Tag Archives: ambient music in the park

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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 20th 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.

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All Summer in a Day

Shunk with Ahren Strange and Checkmate Bullseye, 6482 Saint Laurent, 11 August 2024

Shunk performs at 6482 Saint Laurent, 11 August 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Harmony is rather behind us than before. —Henri Bergson

I often think of those stereotypical pep talks that coaches give in the locker room when their team is down. Or the speech that generals make to their troops on the cusp of some important battle. Something like, “I’m not going to lie to you: you’re going to have to give this everything you’ve got — more that you ever dreamt of giving — and half of you ain’t coming back.”

I recite this speech to myself sometimes just for leaving the house.

It seems as if every quotidian operation these days has the potential to erupt into all-out war. And I hate to fight. But more than fighting, I hate to lose. Particularly in a battle I never asked for. Especially in a fight I did everything possible to avoid.

Adversity in life can strike at any time. Usually, it occurs when we least expect it, when we are least equipped to handle it, when our resistance is lowest. It’s as if the universe somehow knows when we’re down and picks that moment to kick. Then, we are faced with the choice to accept or reject it, to flee or to fight.

I propose that flight is no longer an option. There’s nowhere left to run. We are all living on the same planet, and when we are attacked where we stand, we have a duty to stand our ground. It is an obligation to defend ourselves. Because if we don’t, our attackers will attack again, and worse, they will move on to attack our neighbours, our friends, our family.

Survival is not a right. But surviving is your responsibility.

Rendez-vous sur l’Esplanade du Parc olympique, OSM, 14 August 2024

The OSM performs at l’Esplanade du Parc olympique, 14 August 2024. Antoine Saito for the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

If I never saw the sunshine, baby,
Then maybe I wouldn’t mind the rain —The Ronettes

The TV adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s sad science fiction short story, All Summer in a Day, traumatized me as a youngster. I recall that we watched it in junior high school. And why kids at such a tender age should be exposed to this specific depressing chronicle is now becoming clearer to me.

In the original tale, which was published in 1954 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Venus is a planet beleaguered by constant rainstorms, with the sunshine only being visible for two hours every seven years.

The story centers on a class of Venusian children who finally get to see the sun for the first time, and an Earthling child named Margot, whom the cruel native Venusians lock in a closet, depriving her of the solar spectacle.

In the screen version, the director extends Venus’s sunless period from seven to nine years, presumably to punctuate the brutality of its moral. The ending is also altered when the children, apparently out of guilt, give Margot a bouquet of flowers that they gathered under the Venusian rays.

The message of this story is frequently interpreted simply that people behave with brutality towards those who are different from them, especially to immigrants, and towards those who have had enviable experiences. Margot came from Earth, where she routinely saw the sun, comparing its warmth to a fire in the stove.

But the underlying message is that we are compelled to behave with brutality to the great Other in order to understand the consequences of our brutal nature.

Nature is violent. When we strike out against it, nature strikes back.

Roundtable with Rito Joseph, Acouetey Junior Jocy and Leith Hamilton, Black Summer ’91, Fonderie Darling, 15 August 2024

From left: Leith Hamilton, Rito Joseph, and Acouetey Junior Jocy, Fonderie Darling 15 August 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.

That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. —Ecclesiastes 3:15

The most powerful moment in an especially poignant symposium around Fonderie Darling’s Black Summer ’91 exhibition came when the civic leader Leith Hamilton admitted to the audience that competition within Montreal’s most marginalized communities had historically proven counterproductive.

Rivalry, for example, for grant money, or prestige, ultimately led to further rifts in already-divided communities, setting back the project of unifying and uplifting various diverse peoples within a system that colonialism and capitalism had already rigged against them.

Nothing is as useless as an angry peace activist. To arrive together we must walk together.

Fine Food Market with Nick Bendsza and Nikolas L.B., La Sotterenea, 16 August 2024

Nikolas L.B. performs at La Sotterenea, 16 August 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.

All temporal goods are vanity and delusion; there must come a time when they are taken away and lost. —Solomon Ben Isaac Levi

Every time there’s an election, the familiar chorus through the campaign bluster is always the word “change.” Every candidate promises change. And yet it would be a greater challenge, verily an impossible one, to promise durability.

Change is inevitable. Indeed, the only constant in life is change. This is a cliché, a paradox that we take for granted and seldom truly stop to consider.

Life is a factory churning out change. Time’s chief function is to produce difference. It is up to human perception to ascribe value to the harvest of time, to determine whether this or that change is positive or negative — or both, or neither.

However, nature’s ruthless indifference suggests that there is no such thing as good or bad transformation. Furthermore, change as a process itself is ambivalent.

L Con with ciber1a, Ambient Music in the Park, 11 August 2024

Listeners gather for Ambient Music in the Park, 11 August 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.

All the dreams and promises
That we give
We give away —INXS

Dream time differs from the experience of temporality in waking life.

We might sleep for only a few minutes and experience sprawling narrative dreams that seem to span over hours or even days.

Moreover, these dreams can feel convincingly real, altering our perceptions well into the morning, colouring our moods and shaping our interactions. What happens in a few seconds while we are asleep can have a lasting impact that resonates long after.

Which is the illusion: an instant or eternity?◼︎

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 subscribing.

Cover image: Antoine Saito for the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

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