Description

Can we transfer creative strategies from other artistic domains into music creation? Can a sequence of sounds be composed the way a choreographer composes a sequence of movements in space, a poet composes an arrangement of words, a novelist follows characters through a plot? Can music be staged the same way a director stages a play or a visual artist conceives an installation? The “Ecstasies of Influence” (E°I)  research-creation project will explore inter-artistic ways of conceiving, creating and composing musical performances and productions, influenced by dialogues with and transfers from other artistic practices. In a three year project, three inter-traditional ensembles in Montréal, Berlin and Pune will engage with artists from other disciplines to understand their creative process, their aesthetic strategies and their material – and try to transfer these insights to musical composition, through a constantly dialogical iterative process of distributed creativity – and create 9-12 new musical scores. Documented by a team of artist-researchers this project could offer deep insights into where art forms are different – and where they speak to us in a similar way.

FARF Black Box EV S3.845

December 16, 2018

19h00

Ecstasies of Influence

Dec 16, 2018

A concert in Two Parts

First part @ 2 p.m.

Gésu Amphitheatre

0 Round Table/ video documentation on “Ecstasies of Influence”

I Performance created in collaboration with Deborah Carruthers

Programme:

Allegro – Auction , Ensemble Ekstasis co-creation

Grave – Iceberg, Ensemble Ekstasis co-creation

Deborah Carruthers, Terri Hron and Gabriel Dharmoo

Finale – Translation, Ensemble Ekstasis co-creation

Second part @ 8 p.m.

Concordia University – Fine Arts Black Box (1515 rue St Catherine West)

II Performance created in collaboration with David Szanto

III Performance created in collaboration with Angélique Willkie

Ensemble Ekstasis

Marie Annick Béliveau, Gabriel Dharmoo, Guy Pelletier, Terri Hron, Lori Freedman, Elinor Frey, Jess Tsang, with the direction of Sandeep Bhagwati

These three long music performances each started with a question: Can a musical piece be composed with exactly the same process that an artist uses to create their conceptual artworks? Since September, we have worked with three artists to explore new ways of understanding how music can be made out of nothing.

Deborah Carruthers is an artist that explores the various facets of science around the anthropocene to create multi-disciplinary artworks. David Szanto’s work focuses on our personal, intimate relationship to food and eating to create his performances. Angelique Willkie’s choreographies explore personal, autobiographical narratives and minute everyday movements. In their encounters with these artists, the musicians of the Ensemble Ekstasis tried to explore their practice with the ideas the artists gave them: what kind of intimate biological relationship do musicians have with their instruments? How can a musician read another musician’s movements as their score? How can the audience co-create a musical performance with their cellphone cameras? Does your listening change if your tongue senses a different taste? How does our meat and cow culture affect our musicking ? What does really constitute a piece of music – according to the SOCAN?

All these questions led to three exciting, inquisitive, enlightening hour-long performances which will be presented on Dec 16 in two locations at two times: at 14h we will discuss the research-creation project “Ecstasies of Influence” at Le Gésu, and then première the Bee Symphonie by Deborah Carruthers. And at 20h we will perform the two works created with David Szanto and Angelique Willkie in the “Fine Arts Black Box” at Concordia University.

If you have ever asked yourself what the farthest reaches of musical space could be, this day of inter-artistic explorations is for you.