Hydroörganon 2.0
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2019, at 9 PM
Venue: L'église Saint-Léon de Westmount
Presented as part of the CIOC’s 2019 Grand Organ Festival
This concert brings André Forget’s literary work, "The Lower Registers" (audiobook available here) to music and poetic voice. Imagining what music would sound like for his fictional instrument, the Hydroörganon, we commissioned writers, via poetry, to construct blueprints for newly composed electroacoustic music.
Adrian Foster & Joel Peters, organ and compositions
Miranda Hickman & Vincent Lauzon, narrators
Abdurahman Hussain, lighting
Christopher Murtagh, sound engineer
Background:
In April 2017, Joel Peters and André Forget collaborated on a literary piece inspired by "Organ Ocean: waves of sound", an organ recital given by Peters at St. Joseph's Oratory. The result: "The Lower Registers," a magical-realist account of an organ builder, theorist, and composer, Kenji Saito, whose theories lead him to the conclusion that the purest form of music, and the most appropriate place to meet the Divine, is in the depths of the ocean. Saito begins to build organs underwater and give concerts on these peculiar instruments. Audiences have mixed reactions. Some claim to be transported into spiritual places, and others hear absolutely nothing.
Now, these experiences take on a further dimension by way of newly commissioned poems by Jenny Berkel, Sarah Ens, Noor Naga, Bardia Sinaee, and Vincent Lauzon. These poems, in turn, became the guiding principles for newly composed electroacoustic music, which offer musical re-imaginings of these poetic narratives.