Description
Paramirabo makes its ATMA Classique debut with Voix jetées, a daring album devoted to favourite works by contemporary Canadian and American composers. This is Paramirabo’s fifth album and the works within represent some of the ensemble’s most performed repertoire from the last five years paired with an excerpt of a commissioned work by Keiko Devaux premiered in 2021. Also included works by Nico Muhly (Doublespeak), Missy Mazzoli (Still Life with Avalanche), Nicole Lizée (Music for Body-Without-Organs), and Jared Miller (Leviathan).
Doublespeak by Nico Muhly evokes the spirit of minimalist music. Through its perpetual-mode pulsations, repetitive phrases and harmonic-rhythmic language, his piece reveals the influence of Philip Glass.
Missy Mazzoli’s Still Life with Avalanche essentially consists of a pile of melodies collapsing into a chaotic tumble. The players layer bursts of sound over the static drones of harmonicas, sketching out a strange and evocative sonic landscape.
“Voix jetées” by Canadian composer Keiko Devaux was originally conceived as the third movement of her chamber opera L’écoute du perdu. The work is performed by soprano Sarah Albu.
In her composition Music for Body-Without-Organs, Nicole Lizée refers to a concept developed by the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, which describes an abnormal metamorphic being – fluid, boundless, mutating – that escapes bodily limits. Lizée’s work is a sonic representation of this continuous process of elements that merge to form new entities.
Leviathan by Canadian-American composer Jared Miller explores the concept of “parallax,” or the change observed when the same point is viewed from two different angles. To illustrate this phenomenon, Miller chose to evoke the song of blue whales.
Taking its name from an evocative composition by iconic Montréal composer Claude Vivier, Paramirabo was founded in 2008 by a group of young musicians at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. The ensemble has since forged new paths through its bold programs, multiple collaborations and exchanges, engagement with the public, and its commitment to showcasing new music works by young Canadian composers at home and abroad.
