Presentation: "5 composers, 5 video works"

14:00 - 16:00: Workshop for cinema and visual arts students: Seeing music and hearing images
Workshop led by Mario Côté (screening and discussion)

18:00 : Presentation: "5 composers, 5 video works"
With Mario Côté (director), Lorraine Vaillancourt (conductor and founder of the NEM), Philippe Noireault.

Projection and Discussion

Around the video works created in dialogue with contemporary music

Synopsis of the video works:

Les voix fantômes  by Valentin Silvestrov
2023, 24 min 48 s – v. o. fr

Four musicians from the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) under the direction of conductor Lorraine Vaillancourt (1) gradually tame the Quartet No.1 by Valentin Silvestrov, Ukrainian composer. Four remarkable performers are busy grasping the execution challenges of a complex and fragile piece from the 20th-century repertoire. Inevitably, all these elements plunge us into the tense current events of a war between Ukraine and Russia. Then, through these dark news, emerges a quartet that opens a song of hope on a scorched, ravaged land.

Et seul le roseau ruisselle à la lumière du jour by Alla Zagaykevych
2023, 17 min 24 s – v. o. ukrainien. et fr

In 2023, Ukrainian composer Alla Zagaykevych designed an original musical piece for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM). During her creative residency in Montreal, she is faced with a heartbreaking work context. On one side, the tranquility of the St. Lawrence River banks and, on the other, a memory pierced by the Russian bombings on Kyiv. This musical work of great intensity, but also fragmented by heavy silences, is set amidst snowy landscapes comparable to those of a troubled Ukraine and relies on a text by Ukrainian poet Oleh Lycheha. 

PAUSE

Fired-up by Vito Žuraj
2024, 35 mm num, 12 min – s. d.

True dialogue between the musical work of Slovenian composer Vito Žuraj, Fired-Up (2013), performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) and images of spaces slowly becoming oppressive. A universe where stones transform into percussion, the burning space empties, and the irradiation of sound frictions takes us into a sequence of increasingly complex and interconnected phenomena.

L'Atelier des ombres by Nina Senk
2024, 35 mm num, 15 min – v. s. d.

A journey through the many rehearsal sessions and the final performance of Shadow of Stillness (2020) by Slovenian composer Nina Senk performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM). A journey that leaves traces of cast shadows, snow-covered landscapes, and images on the brink of disappearance.

Seul avec Martin Smolka, Solitudo,
2025, 35 mm num, 17 min – v. s. d.

Czech composer Martin Smolka brings out an ancient melody that gradually occupies an uninhabited place where melancholy and solitude reign. Then, a wandering body appears in this labyrinthine space. Slow silences alternate with rapid, regular rhythmic pulses. The dancer's body pushes back this tension and indicates with minimal gestures the giving or receiving of this fragile music. Then, a strange image from the immemorial past emerges: Noli me tendere, don't touch me, I'm still alive.

All musical pieces are under the direction of the conductor Lorraine Vaillancourt.

*Free event