News – 27/10/21

A wonderful edition to celebrate its 30ᵗʰ anniversary !

The 17th edition of the immersive digital music festival Akousma was held from October 11 to 15 in Montreal with great success and an audience that was obviously eager to come and experience it all!

The 10ᵗʰ program by artistic director Louis Dufort kicked off with a preliminary evening at the Satosphere of the Société des arts technologiques, at the invitation of MTL Connect (Digital Spring). With the premiere of an acousmatic work by Simon Chioini, a music video by the duo GGROUNDD (commissioned by Akousma) and a presentation of an audiovisual work by Myriam Bleau and Sandrine Deumier (recently awarded at the Japan Media Arts Festival), Akousma delighted the audience attending this sold-out event.

The next day, Akousma co-produced a concert with Le Vivier at the Espace orange of the Wilder Building, a program devoted to live sound arts, which also presented its share of premieres. Nine artists playing laptop computers, theremin or invented instruments offered an extremely varied concert which was, once again, sold out.

Artists of the concert at the Wilder : Léa Boudreau, Anne-F Jacques, Véro Marengère + Alain Lefebvre, Dominic Jasmin, Martín Rodríguez, Érick d’Orion, blablabla Trains

At Usine C, an inventory of electroacoustic creation

Returning to its headquarters for the 10ᵗʰ time, Akousma offered Usine C a real inventory of Canadian electroacoustic creation by presenting no less than 20 artists on the first two evenings, before ending the festivities in style on the 15ᵗʰ with a concert that paid tribute to pioneers of the genre in Quebec (Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, Marcelle Deschênes and Gisèle Ricard) as well as to the co-founders of Akousma in 1991 (Jean-François Denis, Gilles Gobeil and Robert Normandeau, whose work Christophe Lengelé also praised).

In addition, invading the entire space of Usine C, Akousma presented in the hall an exhibition by the multidisciplinary artist Félix-Antoine Morin, who hung some of his “Sound Cartographies”, while the composer David Ledoux presented in the garden “Possible sound fields”, an installation co-produced with the help of Audiotopie.

At Usine C on October 13 : Félix-Antoine Morin (spatialized by Guillaume Cliche), Pablo Geeraert + Joseph Sims ( winners of the 2021 JTTP composition competition), Jean-François Blouin, Chantal Dumas, Kevin Austin, Stéphane Roy, Pauline Patie, Claude Périard, Sarah Feldman, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier.

At Usine C on October 14 : Mélanie Frisoli ( winner of the 2020 JTTP composition competition ), Frédéric Auger, Roger Tellier-Craig, Hugo Tremblay, Rouzbeh Shadpey, Erin Gee, Xavier Madore, France Jobin, Louis Dufort.

For this exceptional 17ᵗʰ edition of its festival, which marked its 30ᵗʰ anniversary so well, Akousma would like to thank its partners MTL Connecte, Le Vivier, Audiotopie and the staff of Usine C, as well as those of the SAT and the Wilder Building.

The concerts on October 12, 13, 14 and 15, at the Wilder Building and Usine C, have been recorded and will be available to watch soon - check our website for details.

The immersive digital music festival Akousma will return in 2022, from October 11 to 16, for an 18ᵗʰ edition that will regain its international character !