Ensemble Super Musique

Although co-director of Montréal’s Ensemble Super Musique (ESM), Joane Hétu doesn’t overload the contemporary ensemble with her own works. She also composes for others. That’s why the music on these wide-ranging CDs contain only one Hétu-ESM track on Sonne l’image and one on Tags. Compositions by flutist Cléo Palacio-Quintin and vocalist Viviane Houle are also on the ESM disc. While Tags’ Hétu-ESM composition is vividly expressive, others on that CD demonstrate her sonic adaptability.

Tag’s “Les États” features a nine-piece ESM interpreting a graphic score, while the other disc’s “La vie de l’ésprit” is the audio portion of a 13-member ESM concert that included interactive video, animation and montage. The most jazz-like of the tracks, “Les États” features trombonist Scott Thomson’s plunger variation finding a place among Guido Del Fabbro’s harsh violin sweeps, Palacio-Quintin’s elevated flute peeps, clarinetist Lori Freedman’s shrill pitches and Isaiah Ceccarelli and Danielle Palardy Roger’s percussion patterns that move from rugged metal crunches to simple triangle pings. Expanded with vocal cries and Vergil Sharkya’s synthesizer oscillations the piece undulates to a connective finale. “La vie de l’ésprit” is more structured, as Houle’s lyric soprano is matched by the voices of Hétu and Jean Derome harmonizing phrases during the introduction and reprising that motif at the finale. The coda is sung in tandem with textures from the expanded ensemble, while the introduction integrates voices with a clarinet smear. As Olivier Saint-Pierre’s measured piano clips and synthesizer echoes create a continuum, string sweeps and reed tongue stops fragment and reconstitute the narrative until its parts finally meld.

Extended reed techniques challenge unusual string affiliations on Tag’s title track as Hétu and Derome join the Quasar quartet on saxophones in an invigorating set-to with Quatuor Bozzini. Exhibiting reed augmentations such as finger vibrations, guttural stops and echoing quacks, the six saxophones propel the two violins, viola and cello away from sweet tropes to col legno recoil, wood-thumping percussiveness and sul tasto harshness. Strangled human cries, reed peeps and string strops ricochet against one another as the climax. Freedman and bassist Nicolas Caloia’s “Mercury” duet is a reductionist variation of “Tags”. But the clarinetist’s glissandi curves, inner horn gurgles and squeaks don’t preclude the emergence of an animated melody since even when the pitch and tempo ascend the bassist’s calm pulse keep the piece linear. As for the stack of 20 guitarists’ textures on “Les dentellières”, the overlapping of chord crunching, finger picking and pedal steel echoes into a near opaque blend means that only flanges and twangs pierce the mass long enough to introduce individuality.

Sonne L’image’s other tracks are Palacio-Quintin “Révélations des pierres muettes” and Houle’s “Last Words”. Dense and highly rhythmic, the first sprinkles simple vocalized words within the drones and stresses from electronics and vibrating objects. A threnody, “Last Words” contrasts the singer’s bel canto warbles with keening and murmuring stop-time instrumental cries from the other players until the performance simmers to a low-pitched poignant resolution.

Hétu creates in many styles, These discs confirm her mastery of many.

—Ken Waxman

For MusicWorks Summer 2022