By Irwin Block (irblock@hotmail.com)
VICTORIAVILLE, Que. – It opens big and closes big, with an array range of small and medium-sized ensembles to fill out the four-days festival in typical “Victo” style – bold and eclectic.
The 31st Festival International de Musique Actuelle opens here May 14, and thanks to a sparkling lineup of creative and improvising musicians will draw fans from across North America to this quiet town, 160 kilometers northeast of Montreal.
The major opening night show turns the spotlight on Montreal based musician/composer Jean Derome, leading 20 of the city’s top improvisers as he marks 45 years as a pillar of the jazz and creative music scene.
He’s presenting Résistances, an hour-long work that combines written passages and improv – a game piece where he controls the direction and evolution of the music using pre-arranged hand-gestures.
The festival closer is the French symphonic rock group Magma, an octet led by veteran drummer / vocalist Christian Vander, also marking his 45th anniversary. He created a style that seeks to combine the drama of Wagner, the spirituality of Coltrane, the soul of Gospel, and the energy of rock. He’s touring with three vocalists who sing in an invented language called kobaian.
The first show Thursday, Burning Bridge, is a world-jazz octet of Chinese and Western instrumentation. Chinese-American composer and violinist Jason Kao Hwang combines experts on the traditional erhu (two-stringed violin) and pipa (four stringed lute) with avant jazz trombonist Steve Swell and bassist Ken Filiano.
The Slovenian duo Laibach, a Friday highlight, is anything but laid back: with a driving industrial beat, it takes on the heavy hitters of the political world, with subversive music, visuals, and performance art.
Hans Tammen’s 16-piece Third Eye Orchestra blends strings, reeds, keys, vocals, guitars, electronica and vocals playing compositions that straddle the spectrum from contemporary music to avant-jazz. This is its first gig outside of New York City.
Two top-ranked American guitarists each headline back-to-back Saturday night shows: Marc Ribot, a mainstay of several John Zorn’s groups, leads a trio with percussionist Ches Smith and electric bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Ribot then teams up with Nels Cline for a seven-piece version of Singers Unlimited, with such stalwarts as bassist Trevor Dunn, percussionist Cyro Baptista, and harpist Zeena Parkins.
Sunday gets underway with cellist Erik Friedlander, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, and Ikue More on electronica, another group of Zorn collaborators, playing his 2011 Claws and Wings composition, a suite on death and rebirth.
Chicago-based Joshua Abrams follows with his National Information Society, described as a “post-everything” septet. He’ll be playing gimbri, the three-stringed rectangular lute from Morocco, alongside master percussionist Hamid Drake and two other drummers, and unusual instrumentation – electric guitar, autoharp and harmonium. It’ll fit right in.
On Sunday night, the seasoned avant jazz duo of pianist Satuko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, with a huge discography to their credit, link up with Lille-based drummer Peter Orins and Christian Pruvost in Kaze, Japanese for Wind. With numerous projects together as a quartet, this is no last-minute patch up.
Ticket info, including discounts for ticket packages, are available. A package for two evening concerts, with hotel room (double occupancy) and breakfast, is $110. Info: 1-819-752-7912 or click on fimav.qc.ca
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