MusiMars 2004 Festival

The following photos were taken during the 2004 MusiMars Festival, held from March 1st to 6th, 2004 at the Faculty of Music of McGill University. The festival was produced in partnership with the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, in collaboration with the National Arts Center (Ottawa), La Chaîne culturelle de Radio-Canada and CBC Radio Two. MusiMarch featured a week of concerts, open discussions, presentations and master classes centered on the French composer Philippe Hurel, artistic director of the Ensemble Court-Circuit, and professor of composition at IRCAM as well as Conductor in Residence at the Arsenal de Metz and the Philarmonie de Lorraine. Canadian composer Howard Bashaw was a special guest.

The following pictures are informal photos taken during rehearsals of Philippe Hurel's work "Leçon de choses", for ensemble, multichannel sound and interactive computer system. The piece was performed by the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by Denys Bouliane.

An exhausted but happy Denys Boliane in a relaxed mood following a successful rehearsal of "Leçon de choses".

Composition student Geof Holbrook performed the challenging synthesizer part. He also completely rewrote the Max/MSP patch for the piece to fix a persistent software problem that threatened to derail the performance.

Richard McKenzie, Technical Director of the Digital Composition Studios, (left) and Sean Ferguson, Director of the DCS, at the studio's concert mixing board (Mackie 32 x 8bus with 24 track extender). Only a few inputs were unused!

Performers from the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble arrive at the beginning of rehearsal.