with Éric Normand, Philippe Lauzier, Ellen Waterman, Paul Bendsza, and Chris Tonelli

MUN School of Music, Suncor Hall
Monday January 12th from 6-7:30pm. Free and open to all.

Session IV of Improvising spaces features two exciting improvising musicians from Quebec, Éric Normand and Philippe Lauzier, in their duo Not the Music. Not the Music will perform and share their thoughts on improvisation and then will be joined by local improvising musicians Ellen Waterman, Paul Bendsza, and Chris Tonelli.

For more information on Not the Music see below, or: ernormand.wordpress.com and http://www.philippelauzier.com/.

Éric Normand is an improviser, bassist, instrument designer, composer, songwriter, singer and record and concert producer. He defines himself as an epidisciplinary musician, a free electron driven by its yearning for meetings. As an improviser, he develop a personal and radical playing on a homemade electric bass equipped with mics and objects feedbacking and vibrating in small electronic devices, creating electric flux interrupted by the instrumental gesture. With this set, he prefers to play duets, with Jim Denley (flute and sax), Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet and sax), Sébastien Cirotteau (trumpet), Pierre-Yves Martel (viola de gamba and electronic), Jean-Luc Guionnet (saxophone), in addition of several spontaneous encounters.

He also plays in bands involved in a more specific musical genre as danced poetry with BABABA, instrumental theatre with Le Veau/ The Veal, songs with Les Pitounes and Éric Normand Chante and folk music with The Surruralits and RRRRoyal Canadian Free Form Folk Experience.

Interested in collective creation and orchestral improvisation, he lead for seven years the GGRIL, a 15 pieces band that have worked with composers such as Evan Parker, Jean Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage and Michael Fischer. His music has been programmed by or performed in several festivals in Canada , Australia and Europe. It have also been broadcasted by Radio-Canada, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, Radio-Grenouille, and several college radio stations.

Philippe Lauzier is an active member of the Quebec creative music scene. Instrumentalist, composer, and sound artist, he participates in several regular and occasional projects in Canada and overseas. As a soloist, he is largely defined by his research of, and experimentation with, the acoustic possibilities of the bass clarinet and alto and soprano saxophones. His playing blends the influence of contemporary musical languages as well as sounds from non-Western sources. Creative extended techniques, complex drones from which polyphonies emerge, and a performance marked by compositional rigour are the caracteristics of his style. In 2013, he recorded his first solo album, Transparence, which was hailed by critics as “An engrossing listen” and “nothing less than a masterpiece”. He has developed several fruitful collaborations in improvisation, including Sainct Laurens with Pierre-Yves Martel, with whom he released a second recording on vinyl in 2014. Martin Tétreault regularly joins the duo to form Xyz, an electro-noise trio. Philippe is also a member of Quartetski, which rethinks and reinterprets the works of great composers in an improvised setting.

Other projects, such as Toiture, with percussionist Corinne René, adopt an approach in which forms and precise material are at first composed, then freely developed. With this duo, he has presented works in Quebec, France, the United States, as well as in Austria during a residency at AIR Hotelpupik. Philippe also composes music in collaboration with artists in dance (Kelly Keenan, Kira Kirsch, Isabelle Van Grimde), theatre (Simon Boudreault, Michel F Côté), and visual arts (Marie-Michelle Deschamps). Philippe’s research has also led him to create his first sound installation, presented at the 30th Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville. Gritty is an instrumental installation for bass drum, bells, and autoharps, prepared with different found objects attached to small automatic motors. This miniature orchestration allows the listener to hear the vibrations, rubbing, squeaks, and metaphorical characteristics of the objects. Philippe lives in Montreal, Quebec.