Through the collaboration of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Goethe-Institut Montreal, Le Vivier and HELLERAU - Europäisches Zentrum Der Künste Dresden, Berlin composer Christopher Williams has received a residency in Montreal.
*On Perpetual (Musical) Peace? Montreal* is an experiment in musical cohabitation featuring SuperMusique, an ensemble of diverse improvisors in Montreal, and Christopher Williams, a visiting composer and contrabassist based in Berlin. Over the last several weeks, the artists have rehearsed together regularly to explore ways of be(com)ing a group. On 7 Dec., they will open a window onto this collaboration in the form of a "serious happy hour" with music, discussion, snacks, and drinks.
The project’s conceptual springboard is Immanuel Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch”. This text proposed a path to lasting peace among perpetually warring nations through an international federation of states. (It later influenced the UN Charter and EU Constitution.) Our collaboration embraces Kant’s values of hospitality, publicity (transparency), and perpetuality (sustainability) -- and the often contentious work it takes to maintain them. The project takes them as bedrock conditions for life in which there is room for everyone and everything.
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Rather than providing his own scores, materials, or aesthetic for the ensemble to unite around, "the composer" plays the role of a sympathetic agitator. Williams has proposed exercises, discussions, and graphic and verbal scores by a variety of artists (including the musicians themselves) in order to provoke difference in and reflection on what the members of SuperMusique already do. In turn, the musicians find new collective resources which they fold back into the work process en route to a kind of perpetual musical piece/peace.
Participants
Ensemble SuperMusique (Cléo Palacio-Quintin, flutes; Elizabeth Millar, clarinet; Joane Hétu, alto saxophone, voice; Scott Thomson, trombone; Jennifer Thiessen, alto; Pierre-Yves Martel, viola da gamaba, harmonicas; Martin Tétreault, turntable; Danielle Palardy Roger, percussions)
Christopher Williams
Christopher Williams (1981, San Diego) is a wayfarer on the bodymind continuum. His media are music and sound. As a composer and contrabassist, Williams’s work runs the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists. Williams’ artistic research on improvisation, notation, and his body-mind continuum takes the form of both conventional academic publications and practicebased
multimedia projects. He is also an active concert curator and spokesman for the importance of thinking about sound in built environments.
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