ChamberDestroy

In an effort to make Chamber Destroy as financially accessible as possible, TENMC is implementing ticketing options based off of The Music Gallery’s new Pay What You Can Afford (PWYCA) ticketing model. MG’s PWYCA ticketing invites concert goers to choose an appropriate level where possible, to help offset community members attending at a discounted rate. Levels are decided by you based upon your income and financial flexibility and are not verified at the door.

ChamberDestroy is co-produced by The Music Gallery and connects contemporary music ensembles from two of Canada's largest cultural centres with one common artistic goal. Ensemble Paramirabo-EP (Montreal) and Thin Edge New Music Collective - TENMC (Tkarón:to/Toronto) reunite on the heels of a highly successful joint touring/recording project (2015 and 2018), to premiere Nicole Lizée's ChamberVania (AKA ChamberDestroy, FKA ChamberKill) for double sextet, soundtrack and video and Datura for double sextet and video by Yaz Lancaster (USA) alongside, Louis Andriessen’s seminal Workers Union and Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy for unspecified ensemble.

Montreal-based Nicole Lizée is one of Canada’s most sought after and imaginative composers. Her instantly recognizable musical language ingeniously marries elements of contemporary music with technology, popular culture and visuals. Nicole’s rhythmically propulsive new work explores ephemera, idioms, and connotations of early video game culture. The 8-bit world infiltrates the chamber ensemble world as instruments assume 8-bit and pixelated characteristics. Sections of the work are duel/battle-based music: ensemble vs ensemble. Puzzles need to be completed, levels are attained, 2D and 3D music are both expressed on screen via graphics and in the ensemble writing and alterations to instruments. The ensembles performs on custom-made instruments to evoke the infiltration through the 4th/5th wall into the chamber music world. 

Yaz Lancaster is a transdisciplinary artist based in NYC. They are most interested in practices aligned with relational aesthetics & the everyday; fragments & collage; and liberatory politics. Their work is presented in many different mediums & collaborative projects, and often reckons with specific influences ranging from politics of identity & liberation to natural phenomena and poetics. 

Louis Andriessen’s experimental compositional style developed as a rebellion against postwar serialist traditions prevalent in Europe during his formative years. Worker’s Union (1975) is an indeterminate piece ‘for any loud sounding group of instruments’. Driven by aggressive, machine-like rhythmic precision, Andriessen believes that "only in the case that every player plays with such an intention that his part is an essential one, will the work succeed; just as in the political work." TENMC and EP are revisiting this powerful composition, which featured prominently on their joint album ‘Raging Against the Machine’ (2015 Redshift Records), in honour of Andriessen’s recent passing.  

Joy Boy (1974) by visionary American minimalist composer/performer Julius Eastman, is written for open instrumentation, and includes elements of improvisation within the framework of a set harmonic structure. Joy Boy’s shimmering harmonic textures carry listeners and performers alike along for an ecstatic sonic journey. 

ChamberDestroy is made possible with generous support from The Music Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.