Poster by Kristin Messina
May 7th, 2024, 8-10pm
918 Bathurst
Doors Open: 7:30pm
Show Starts: 8pm
Ticket info coming soon
ChamberDestroy is co-produced by The Music Gallery and connects contemporary music ensembles from two of Canada's largest cultural centres with one common artistic goal. Ensemble Paramirabo-EP (Montreal) and Thin Edge New Music Collective - TENMC (Tkarón:to/Toronto) reunite on the heels of a highly successful joint touring/recording project (2015 and 2018), to premiere Nicole Lizée's ChamberVania (AKA ChamberDestroy, FKA ChamberKill) for double sextet, soundtrack and video and Datura for double sextet and video by Yaz Lancaster (USA) alongside, Louis Andriessen’s seminal Workers Union and Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy for unspecified ensemble.
Montreal-based Nicole Lizée is one of Canada’s most sought after and imaginative composers. Nicole’s rhythmically propulsive new work explores ephemera, idioms, and connotations of early video game culture. The 8-bit world infiltrates the chamber ensemble world as instruments assume 8-bit and pixelated characteristics. Sections of the work are duel/battle-based music: ensemble vs ensemble. The ensembles perform on custom-made instruments to evoke the infiltration through the 4th/5th wall into the chamber music world.
Yaz Lancaster is a transdisciplinary artist based in NYC. They are most interested in practices aligned with relational aesthetics & the everyday; fragments & collage; and liberatory politics. Their work is presented in many different mediums & collaborative projects, and often reckons with specific influences ranging from politics of identity & liberation to natural phenomena and poetics.
Louis Andriessen’s experimental compositional style developed as a rebellion against postwar serialist traditions prevalent in Europe during his formative years. Worker’s Union (1975) is an indeterminate piece ‘for any loud sounding group of instruments’. Driven by aggressive, machine-like rhythmic precision, Andriessen believes that "only in the case that every player plays with such an intention that his part is an essential one, will the work succeed; just as in the political work." TENMC and EP are revisiting this powerful composition, which featured prominently on their joint album ‘Raging Against the Machine’ (2015/Redshift Records), in honour of Andriessen’s recent passing.
Joy Boy (1974) by visionary American minimalist composer/performer Julius Eastman, is written for open instrumentation, and includes elements of improvisation within the framework of a set harmonic structure. Joy Boy’sshimmering harmonic textures carry listeners and performers alike along for an ecstatic sonic journey.
ChamberDestroy is made possible with generous support from The Music Gallery, the Canada Council of the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.