+++ Red Bull Music Academy announces the program for its month-long Montreal edition, featuring Björk, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Ciani, Fucked Up & Tanya Tagaq, Tim Hecker, Pauline Oliveros, Joan La Barbara, Theo Parrish, Chilly Gonzales, Tiga, The Black Madonna, Jacques Greene and many more +++
+++ Events include a virtual reality exhibition; an underwater listening experience; an ice skating jam; a meeting of metal, drone and noise vanguards; a night of improvised Round Robin duets; a celebration of Montreal disco; collaborations with 1080p, Never Apart, Piknic Électronik and many more +++
August 18th, 2016 – Montreal (Quebec) – From September 24 to October 28, the Red Bull Music Academy will touch down in Montreal for a deep and distinguished exploration of Canadian and international music culture, featuring events, club nights, performances, public lectures and a special VR exhibition.
Since 1998, the world-travelling Red Bull Music Academy has been at the forefront of celebrating and documenting music history, while simultaneously adding new chapters to it through its much-lauded network of events, lectures, editorial content and radio programming. Taking root in cities like Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Paris, São Paulo and Cape Town, the Academy has been nurturing local music scenes for almost 20 years.
WHY MONTREAL?
Montreal has been at the epicentre of Canadian artistic experimentation for decades, which makes the city an ideal fit for the Red Bull Music Academy. With its multilingual makeup and multicultural vitality, Montreal supports a booming art scene that has nourished creativity of all shapes and sizes – from thriving metal and experimental music scenes to leading edge contributions in video game design and animation.
THE PHI CENTRE
The Phi Centre, is a multidisciplinary arts and culture hub that will serve as the home base for 70 hand-picked Academy participants from 38 countries — An outstanding example of Montreal’s innovative, inspiring and inclusive approach to culture, providing an eclectic range of programming throughout the year. Over the course of the month-long Red Bull Music Academy, the Phi Centre will provide the infrastructure for the Academy’s state-of-the-art recording facilities, private lectures with musical luminaries and RBMA Radio studio. Phi Centre’s sister location, DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, will host a virtual reality exhibition revolving around the extraordinary visual output of Björk.
The Academy has commissioned the world-renowned Icelandic artist’s latest VR video, following similar collaborations with New York’s MoMA, Vivid Sydney, Tokyo’s Miraikan and London’s Somerset House. Starting on October 15, DHC/ART’s visitors will be invited to immerse themselves in the Björk Digital Exhibition, featuring all five of Björk’s VR videos, her interactive Biophilia app and screenings of her inimitable music video oeuvre. Later in the month, Björk will also be DJing on back-to-back Academy nights.
CELEBRATING LOCAL VENUES
The event program will also extend to a wide range of iconic locations throughout the city. Ludger-Duvernay, Canada’s oldest theater inside the Monument-National, provides the beautiful backdrop for an extended conversation with Iggy Pop, the godfather of punk music and one of the most enduring artists and performers of our times. Harkening back to the glory days of cabaret, the intimate concert hall La Tulipe will house the world premiere of an eruptive collaboration between two Polaris Music Prize winners: experimental Toronto hardcore punk outfit Fucked Up and Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq.
2,500 celestial bodies in the star field of the Montreal Planetarium will provide the dazzling setting for a deep listening experience led by pioneering electronic composer Pauline Oliveros, vocal experimentalist Joan La Barbara and Lucrecia Dalt, part of this year’s team of studio tutors at the Academy. The event is then going to shift focus to a different listening experience that will be immersive in its truest sense: Inside Montreal’s most iconic pool, the audience will be treated to an underwater sound experience, featuring a custom-built soundsystem, a specially commissioned piece by Lorenzo Senni, a Dopplereffekt live set and an all-Drexciya set by DJ Stingray. Bring your bathing suits!
The Academy program will also pay tribute to numerous cornerstones of Canadian culture in general and Montreal music in particular. For its opening night on September 24, Red Bull Music Academy teams up with the Never Apart cultural center to present a night of cream-of-the-crop techno and house music, featuring Rrose, DJ Richard, Aurora Halal, Mike Servito, Mathew Jonson and more. Montreal’s influential Turbo Crunk party will be revived for the opening night of the second Academy term on October 15, bringing together the founding group made up of Jacques Greene, 247ESP and Academy alumni Lunice and Ango.
Piknic Électronik, Montreal’s prime outdoor destination for electronic music in the summertime, will host a Red Bull Music Academy Special on its closing weekend, headlined by esteemed Detroit selector Theo Parrish. Celebrated Canadian tape and digital label 1080p will bring their strong roster to Artgang for a label night, and two of Montreal’s favorite sons, Tiga and Jacques Greene, will present their new live shows as part of the Academy program. Even Canada’s national sport will be represented: an ice skating jamboree on October 1 will translate the roller disco concept to more slippery territories.
Québec’s influential metal scene will be at the core of one of the Academy’s signature event formats: Drone Activity In Progress first premiered at the Red Bull Music Academy New York in 2013, and this latest edition will assemble some of the most exciting artists from the local metal circuit, as well as connecting the dots to related forms of experimental, noise and drone music. Pierre-Marc Tremblay of legendary Québécois black metal outfit Akitsa presents his Âmes Sanglantes power electronics solo project, Away, drummer and album art designer of thrash metal giants Voivod, will give a rare solo percussion performance, and Melanie Mongeon + Topon Das of Montreal grindcore band Fuck The Facts will present their first show as a duo. The lineup is rounded off by a specially commissioned sound and light show from Tim Hecker, as well as Kara-Lis Coverdale, Thisquietarmy, Drainolith and the debut performance of Black Mecha. Another Academy favorite taking place in Montreal, which debuted in New York in 2013, is Round Robin, which will bring together a wide range of artists from different genres for a night of improvised duets.
Additional events will include a night of electronic explorations with Suzanne Ciani, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Veronica Vasicka, the debut collaborative live performance of French-Canadian pianist Jean-Michel Blais and Montreal’s emotional electronics whiz CFCF, Chilly Gonzales leading a group of Academy participants through a special collaborative concert, a celebration of Montreal’s formerly booming disco scene, as well as a number of club nights featuring The Black Madonna, Sadar Bahar, Black Coffee, RP Boo and many more.
WHERE CAN WE BUY TICKETS?
Tickets go on sale Tuesday, August 23.
For more information on all Red Bull Music Academy Montreal events, visit mtl.redbullmusicacademy.com
THE 2016 PARTICIPANTS
As the event program unfolds at Phi Centre and throughout the city, the 70 hand-selected participants — a highly international group that includes Baton Rouge producer Suicideyear, Norway’s bass hotshot Drippin, Mexico City’s goth-pop songstress Dani Shivers, Berlin-based Chinese experimental artist Pan Daijing, Canadian representatives include Marie Davidson (Montreal), River Tiber (Toronto), Sayge (Ontario), Casey MQ (Toronto) and Angus Tarnawsky (Vancouver), and many more — will attend the Academy’s signature lecture program. While the lectures will neither be announced nor open to the public, the video recordings will be uploaded to the Academy’s digital hub at redbullmusicacademy.com. The participants will furthermore use the Academy’s state-of-the-art recording facilities to collaborate on music together, while a team of studio tutors including Just Blaze, Deradoorian, Matias Aguayo and Lucrecia Dalt will provide mentoring help, and work side-by-side with the Class of 2016 around the clock. A daily Facebook Live stream on the Red Bull Music Academy page will let the world in on a piece of the action at facebook.com/redbullmusicacademy.
THE DAILY
The Red Bull Music Academy’s online hub for premium, long-form music journalism at daily.redbullmusicacademy.com will meanwhile shine a light on innumerable artists and genres that have influenced and continue to define Canadian music past, present and future, in addition to long-form pieces that hone in on some of Canadian music’s essential stories. These essential stories from Montreal and beyond range from the history of Quebec’s hip-hop evolution and the rise of Montreal’s rave scene to special Nightclubbing essays on Montreal’s most esteemed clubs and the musical legacy of Refus Global.
MOVING IMAGES
In collaboration with Montreal’s Booooooom, Red Bull Music Academy has also produced a six-episode animated series, relating the origin stories of when certain Canadian musicians first met and experienced a spark of shared creativity. Among the featured artists will be Peaches, Jessy Lanza, A-Trak, Kaytranada and BadBadNotGood.
RBMA RADIO
RBMA Radio will be broadcasting live from their studio at Phi Centre every weekday at 10AM and 3PM EDT. Tune in for a diverse program featuring the best of Montreal: local scenes, conversations and special guests. At night, select Red Bull Music Academy concerts and club nights will be live streamed. Be sure to also check out Northern Lights, RBMA Radio’s roadtrip north. With all episodes available on-demand, the new show covers everything from Canadian punk to the unique habitat of live electronic music that is MUTEK festival.
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