, when Sarah Palmer learns of her daughter Laura’s death, the audience apparently erupted in laughter.

The tendency toward cascading misfortune is a source of particular humour. Whenever a situation deteriorates from bad to worse, we cannot help but be amused. It’s a specific kind of schadenfreude, the discovery of a perverse sense of pleasure in regarding the pain of others.

Yolk, Two Readers and Music IV with Ashley Mayne, Gloriah Amondi, and James Player, 9 January 2025

***_{Guitarist James Player performs at Yolk’s Two Readers and Music IV.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

So-called “smart” technologies often aren’t.

Why would you want the door to your washing machine to automatically lock as a childproofing feature? What if your child was locked inside the machine?

As I write this article, Microsoft Word has restarted of its own volition and automatically enabled something called “Copilot.”

Copilot, ostensibly, is Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence integration that can answer questions and summarize sentences and compose calls to action, as if every piece of writing should be some listicle about 13 restaurants you need to try whilst visiting Montreal. Or whatever.

The worst part about Copilot is that I can’t seem to figure out how to disable it. Every time I start writing a new paragraph, there it is, a little icon blinking at me, like Clippy on cocaine, prompting me to click on it, and by clicking on it, to train it to think like I do.

Get this through your artificially intelligent simulation of a head, Microsoft: the only copilot I need is God.

Janis Rafa, Landscape Depressions, Centre Vox, 17 January — 1 March 2025

_{Still image from The Space Between Your Tongue and Teeth, 2003, Janis Rafa, Centre Vox. Photographed for NicheMTL.}

It may come to pass that animal intelligence will soon surpass human intelligence in the form of instinct.

We have begun to rely so heavily upon machines to do our thinking for us that inherent flaws are compounding and multiplying in our own faulty faculties. We are failing to recognize that within the systems of machinic control with which we have surrounded and propped up ourselves, there is an unseen disciplining apparatus at work that imprisons our physical and even our mental gestures.

The only escape may be to lean on intuition, relaxing our fingers on the Ouija board gadget and allowing the machine to exorcise its own ghost.

Alexandra Streliski, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, 17 January 2025

***_{Alexandra Streliski onstage at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

The standard piano has twelve notes across seven and one quarter octaves on only 88 keys.

That’s a surprisingly small number of sounds for an instrument that sits at the centre of Western musical composition. But limitation is paradoxically liberating, permitting virtually infinite combinations.

There are no wrong notes on the piano. It just depends on what song you’re trying to play.

David Lynch (20 January 1946—15 January 2025)

“Experience the joy of doing. And you’ll glow in this peaceful way.” —David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish

David Lynch, aside from being one of the most compelling filmmakers in the brief history of cinema, was also a painter, a photographer, a musician, a furniture maker, and a proto internet pioneer.

Before there was such a thing as social media, Lynch sold monthly subscriptions to his website, davidlynch.com, whereupon he would post what we now call “content” — absurd short videos of Japanese girls talking about bananas, and people in domestic environments wearing enormous rabbit masks, and Lynch himself delivering daily weather reports from his home in Los Angeles. He also sporadically responded to questions that his subscribers would email in.

To say that I was a David Lynch fan in the early 2000s is an understatement. I was determined to become an artistic Renaissance man just like him. I had sought out and seen all of his films. I had watched every documentary and read every book about him that I could find. I even paid for a subscription to his website. And thinking that he might hold some sort of secret to becoming a brilliant artist, or at least a key to how to get into film school, I decided to send him a question.

A few subscriptions cycles later, Lynch thoughtfully answered it. I was thrilled to hear my hero acknowledge my existence, much less offer me some sage advice.

_{David Lynch in 2003 offering advice.}

Soon afterward, I went out and made a film, moved from Edmonton to Montreal, attended and graduated from film school, continued on to complete a master’s degree and Ph.D., pivoted from filmmaking to writing, and launched a niche publication that combines cultural criticism with narrative nonfiction in hopefully novel and creative ways.

None of these things made me rich or famous. But they fulfilled me nonetheless and continue to do so in large part because I never strayed from the core of Lynch’s guidance, which was simply to learn by doing — and to be the best me that I can be.

My opinion of David Lynch’s movies has shifted in 25 years, since good drama is always about change. But my gratitude to Lynch as an artist has only grown.

Because in addition to being the kind of artist who more than anything inspired ideas to flourish, Lynch’s greatest artform may have been to encourage other artists to keep making their art.

That, I believe, is Lynch’s eternal legacy.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

_{Cover image: Nubian Néné performs at MAI, 15 January 2025. Photographed for NicheMTL.}

Play Recent

All The Things You Are

NicheMTL has an ambivalent mission.

On one hand, it endeavours to shed light upon cultural activities that receive little to no attention in other media. On the other, like any enterprise, it aims to achieve maximum popularity — clicks, likes, shares, stats, growth.

On one hand, it seeks to remain free to read. On the other, it is now also a luxurious magazine for sale at a near art book price point.

On one hand, it serves the artistic community by covering Montreal’s nichest events. On the other, it serves me and its contributors as a platform for our artform: the written word.

***_{Raphaël Daudelin, left, and Anouk Pennel, right, of Studio FEED inspect their design work.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

Ideally, NicheMTL is a circuit that gives back more than it receives, if only in the form of goodwill in absence of anything tangibly valuable.

NicheMTL has afforded me a wealth of incredible experiences. It is impossible to choose favourites, or to rank my most beloved days.

Nonetheless, the days listed chronologically below stand out, not just as some of the most enjoyable of 2024, but moreover, some of the most sincerely special days of my life.

Since the depths of the pandemic, I promised never again to say ‘no’ to an opportunity to do something out there in the world, together with people, in the public sphere. And so far, keeping this promise has not remotely disappointed me.

Thank you for a wonderful year. Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your events. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us, with Montreal, and with the world.

What you do matters. It is interesting. It is important. It is beautiful. It is eternal.

Some people have asked me why NicheMTL doesn’t publish straight-ahead reviews — or previews — like other media forms. The answer, simply, is because it’s niche.

There are no prizes. It’s an honour just to be nominated.

—Ryan Alexander Diduck, publisher

Alexandra Stréliski with Patrick Watson, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, 17 January 2024

***_{Carolina Dalla Chiesa and Alexandra Stréliski backstage at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

After securing a coveted media ticket to the second of two sold-out concerts at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, I was delighted to have been assigned a seat next to Carolina Dalla Chiesa, who is Alexandra Stréliski’s partner.

We became fast friends and hung out backstage after the show with Patrick Watson, who earlier in the evening treated the audience to a walk-on duet with Stréliski of The Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build a Home.”

The house came down.

Sarah Davachi interview and Total Solar Eclipse, 8 April 2024

***_{Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

Immediately following a Zoom conversation with Davachi, I realized that there were precious few minutes until Montreal would bear witness to a total solar eclipse.

So, I scrambled past thousands of spectators to a secret spot adjacent to Silo no. 5 and perched myself amidst a group of stoner kids and some Quebecois old-timers who were listening to Pink Floyd and drinking tall cans of PBR.

There could not have been a better setting for this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Emmanuel Lacopo and Ensemble Urbain play Julius Eastman, Casa del Popolo, 20 May 2024

***_{Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo, Ensemble Urbain, and friends perform Eastman at Casa del Popolo.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

The only other band that has ever sent shivers down my spine quite like Lacopo and company at Casa del Popolo was Godspeed You! Black Emperor at their reunion concerts in 2011.

I had the sense that I was observing something very special as this group of talented artists took to the stage at one of the venues that that legendary collective helped to establish — like the passing of the baton onto the next generation of Montreal’s musical mythmakers.

Black Givre with Jean-Sébastien Truchy and Preoptic Ridge, Ateliers Belleville, 1 June 2024

***_{Preoptic Ridge perform at Ateliers Belleville.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

Ateliers Belleville established itself as an important cultural space in 2024, presenting a number of unmissable vernissages, housing the studios for more than four dozen practicing artists, and hosting a handful of experimental music events entitled Échos.

With venues under threat from encroaching condos, and residents unamenable to the noise that accompanies Montreal’s renowned night-time scenes, workspaces like Ateliers Belleville have never been more vital.

Ambient Music in the Park + Shunk with Ahren Strange House Show, 11 August 2024

***_{Left: Julia Hill and Adrian Vaktor of Shunk; Right: the audience gathers at Champs des Possibles for Ambient Music in the Park, 11 August 2024.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

Montreal’s do-it-yourself core came to the fore in two events that happened to coincide on 11 August: the first being one of NPNP Trio and Personal Records founder Jackson Darby’s iterations of Ambient Music in the Park, an impromptu gathering of electronic music’s outsiders at Champs des possibles.

Next, I headed north to a house show featuring NicheMTL darlings, Shunk, held atop the roof of an apartment on Boulevard St. Laurent and Beaubien.

Everyone passed the audition.

The Dears & Stars, Rialto Theatre, 28 September 2024

***_{Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan of Stars.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

2004 was an enormously momentous year for Montreal’s independent music scenes, with the release of internationally best-selling albums by The Dears, Stars, Wolf Parade, and Arcade Fire.

What was so special about Pop Montreal’s 20^th anniversary Stars/Dears double bill was that it wasn’t just about invoking a sense of nostalgia; it was also about celebrating the longevity of these astonishing bands, which have always been capable of creating a vibe in the here-and-now.

FYEAR with Erika Angell, Centre PHI, 16 October 2024

***_{Tawhida Tanya Evanson and Kaie Kellough of FYEAR.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

FYEAR is a supergroup fronted by poet Kaie Kellough and saxophonist Jason Sharp, and including Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, Joe Grass, Josh and Jesse Zubot, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, Stefan Schneider, and Tommy Crane.

Watching this ensemble come together onstage at Centre PHI was the highlight of 2024’s cultural calendar and might be among my most transformative ever live musical experiences.

There is no greater power than a nonet firing on all nine cylinders.

NicheMTL Yearbook Launch, Ateliers Belleville, 19 October 2024

_{Yuki Isami, Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo, and Josh Morris perform at NicheMTL’s yearbook launch.}_{Filmed by Amelya Hempstead for NicheMTL.}

Everyone who attended the NicheMTL Yearbook launch was undoubtedly graced with exceptional musical performances.

However, the most unexpected gift came when Yuki Isami, Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo, and Ensemble Urbain’s Josh Morris spirited up a blissful sonic improvisation that they made look easy.

It was something like a Vaudevillian magic trick, with all the players having to promise the audience that they had never before performed together.

Tout geste est/et politique, Nadia Myre, Robert Myre & Molinari, Fondation Guido Molinari, 31 October 2024

_{Fondation Molinari director Marie-Eve Beaupré, left, and the artist Nadia Myre. Photographed for NicheMTL.}

One of the reasons I write is to remember — what I did, what I experienced, how it affected me, sounds, colours, the mood of the room. Every word is more-or-less carefully chosen to convey and communicate as clearly as possible a feeling, an image, not just for readers but also for me.

Writing is a consciously political act because it orients an audience towards an idea. Words are naked as food crossing the threshold of our mouths, immanently transmogrifying into us.

Soul Manifest, Dexter Barker-Glenn, Espace Maurice, 30 November 2024

***_{Dexter Barker-Glenn, Soul Manifest, Mycelium, ergot, pine, resin. 39 x 19 x 15 in.}***_{Photographed for NicheMTL.}

There are no shortcuts to enlightenment. Certain things may act as catalysts. Meditation, exercise, diet, habit — all of these produce in the subject a disposition of consciousness that may be more conducive to illumination.

Drugs, of course, have been touted as vehicles for expanding consciousness, and I at times have succumbed to this prescription.

Still, nothing gets me higher than a great conversation. More than a tab on the tongue, it is true communion.◼︎

Thank you to NicheMTL’s contributors, Darragh Kilkenny-Mondoux, Rachael Rinn Palmer, and Zoe Lubetkin, and to our presenting sponsors, Akermus, Constellation Records, and État de choc.

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

_{Cover image: The view of Montreal from Mount Royal Chalet, 8 October 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.}

999 Words

Minor Fall, Major Lift: notes on notes

The multiple meanings of the word “note” are themselves noteworthy, especially given that NicheMTL habitually subtitles these articles, “notes on” this or “notes on” that — not least including this latest note, which is self-reflexively subtitled: “notes on notes.”

First, there are literal notes, to which the subtitle refers. The written word is defined as a note. Notes scribbled in class. Notes stuck to the fridge, or the calendar. Notes in passing. The subtext of using “notes” as opposed to, say, an essay or a report, is its fleet-footedness and improvisatory character, like notes jotted during a lecture, or in a police interrogation. Quickly, efficiently.

Then, there are musical notes. These notes are also written forms — that is, notational — which are audible and understood to us as discrete sounds, the note of middle C, or G#, for instance. We conventionally speak of these notes as sitting on a chromatic scale of twelve distinct units, the notes on a piano, the notes upon which the vast majority of Western music is composed.

Notes describe smell and taste, too. Coffee, for example, is often thought to exhibit a “note” of chocolate, or vice versa. Certain flavourful notes, just like certain audible notes, complement each other, and others seem dissonant. We never know, however, which notes are going to taste or smell pleasant, or harmonize, until we put them together in resonance with one another.

This presupposes the singularity of notes. We think of notes — whether olfactory, flavourful, audible, or legible — as individual units of dimension, infinitely divisible, but irreducible, beyond being constituent of more notes.

A note scrawled on a blackboard has a definite quantity of information, just as a piano note corresponds to a definite musical frequency. Yet, as isolated as notes appear, we only define them in relation to other notes, one note in opposition, or conjunction, or relation to another. Therefore, no one note ever exists alone, a reassuring thought in a world comprised of seemingly solitary, remote parts.

I started thinking again about notes this past week, during the first of two sold-out Alexandra Stréliski concerts at Place des arts, a flawless performance at which there seemed to be no false notes. But what is that anyway — one false note? How can any note be considered wrong?

There are eighty-eight notes on a traditional piano keyboard. That is, eighty-eight keyboard keys which trigger one of twelve notes across a little more than seven octaves.

Obviously, there are no wrong notes on a piano. It depends upon the song. Although some notes are far more frequently used than others. The extreme notes, resting at the ends of the spectrum, are played only seldom and very deliberately. We have modified standard pitches over the years as well, tuning slightly upwards over time.

The scientific measurement of a note is one hertz, equal to its wavelength per second. In other words, a note depends upon its place in space and time, like a pyramid of cards, supporting and warping itself simultaneously.

In fact, infinite notes must exist, because there is always another note between notes. This is not the case, however, with linguistic notes. There is a finite number of letters in the alphabet. An exact number of words in a language. And yet, the combinations are endless.

Pleasant combinations of musical notes are what we call chords. So, it was apt that Stréliski invoked a “crack in everything”, the famous quote by Leonard Cohen, another noteworthy Montreal artist who filled the same auditorium with pleasant notes. In his most well-known song, “Hallelujah,” Cohen sings of a “secret chord that David played, that pleased the Lord.”

What does this mean?

David was the harpist introduced in the Book of Samuel, who banished King Saul’s supposedly evil spirits during spells that we might today consider on a sliding scale in severity, from panic attacks, to epileptic seizures, to paranoiac fits.

Something about the melody of David’s harp managed to calm the king’s disturbed mind. Just as something about the combination of Cohen’s words has struck a profound chord in millions of people, comforting troubled souls in troubled times. Just as Stréliski’s notes struck a chord last Wednesday night for thousands of fortunate Montrealers who were in the same place, on the same wavelength, at the same time.

The Book of Revelation is the ultimate of the Bible’s “notes,” so to speak, which describes in allegorical language the world’s destruction and redemption. It, too, is a combination of notes that inspires and terrifies its readers.

In Chapter 14, the text tells of a “new song” that redeemed people sing, which precedes the end of God’s wrath on Earth. I could not help but hear this new song in every note of Stréliski’s performance, in each chord that cleansed the air and saturated it with such pleasant sounds that for one moment it seemed as if peace on the planet was possible, within reach, that all it would take was the right combination of notes, of words, hammered out from a keyboard, revealing the secret chord that might deliver us from evil forever.

I wrote about the centrality of the keyboard to Western music in my book, Mad Skills, coining the term “Claviocentrism” to define the phenomenon. Why we have chosen the piano and its particular frequencies to gather ‘round is arbitrary, mysterious, but nonetheless real. For reasons unknown, or unexplainable, we resound most with the piano, an instrument with a remarkably limited number of notes that it can reproduce. But their combinations are familiar and novel all at once. We recognize them, and yet they delight us every time.

There is no such thing as a dishonest note. And nothing false about any individual frequency. We merely have to strike the correct chords.

There is no such thing as a wicked word. And nothing false about any literary unit. We merely have to find the right combination of them, the precise notes, the hidden hallelujah chorus.◼︎

NicheMTL

⍀ not too big ⍀ not too small ⍀

Tag Archives: Alexandra Stréliski

Catching the Big Fish

All The Things You Are

Minor Fall, Major Lift: notes on notes