Reservations
The CIRMMT Welcomes: Akousma — From intimacy to immensity concert is free and open to the public by reserving tickets online via this MS Form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/n5bHbdFrQe
For CIRMMT students wishing to have their attendance tracked for awards eligibility, please ensure to reserve your own seat.
We invite you to share this event via Facebook once the link becomes available.
Description
The “augmented concert” is a pioneering research-creation project that, for the first time in a structured way, incorporates new audio technologies—particularly bone conduction headphones—in the context of electroacoustic music performance.
This new medium of sound diffusion will offer augmented reality concert experiences, that is, immersive performances where virtual sources can blend seamlessly between the sounds played through the speakers and live musicians (external sources) and the sounds played through headphones (internal sources).
Listeners will thus benefit from a multi-layered listening system, opening up new artistic and scientific perspectives.
The inaugural 2025 concert featured newly created mixed music works commissioned for the occasion from Ana Dall’Ara-Majek, the Catalão-Thibault duo, Kevin Gironnay, and Nicola Giannini.
This project is led by composer and researcher Andrea Gozzi (Assistant Professor at the University of Sherbrooke, Associate Director of Artistic Research at CIRMMT).
The original production was a collaboration between Akousma (Montreal) and Mezzo Forte (Meudon, France), with financial support from the Pôle lavallois d’enseignement supérieur (PLAN).
Program
Duo Catalão-Thibault: INTIMITÉ INFINITÉ
For orchestral bass drum, percussion objects, and electronics
INTIMITÉ INFINITÉ is a musical work for orchestral bass drum, percussion objects, and electronics. The piece is built around the metaphor of intimacy, aiming to construct a personal relationship with the sonic phenomenon. After all, our relationship with sound is intuitive, personal, and unique. The work interrogates notions of timbral similarity, rhythmic space, and pitch proximity. Its metamorphoses carry us from gentleness to unease, from hesitation to fervor. Percussion timbres are explored with simplicity, while electronics serve to enhance the performers’ gestures. In the immersive concert setting proposed by Akousma, we present a version where electronics are spatialized through a dome of loudspeakers and bone conduction headphones, with the aim of heightening the sense of intimacy that can be developed with sound.
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek: Polyhedral Rhythms (2025)
For loudspeaker dome, bone conduction headphones, and PhotoTable
Polyhedral Rhythms is a performance for loudspeaker dome, bone conduction headphones, and the PhotoTable — an invented instrument that reacts to light. From liquidity to crystallization, I imagine sounds as elements whose state changes depending on their environment. Over time, increasingly complex and interwoven structures form, like giant crystals, unfolding in a four-dimensional space: that of the dome and our inner listening.
From sonic flux to geometric rhythms, the PhotoTable and bone conduction headphones interact to immerse the listener in the processes that transform matter.
Nicola Giannini: La dialectique de la proximité (2025)
Immersive sound performance for dome of speakers, bone-conduction headphones, synthesizers, cassette recorders, and amplified markers, Duration: 13'
Proximity isn't simply a measurable distance; it shapes our emotions and state of mind, just as being near or far from a loved one affects our mood. This performance explores the relationship between these two spatial sensations. The performance alternates between a vast soundscape and an almost private intimacy. An ephemeral sonic architecture is thus constructed using synthesis, and the boundaries between vastness and intimacy blur, inviting the audience to total immersion.
Kevin Gironnay: Espèces d’espaces
Various excerpts from works by poets, sung by Amy Grainger, soprano
Georges Perec wrote: “Space is a doubt.” He also wrote: “To live is to move from one space to another, trying as much as possible not to bump into anything.”
This piece is an essay on space and spaces, poetry and poems. It is not really about emptiness, but rather about what surrounds it, or what is within it.
Biographies
Duo Catalão-Thibault
S
ince 2009, the Catalão–Thibault duo has been exploring intersections between percussion and electronic music. Versatile percussionist João Catalão moves fluidly between contemporary music, jazz, and pop, while Dominic Thibault develops a practice as a composer and electronic improviser centered on human–machine interactions. Together, they have evolved from traditional mixed music to freer forms in which improvisation relies on pre-established structures and composed sonic materials. Their artistic approach seeks to unite acoustic and electronic timbres while experimenting with new notational practices that integrate improvisation. This long-standing collaboration has continually nourished and transformed their respective artistic trajectories.
live@CIRMMT Mini-festival: HanDVerb video link
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek is a composer and sound artist based in Montreal. She is interested in the interaction between instrumental, electroacoustic, and computational thinking in musical composition. Her favorite themes include microorganisms and imaginary landscapes that blend modular synthesis with field recording.
She is active in electroacoustic/mixed music and gestural instrument performance. She regularly performs as a thereminist with the ILÉA ensemble and the duo blablaTrains, and as a soloist with her invented instrument, the PhotoTable. Her albums have been released on Kohlenstoff Records and Empreintes DIGITALes, and her scores published by Babel Scores and Editions Henri Lemoine.
Photo credit: Andre Parmentier
Nicola Giannini
Nicola Giannini is an artist-researcher creating immersive sound experiences. His practice lies at the crossroads of experimental music, sound art, collaborative practices, and public-space creation. By exploring interactions between people, sound, and context, he conceives sound spaces as ephemeral architectures where intensity and lightness, the real and the surreal, the natural and the synthetic intertwine. His works have been presented across North and South America, Australia, and Europe.
He holds a doctorate in composition from the Université de Montréal and is currently a FRQSC-funded postdoctoral researcher at UQAM and McGill University.
https://www.nicolagiannini.com/
Photo credit: Emanuele Porcinai
Kevin Gironnay
Kevin Gironnay creates acousmatic and mixed music; he also produces music for installations, video, and dance, and performs in improvised music projects, both solo and in collaboration. His work focuses on taming chaotic elements to transform them into music through concrete and/or conceptual processes—hence his love of improvisation. His music is equally shaped by his interest in molding musical ideas across micro- and macro-formal levels—hence his love of composition. In 2016, he founded the Ensemble ILÉA, a mixed improvisation group combining acoustic and electronic instruments. He is an associate member of CIRMMT (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media, and Technology). In 2020, he co-founded Virage Sonore, a podcast production company. His works have been performed in Canada, the United States, China, and across Europe.
Photo credit: Lou Scamble
